Golijov: Azul Yo-Yo Ma, The Knights & Eric Jacobsen

• Colin Jacobsen (b. 1978 ), Siamak Aghaei (b. 1974): Ascending Bird:
• 1 Jacobsen, Aghaei: Ascending Bird 06:58
• Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904): Rusalka, Op. 114, Act 1:
• 2 Dvorák: Rusalka, Op. 114: Song to the Moon (Arr. Diener-Bennett for Cello and Orchestra) 05:24
• Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960): Azul:
• 3 Golijov: Azul: I. Paz Sulfúrica 06:33
• 4 Golijov: Azul: II. Silencio 06:50
• 5 Golijov: Azul: III. Transit 06:41
• 6 Golijov: Azul: IV: Yrushalem 08:13
• Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 - 2007): Tierkreis:
• 7 Stockhausen: Tierkreis: Leo (Arr. Shaw for Ensemble) 03:27
• Sufjan Stevens (b. 1975): Suite from Run Rabbit Run (Arr Atkinson):
• 8 Stevens: Suite from Run Rabbit Run: I. Year of the Ox (Arr. Atkinson for Orchestra) 03:25
• 9 Stevens: Suite from Run Rabbit Run: II. Enjoy Your Rabbit (Arr. Atkinson for Orchestra) 03:01
• 10 Stevens: Suite from Run Rabbit Run: III. Year of Our Lord (Arr. Atkinson for Orchestra) 05:17
• 11 Stevens: Suite from Run Rabbit Run: IV. Year of the Boar (Arr. Atkinson for Orchestra) 02:48
• Total Runtime 58:37

Info for Golijov: Azul

A new album by cellist Yo-Yo Ma is always an invitation into new musical worlds. The star virtuoso long ago moved beyond the standard classical repertoire. For years, he has been a guarantee of highly innovative projects—as is the New York chamber orchestra The Knights, with whom Ma has now produced his first album. *Azul* brings together compositions by Osvaldo Golijov, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Sufjan Stevens, and Siamak Aghaei. Amidst these disparate sonic universes, Antonín Dvořák’s "Song to the Moon"—in an arrangement for cello and orchestra—adds a touch of Romanticism.

The album’s centerpiece is Golijov’s cello concerto *Azul* (Blue), composed in 2006. Featuring an exotic instrumental lineup—including a waterphone, African drums, and a hyper-accordion within the orchestra—the work reveals itself as a powerful sonic meditation, a drifting ascent into ethereal soundscapes. The composer himself views it as a 21st-century take on the Baroque adagio. The motif of the color blue—with its associations of the celestial and otherworldly—leads naturally to Stockhausen’s "Leo" (from the *Tierkreis* cycle), Dvořák’s "Song to the Moon," and the orchestral piece *Ascending Bird* by the prominent Iranian composer Siamak Aghaei. With an orchestral work by American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens, The Knights cross genre boundaries in spectacular fashion: Stevens’ 2009 album *Run Rabbit Run*—itself a crossover project for string quartet blending classical, jazz, and pop—here receives a visionary orchestral transformation.

Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Michael Ward-Bergeman, hyper-accordion
Cyro Baptista, percussion (tracks 3–6)
Jamey Haddad, percussion (tracks 3–6)
The Knights
Eric Jacobsen, direction

Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing us together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo seeks to foster connections that reinforce our humanity.

Yo-Yo and his creative team at Sound Postings collaborate with partners around the globe to develop and produce initiatives that advocate for a world guided by humanity, curiosity, and connection. Their recent projects include a six-continent tour of Bach’s cello suites exploring how culture strengthens communities today, and Our Common Nature, a journey celebrating the ways that culture can reconnect us to the natural world. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to ask how music can help us imagine and build a better future.

Yo-Yo was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris. He began to learn cello with his father at age four and three years later moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his studies at The Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard.

He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), Kennedy Center Honors (2011), the Polar Music Prize (2012), and the Birgit Nilsson Prize (2022). Among other roles, Yo-Yo is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, a member of the board of Nia Tero, an organization supporting the role and influence of Indigenous Peoples, and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad. He has performed for ten American presidents.

His discography of more than 120 albums (including 20 Grammy winners) ranges from iconic interpretations of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as “Hush” with Bobby McFerrin and the “Goat Rodeo Sessions” with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Yo-Yo’s recent releases include “Six Evolutions,” his third recording of Bach’s cello suites; “Merci” with pianist Kathryn Stott; and “Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’ and Leonore Overture No. 3,” the fifth in a series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.

Yo-Yo and his wife have two children. He plays the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius, a 1733 Montagnana from Venice, and modern instruments made by Peter and Wendy Moes.

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 2025-26 The Knights continued 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. Collaborators included poet J. Mae Barizo and pianist Dan Tepfer, among others.

The Knights’ 2026-27 season at Carnegie Hall is a triumph of imaginative curation, featuring iconic masterworks with boundary-breaking voices. Esteemed collaborators and guest artists in the upcoming season include Emanuel Ax, string quartet Brooklyn Rider, Nico Muhly, and Carnegie Hall’s 2026-27 Debs Composer’s Chair and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw. 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.

Booklet for Golijov: Azul