Brooklyn Rider - Seven Steps (2012/2020)

This album includes one of the greatest works of the string quartet repertoire, Beethoven’s op. 131, as well as works by New York-based composer Christopher Tignor and Brooklyn Rider’s first-ever collaborative composition, Seven Steps.

The idea of creating Seven Steps was partially born out of the need to define a place where the labyrinth of Beethoven’s colossal op. 131 could work itself out guided by a spirit of free play rather than the heavy weight of the great composer’s pen. It was also born out of a question that came from looking at the world of popular music; why shouldn’t a string quartet also endeavor to create music collaboratively rather than relying on the singular voice of the composer? Half-sketched, half improvised, Seven Steps is the first work by Brooklyn Rider.

Christopher Tignor, NYC-based composer/band leader by night and software engineer by day, wrote Together Into This Unknowable Night in 2008 for Brooklyn Rider. Christopher’s music, informed as much by the vast possibilities of the electronic music universe as it is by his tactile experience as a violinist, seemed to be a natural fit for this album. His vivid description felt like it shared a kinship with the world of Beethoven:
In “Together Into This Unknowable Night,” I wanted something that took the quartet somewhere overwrought, something they could lean into with heart as much as bow. Big vertical stacks that would take that centuries-old quartet resonance and let you live inside it. Music that is as much noun as verb, as much a story as a place for your story. And I want it to feel like we’re sorting it all out together.

One of the central challenges of Beethoven’s op. 131 is that it places huge emotional and physical demands on the player, often posing near-impossible musical juxtapositions. But in demanding the impossible, Beethoven forces the musician to rise to new heights, to interact with each other and society on equal terms, to love and to be vulnerable—in short, to experience a sense of catharsis together. Throughout the rehearsal process, Brooklyn Rider came to understand op. 131 as the story of a life, and the ingenious variation of musical DNA throughout surely creates one of the ultimate motivic journeys in the classical music canon. Brooklyn Rider makes full use of their unique vantage point gained from the collaborative process of Seven Steps fused with a loving and intensive re-imagination of the score to give this beloved work a new and revealing interpretation.

The intersection between the improvisatory spirit of Seven Steps, the luminescent sound world of Together Into This Unknowable Night, and the transcendent world of late Beethoven aptly represents the multi-faceted passions of Brooklyn Rider. In addition, Seven Steps honors the quartet’s ongoing connection between music and the visual arts by featuring the work of noted New York artist Mary Frank on the album’s cover.