Rabia Brooke is known worldwide for her passion and sincere artistry. As a soloist and chamber musician, Ms. Brooke has collaborated with some of today’s most compelling musical voices including ...
The five acclaimed musicians will perform their first residency concert held at Guarneri Hall on Wed Jan, 2025
ReadLouis Spohr Hall
Rabia Brooke returns to Germany for an afternoon that traces a line between the old world and the new. Presented by Braunschweig State Theatre, "Friends from 'near and far'" brings together musicians of the Staatstheater with guests from America for a program that travels from Leipzig to the American countryside and back again.
Rabia opens as soloist, drawing an arc from the searching Adagio of Bach's Sonata No. 1 (BWV 1001) through Nathan Milstein's dazzling Paganiniana and the quiet, prayerful voice of Lera Auerbach's T'filah, Op. 33. She then joins her colleagues for two cornerstones of the chamber repertoire: Dvořák's "American" String Quartet, written during the composer's years in the United States, and Tchaikovsky's richly Romantic String Sextet "Souvenir de Florence."
She performs alongside Desirée Ruhstrat and Dobromiła Hańćka (violin), Santiago E. Osorio and Arnold Stieve (viola), and Christian Bußmann and Guchao Zhao (cello).
Nova Linea Musica carries its new-music mission across the Atlantic, bringing an evening of chamber music that bridges traditional and contemporary repertoire to the Villa Morillon in Bern. NLM Artistic Director Desirée Ruhstrat and founding Artist-in-Residence Rabia Brooke are joined by pianist Claire Huangci, first-prize winner of the 2018 Concours Géza Anda, and by three distinguished European string players: violinist Benjamin Schmid, violist Mathis Rochat, and cellist Andreas Fleck. Set in the restored halls of the Villa Morillon, an 1830 country estate whose design draws on the Italian Renaissance villas of Palladio, these six artists move between the classic and the new, embodying NLM's founding purpose: to resource the music of our time and close the distance between composer, performer, and listener.
Chopin-Gesellschaft in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Presented by the Chopin-Gesellschaft in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland e.V. as part of its 55th-anniversary season, this evening gathers four artists for a program of chamber music spanning the Classical, Romantic, and virtuoso repertoire.
Rabia joins pianist Claire Huangci for Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30 No. 2, a work of storm and lyricism that stands among the composer's most dramatic contributions to the form. Claire follows with solo piano works by two composers close to the society's heart: Chopin's Ballade in F minor, Op. 52, and Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53, alongside a set of Paderewski miniatures.
After the interval, horn player Felix Klieser takes the stage for Dukas's "Villanelle," then joins Desirée Ruhstrat and Claire Huangci for Brahms's Horn Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40, closing the evening in warm, autumnal color.
The concert is part of Rabia's August-September 2026 tour of Germany and Switzerland with Claire Huangci.
Every season has a first night, and this one belongs to Rabia Brooke. The season opens with an evening that moves between the familiar and the newly imagined - works drawn from the heart of the chamber repertoire alongside music written for this moment. The violin has carried human feeling across four centuries of music-making, from the courts of Baroque Europe to the concert halls of today, and few artists understand that continuum as instinctively as Rabia Brooke. Performed on the 1731 Lady Jeanne Stradivarius on generous loan, she brings to each piece the quality that defines her artistry: the sense that the music is being discovered, not simply delivered. Colleagues join her on stage for an evening that sets the tone for everything that follows.
Guarneri Hall
A celebration of Philip Glass at 90, this landmark evening honors one of the most influential composers of the last century, brought to life by flutist Demarre McGill, violinists Desirée Ruhstrat and Rabia Brooke, and cellist Wendy Sutter in an intimate program of his most beloved chamber works. Nova Linea Musica marks the milestone with a concert worthy of the moment.
Midwinter in Chicago, and the music turns inward. Rabia Brooke and colleagues bring works that ask quiet, essential questions - about time, about memory, about what it means to listen carefully in a world that rarely slows down. The chamber music tradition has always found its deepest expression in rooms like this one: close, warm, unhurried, alive to the details that larger halls swallow whole. The CheckOut in January is its own particular thing - the lake outside, the audience near, the conversation between performers and listeners something closer to a dialogue than a performance. These are pieces that reward exactly that kind of intimacy, drawn from across the full arc of the repertoire and performed by artists who know how to use the room they are in.
Inheritance is what we carry forward, and what we make new. This evening moves between musical generations - works that have endured alongside music being heard for the first time, each in conversation with the other. The great violin repertoire is itself an act of inheritance: pieces passed from teacher to student, from recording to live performance, from one generation's understanding to the next. Among the premieres on this program: the World Premiere of Chen Yi's "My Childhood Memories," a solo violin work commissioned by Nova Linea Musica. To hear a piece of this personal depth - memories rendered in sound, filtered through one of the most distinctive compositional voices of our time - performed on the 1731 Lady Jeanne Stradivarius is to understand exactly why new music needs a home like this one.
Guarneri Hall
The NLM Piano Trio presents an evening anchored by the world premiere of a new piano trio by NLM Composer-in-Residence Stacy Garrop, written during her residency in the Rocky Mountains. Violinist/NLM Artist-in-Residence Rabia Brooke and her trio partners present an intimate evening of chamber music conversation and discovery.
World Premiere: Elizabeth Younan
The World Made Larger is when the season closes the way it should: with something that has never been heard before. A world premiere by composer Elizabeth Younan anchors an evening alongside works that have shaped Rabia Brooke's musical life - pieces from the canon that illuminate what Younan's new work is in conversation with, and what it moves beyond. Younan's voice is one that rewards close attention: intricate, luminous, and built on the conviction that music should expand what we are capable of feeling. The violin repertoire grows one work at a time, each premiere a small act of faith that what is written today will matter tomorrow. This is an evening about arrival - the arrival of a new work into the world, and the particular kind of attention that only live music, in a room like this, can ask of us.
