Biography

The Knights are a collective of adventurous musicians dedicated to transforming the orchestral experience and eliminating barriers between audiences and music. Driven by an open-minded spirit of camaraderie and exploration, they inspire listeners with vibrant programs that encompass their roots in the classical tradition and passion for artistic discovery. The orchestra has toured and recorded with renowned soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Béla Fleck, Chris Thile, and Gil Shaham, and has appeared across the world’s most prestigious stages, including those at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Ravinia, The Kennedy Center, and the Vienna Musikverein.

The Knights evolved from late-night chamber music reading parties with friends at the home of violinist Colin Jacobsen and cellist Eric Jacobsen. The Jacobsen brothers, who are also founding members of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, serve as artistic directors of The Knights, with Eric Jacobsen as conductor. Since incorporating in 2007, the orchestra has toured consistently across the United States and Europe.

The Knights seek to share music with a broad general public regardless of background, and the group designs programs to appeal to both loyal followers and new listeners alike. The Knights perform in traditional concert halls as well as in parks, plazas, and bars, and create unusual and adventurous partnerships across disciplines. Counted among recent highlights are fully-staged performances of Bernstein's Candide at both Tanglewood and Ravinia; the release of the album “Shorthand” with composer Anna Clyne and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and the 2025 summer season featuring performances at Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell, Bryant Park, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts with mandolinist Chris Thile, and the Clark Art Institute.

The orchestra seeks out and prioritizes collaborative partnerships with artists often underrepresented in classical music. Recent seasons have included performances with Brooklyn-based Pan Evolution Steel Orchestra, with African musicians as part of William Kentridge’s The Head and the Load, and with a diverse group of contemporary composers and performers including Vijay Iyer, Kinan Azmeh, Angélica Negrón, and Jessie Montgomery, among others.

Artistic collaborators in the 2024-25 season included GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan and Brooklyn Youth Chorus; vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant; Knights violinist and composer Christina Courtin; and genre-shattering pianist/composer Aaron Diehl, with whom The Knights released a GRAMMY-nominated album of Mary Lou Williams' Zodiac Suite in September 2023.

In the 2025-26 season, The Knights continue our concert series presented by Carnegie Hall, featuring a new work by songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane for clarinetist Anthony McGill, commissioned as part of the orchestra’s Rhapsody project. Rhapsody is a multi-year initiative inspired by the 2024 centennial of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The Knights’ Carnegie Hall concerts this season feature poet J. Mae Barizo, pianist Dan Tepfer, and other esteemed collaborators. Learn more here.

The Knights are proud to be known as “one of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products…known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” (The New Yorker). Their roster boasts musicians of remarkably diverse talents, including composers, arrangers, singer-songwriters, and improvisers, who bring a range of cultural influences to the group, from jazz and klezmer to pop and indie rock music. The unique camaraderie within the group retains the intimacy and spontaneity of chamber music in performance. Through the palpable joy and friendship in their music-making, each musician strives to include new and familiar audiences to experience this important art form.