Important Update: 92Y remains open
Former WQXR host Naomi Lewin moderates a series of conversations with renowned artists featured in 92Y’s current concert season. Together they explore and illuminate works they’ll be performing on our stage.
Inside the Concert launches with a talk featuring Grammy Award-winning violinist Gil Shaham, with Colin and Eric Jacobsen of the groundbreaking orchestral collective The Knights. The centerpiece of their March 14 livestream concert is a newly conceived arrangement by The Knights of Beethoven’s sublimely beautiful Violin Concerto — a work that has captivated Shaham since he was a young boy, and which he has performed with some of the greatest orchestras in the world.
Hear Gil, Colin and Eric talk about what ignites their passion for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and all that can be found and experienced in it. They perform passages from the work, interspersed throughout the talk, for illustration. A deep and personal hourlong dive into a Beethoven masterwork by the world-class artists who’ll bring it to life on our stage.
Gil, Colin and Eric will take questions via chat during the last part of the program.
Use promo code 92YGIL for a 20% discount for Gil Shaham, The Knights and Eric Jacobsen’s new CD recording of Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos from Presto Music.
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Naomi Lewin is the former host of weekday afternoon music on WQXR, and of the podcast Conducting Business. Before that, she was midday host at WGUC in Cincinnati, where she created the award-winning weekly program Classics for Kids, which airs on radio stations across the country. She has produced music programs and arts reports for NPR; intermission features for Metropolitan Opera broadcasts; and podcasts on subjects ranging from the Yale Glee Club, to Tippet Rise Art Center, to the bicentennial of St. George's Choral Society. Südwestrundfunk in Stuttgart recently com ...
Naomi Lewin is the former host of weekday afternoon music on WQXR, and of the podcast Conducting Business. Before that, she was midday host at WGUC in Cincinnati, where she created the award-winning weekly program Classics for Kids, which airs on radio stations across the country. She has produced music programs and arts reports for NPR; intermission features for Metropolitan Opera broadcasts; and podcasts on subjects ranging from the Yale Glee Club, to Tippet Rise Art Center, to the bicentennial of St. George's Choral Society. Südwestrundfunk in Stuttgart recently commissioned her to create a two-hour program – in German – celebrating Itzhak Perlman's 75th birthday. Naomi is also a speaker, emcee, and media coach, and the radio voice of Arizona Opera.
Given her previous lifetime as a singer and actress, Naomi has continued to appear onstage, narrating Peter and the Wolf, Carnival of the Animals, King David, Façade, A Visit from the White Rabbit, and Four Seasons of Italian Futurist Cuisine by Aaron Jay Kernis. She can be seen as J.S. Bach in the Sunday Baroque 30th Anniversary video, and as a spitball-shooting professor in La Folía, from Filmelodic. Naomi has hosted a Classics for Kids Live show around the country, and has given talks on operas from Aida to Zauberflöte.
Naomi was born in Princeton, New Jersey, but received both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale.
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Music’s Tightest-Knit Family: The String Quartet
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Countertenor-Palooza
Inside the Concert with Naomi Lewin: Gil Shaham and The Knights
Inside the Concert with Naomi Lewin: Jason Vieaux
Inside the Concert with Naomi Lewin: Brandon Patrick George
Inside the Concert with Naomi Lewin: Anthony McGill
Inside the Concert with Naomi Lewin: Stewart Goodyear
Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time, whose combination of flawless technique with inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his legacy as a beloved master. He is sought after for concerto appearances as well as for recital and ensemble performances in the world’s most hallowed concert halls and most prestigious festivals …
Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time, whose combination of flawless technique with inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his legacy as a beloved master. He is sought after for concerto appearances as well as for recital and ensemble performances in the world’s most hallowed concert halls and most prestigious festivals.
Shaham regularly performs with the world’s top orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Israel Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, among others. In addition to his many orchestral engagements, Gil Shaham is an avid recitalist, chamber musician, and proponent of new works. He regularly collaborates with musical colleagues: composers William Bolcom, Bright Sheng and Avner Dorman; pianists Yefim Bronfman, Akira Eguchi and sister Orli Shaham; cellists Truls Mørk and Lynn Harrell, and his wife violinist Adele Anthony.
Shaham’s broad discography encompasses over 30 recordings including many award-winning discs, including multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, a Diapason d’Or and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Since 2004 Shaham’s recordings have been produced for his own label, Canary Classics, include Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies with Orli Shaham, Butterfly Lovers and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto; Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works with Adele Anthony, Akira Eguchi and Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León. 2014 saw the release, to wide critical acclaim, of Volume 1 of his 1930s Violin Concertos (CC12) series encompassing concertos by Barber, Stravinsky, Berg, Hartmann and Britten, and in 2015 he released his landmark recording of JS Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas (CC14). In 2016 he released the Grammy nominated recording and second installment of his 1930s Violin Concertos featuring Prokofiev and Bartok’s second violin concertos (CC16).
Shaham was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Award, presented live on national television in the USA by conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
In 2012, he was named ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ by Musical America, which cited the ‘special kind of humanism’ with which his performances are imbued. For his forthcoming album of the Brahms and Beethoven Violin Concertos with The Knights, he performed on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium Artists and Benefactors Collaborative.
Hailed by the New York Times as “an interpretive dynamo,” conductor and cellist Eric Jacobsen has built a reputation for engaging audiences with innovative and collaborative programming.
Jacobsen is Co-Artistic Director and conductor of The Knights, and also serves as the Music Director for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra …
Jacobsen is Co-Artistic Director and conductor of The Knights, and also serves as the Music Director for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and the Greater Bridgeport Symphony. Jacobsen founded the adventurous orchestra The Knights with his brother, violinist Colin Jacobsen, to foster the intimacy and camaraderie of chamber music on the orchestral stage. As conductor, Jacobsen has led the “consistently inventive, infectiously engaged indie ensemble” (New York Times) at Central Park’s Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, (Le) Poisson Rouge, 92nd Street Y, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center, at major summer festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Ojai, and on tour nationally and internationally, including at the Cologne Philharmonie, Düsseldorf Tonhalle, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Salzburg Großes Festspielhaus, Vienna Musikverein, National Gallery of Dublin, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Recent collaborators include violinists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham, singers Dawn Upshaw, Susan Graham, and Nicholas Phan, and pianists Emanuel Ax and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Also in demand as a guest conductor, Jacobsen has led the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Detroit, Virginia, Alabama, the New World, Naples, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and the Deutsche Philharmonie Merck.
Under Jacobsen’s baton, The Knights have developed an extensive recording collection, which includes the critically acclaimed albums Azul, with longtime collaborator Yo-Yo Ma, as well as the Prokofiev Concerto in the Grammy-nominated Gil Shaham album 1930s Violin Concertos. The Knights issued three albums for Sony Classical including Jan Vogler and The Knights Experience: Live from New York; New Worlds, and an all-Beethoven album, as well as the “smartly programmed” (National Public Radio) A Second in Silence on the Ancalagon label. Jacobsen’s first release on Warner Classics was the ground beneath our feet. We Are The Knights, a documentary film produced by Thirteen/WNET, premiered in September 2011.
A dedicated chamber musician, Jacobsen is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, participating in residencies and performances at the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, and across the U.S., Central Asia, Middle East, Far East, and Europe. In addition, as a founding member of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, he has taken part in a wealth of world premieres and toured extensively in North America, Europe, and Asia.
In December 2012, Jacobsen and his brother Colin were selected from among the nation’s top visual, performing, media, and literary artists to receive a prestigious United States Artists Fellowship. Eric splits his time between New York and Orlando with his wife, singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, and their daughter.
Violinist and composer Colin Jacobsen is “one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene” (The Washington Post). An eclectic composer who draws on a range of influences, he was named one of the top 100 composers under 40 by NPR listeners …
Violinist and composer Colin Jacobsen is “one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene” (The Washington Post). An eclectic composer who draws on a range of influences, he was named one of the top 100 composers under 40 by NPR listeners. He is also active as an Avery Fisher Career Grant-winning soloist and has toured with the Silk Road Ensemble since its inception in 2000. For his work as a founding member of two game-changing, audience-expanding ensembles – the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and orchestra The Knights – Jacobsen was selected from among the nation’s top visual, performing, media, and literary artists to receive a prestigious and substantial United States Artists Fellowship. As a featured soloist and composer with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, he performed at the Sydney Opera House in a memorable concert streamed by millions of viewers worldwide. His compositions and arrangements for dance and theater include The Principles of Uncertainty, a collaboration between writer/illustrator Maira Kalman and Dance Heginbotham; and More Or Less I Am, a theatrical production of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself by Compagnia de' Colombari.