Violinist and composer Johnny Gandelsman is a founder of Brooklyn Rider and a regular member and Grammy-winning producer of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. This Is America is his response to the tumultuous events of the past few years, from the pandemic to the climate crisis, racism and police brutality and the toxicity of the American political landscape.

More than 20 composers were commissioned to respond to these extraordinary events, and this three-album anthology for solo violin traces an arc of extraordinary imaginative energy and emotional depth with contributions from a rich tapestry of musicians who call the US home.

Gandelsman’s is a wide-angle lens that captures the free-spirited and richly textured response of Terry Riley (Barbary Coast, 1955), and the sometimes wistful, then foreboding contribution of Dana Lyn, among so many other thought-provoking and stomach-churning pieces. A standout is Dew, Time, Linger from Tatar composer, Adeliia Faizuliina, where Gandelsman’s crystalline tone and filigree phrasing ricochet through a piece of extraordinary beauty and intensity. Rhiannon Giddens’s New to the Session strikes another chord too, drawing on her own rich experience in American folk and Irish music.

Most of all what emerges from this extraordinarily rich collection is a sense of well-deep humanity that binds more than it sunders, soothing and stirring in equal measure. A pulse reading of and for our times.