New Classical Tracks: 'The Ground Beneath our Feet'

The Knights - The Ground Beneath our Feet (Warner Classics 617098)

Colin Jacobson grew up with a lot of music in his house.

"Our dad, from Minnesota, played violin in the Minnesota Orchestra, then the Milwaukee Symphony, then the Met Opera," Colin says. "We grew up with him and his friends playing chamber music in the living room whenever they weren't at the Met. I think we saw music as a very social and joyous activity from the beginning."

Colin Jacobson says as soon as he and his younger brother Eric were old enough, they carried on that tradition of making music with friends in their living room. Before long, that group of friends became a chamber ensemble called The Knights. Colin is a violinist and co-artistic director for the group with Eric, who plays cello and often directs the group.

On their newest recording, The Ground Beneath our Feet, Colin says the ensemble is moving much closer to its overall goal. "I think this album puts forward what the orchestra believes better than any other album up to this date, because it really comes from within the group," he says. "By using the Concerto Grosso as the jumping-off point in which individual voices come to the fore and then fade away, I think we tried to make that explicit."

As Colin explains it, The Ground Beneath our Feet is a title that really serves a dual purpose. "It's a little bit of a play on words," he says. "The 'ground' referring to the ground bass that forms the backbone of the piece. But I think it's also a sense that what we do as the Knights has to happen collectively. And it's the work we put in together that allows that ground to be there, so we can trust each other and play music."

Whenever this group gets together, there are constant brainstorming sessions where ideas of all kinds are tossed around. "This album is really a product of those conversations," Colin explains. "For instance, the title track is the brainchild of Alex Sopp, who is a flutist within the group. And she's also the multi-talented person who did the cover artwork, taking Stravinsky's face and having the universe sort of spew out of his mouth. It's really beautiful. She came up with this idea that we should create a piece collectively within the group. And to do that, she suggested using an old ground bass line, or chaconne, and for different people to write sketches or takes on that bass line. About seven people contributed original material to the piece, The Ground Beneath our Feet.

"For instance, it starts with a free improvisation led by Sean Conley, a bass player who outside of the Knights plays almost all jazz. And it ends with an original song by Christina Courtin, who is a violinist and also a wonderful singer-songwriter. And in the middle, I write a section that indulges my love of Persian music. My friend Johnny writes a section that showcases his love of salsa — and so it is a quilt, in a certain sense."

Isn't there also an Irish jig?

"Yes," Colin says, "and the person who wrote that is someone who is now in Minnesota, playing principal bass with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Zack Cohen. We get to borrow him every now and then."

Colin's passion for Persian music resulted in the world-premiere recording of the Concerto for Santur, Violin and Orchestra, which he co-wrote with Siamak Aghaei, a Persian musician Colin met while touring with The Silk Road Ensemble. "The piece starts with a three-minute opening invocation by Siamak — not on the santur but the dutar, which is a two-stringed, long-necked lute often used by bards in central Asia," Colin explains. "In the middle of the piece is a cadenza for santur, the hammered dulcimer of Iran and he sings during it, a chant. It's incredibly beautiful. When I heard him do that, it was so deep, so sad — nostalgic for a place a long time ago and I thought the material could form some of the backbone of the piece. And then I contributed original material and tried to find a way to weave his instrument and his tradition into the orchestra."

This new release was actually recorded on what Colin and his brother Eric consider to be somewhat hallowed ground. "We made this recording and played Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks a year ago, and it was the 75th anniversary of that piece being written for that place — it's a beautiful historic mansion in Washington, D.C.," Colin says. "And when Stravinsky was writing that piece, he was thinking about Bach and his Brandenburg concerti. That piece has a different part for every single person in the orchestra. So it's really the sense of individuality within the collective, through the wonderfully quirky lens of Stravinsky. And another sense-of-place thing: I mentioned my dad — he played that piece there about halfway between its being written and us playing it there. I'm not sure it's with Stravinsky conducting … it might have been Robert Craft conducting. That was a nice feeling, for my brother and me to be there, knowing that our dad had done the same thing there, half our lifetimes' ago."

The Knights are on solid ground with their new release, The Ground Beneath Our Feet.

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