Brooklyn Rider to bring ‘Citizenship Notes’ to New Mexico Museum of Art

What do you get when you combine two violinists, a violist and a cellist? The Brooklyn Rider string quartet, which is bringing its sound to the New Mexico Museum of Art’s St. Francis Auditorium on Sunday, Jan. 11.

Violist Nicholas Cords said Brooklyn Rider turned 20 in 2025 and much of its programming has been devoted to celebrating this milestone. He said the group decided to go all in and try a lot of different things this concert season.

“I think it’s quite a range of feeling within the program, and I think we like that idea of just being able to sort of experience a whole world of history, ideas, time and emotion within the context of the program,” Cords said.

Brooklyn Rider will perform “Citizenship Notes,” which includes music by Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, along with new commissions.

“I think what’s really unique about Haydn is he sets the string quartet as this conversation of four equal people,” Cords said. “There’s really not a lot of hierarchy in that music, and so it’s a give-and-take conversation in which any instrument can take the lead or can follow.”

The conversation continues in Beethoven’s string Quartet in C major, opus 59, no. 3, Cords said. He said both Haydn and Beethoven have movements that are fugues.

“The fugue is really interesting because it’s an older musical technique from the Baroque, but it’s a great choice if we’re talking about equality and democracy within the quartet,” Cords said.

He said music helps him express emotions and feelings when words can fall short.

“I think one of the definitions of music is that it exists to sort of describe feelings and ideas and emotions that I think go deeper than words,” Cords said.

He hopes the music stirs individual, unique emotions in the audience.

“I think each individual takes their own experience and their own listening and their own whatever is going on for them that day, or time,” Cords said.

Over the last 20 years, Cords said it has been common for the group to have a strong appetite for projects and ideas, and a hope that the music becomes something audiences can wrap their minds around.

Even after decades of playing together, he said there are constant changes.

“With the string quartet, I think, there’s a lot that’s going on there, because we’re playing for the audience, but we’re also playing for each other and it changes every time,” Cords said.

This will be a return to New Mexico for the quartet. Violinist Colin Jacobsen is the musical director at Santa Fe Pro Musica. Cords said it has always been nice how welcoming the community has been to the group.

“We’ve felt really embraced by this musical community and by Santa Fe, so that actually really feels good,” Cords said.