Known for “making classical music accessible but also celebrating why it was good in the first place” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Brooklyn Rider holds a singular space in the world of chamber music. 

With “Citizenship Notes,” the opening concert of our 2025–26 MainStage Live season, the group explores the string quartet as a microcosm of democracy: a project of collaboration and respect among multiple voices.

Last presented by Chamber Music Pittsburgh in January 2020, Brooklyn Rider returns in a multi-century program that embodies the quartet’s passion for the unexpected, reaching across time and genre to connect iconic creators of the past with contemporary composers. The concert begins with Franz Joseph Haydn’s take on the Age of Enlightenment, travels 300 years into the future with new commissions by Don Byron, Ted Hearne, and Angélica Negrón, features an adaptation of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and ends triumphantly with Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3.

Brooklyn Rider features Colin Jacobsen on violin, Johnny Gandelsman on violin, Nicholas Cords on viola and Michael Nicolas on cello.

HAYDN QUARTET in f minor, Op. 20, No. 5

DON BYRON String Quartet No. 3 *

TED HEARNE We Are Working Tirelessly for a Ceasefire * 

ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN *Our Children Speak English and Spanish (for string quartet and pre-recorded electronics) 

BOB DYLAN The Times they are a-changin’ (arr. Colin Jacobsen)

BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTET in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3

* Commissioned for Brooklyn Rider’s 20th anniversary by Art of Elan, Carnegie Hall, and Tippet Rise Art Center