The Knights

Driven by a “passion for musical discovery” and an “open-hearted spirit of camaraderie,” The Knights bring fresh excitement and insight to every performance. Tonight, conducted by Eric Jacobsen, they traverse a vast soundscape of American music as part of Carnegie Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 festival. The program features Copland’s Pulitzer Prize–winning, folk-infused masterpiece: the Appalachian Spring Suite, plus the New York premiere of a concerto written by Gabriel Kahane for clarinetist extraordinaire Anthony McGill, part of the ensemble’s multi-year Rhapsody project. Cherished short works also undergo a “Knightsian” transformation, including Ellington’s ballad “Sophisticated Lady”; Bonds’s “Troubled Waters,” based on the spiritual “Wade in the Waters”; Brumley’s “I’ll Fly Away”; and Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin’s Garmoshka (“little accordion”).