KRONOS QUARTET
David Harrington, violin John Sherba, violin Hank Dutt, viola Sunny Yang, cello Brian H. Scott, Lighting Designer Brian Mohr, Associate Sound Designer
Zankel Hall Carnegie Hall New York, New York April 2, 2016
Aleksandra Vrebalov / My Desert, My Rose * World premiere Composed for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire
Nicole Lizée / The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop [Fibre-Optic Flowers] * NY premiere
N. Rajam (arr. Reena Esmail) / Dadra in Raga Bhairavi + NY premiere
Wu Man (arr. Danny Clay) / Four Chinese Paintings: III. Ancient Echo 远古回响 * NY premiere Composed for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire
Karin Rehnqvist / All Those Strings! * NY Premiere 1. Night Strings 2. Cross Strings 3. Thin String – Little Song 4. Joy Strings with special guest Ritva Koistinen, kantele INTERMISSION Yotam Haber / break_break_break * World premiere with special guest Philip White, electronics Composed for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire
Fodé Lassana Diabaté (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Sunjata’s Time: 5. Bara kala ta * NY premiere Composed for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire
Pete Townshend (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Baba O’Riley + NY premiere
Albert Behar / Lost Wax * NY premiere
I. Midnight Awakening II. Blue Blue Blue III. Wandering Sheep IV. Violets Bloom V. Found
PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE * Written for Kronos + Arranged for Kronos
Aleksandra Vrebalov (b. 1970) My Desert, My Rose (2015) Aleksandra Vrebalov, a native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and now lives in New York City. She has written more than 60 works, ranging from concert music, to opera and modern dance, to music for film. Her works have been commissioned and/or performed by the Kronos Quartet, Serbian National Theater, Carnegie Hall, Moravian Philharmonic, Belgrade Philharmonic and Providence Festival Ballet. Vrebalov is a fellow of MacDowell Colony, Rockefeller Bellagio Center, New York’s New Dramatists, American Opera Projects, Other Minds Festival, and Tanglewood. Her awards include The Harvard Fromm Commission, The American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship, Barlow Endowment Commission, MAP Fund, Vienna Modern Masters, Meet the Composer, and Douglas Moore Fellowship. Her works have been recorded for Nonesuch, Innova, Centaur, Records, and Vienna Modern Masters. Vrebalov’s collaborative work with director Bill Morrison, Beyond Zero (1914–1918), was commissioned and premiered by Kronos at U.C. Berkeley’s Cal Performances in April 2014 and had its European premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival that summer. Her string quartet …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… was written for and recorded by Kronos for the album Floodplain. Her string quartet Pannonia Boundless, also for Kronos, was published by Boosey & Hawkes as part of the Kronos Collection, and recorded for the album Kronos Caravan. Vrebalov just finished a song cycle on Charles Simic’s poetry commissioned by ASCAP/Kingsford Fund and a sound installation with architect Ronit Eisenbach, converting an old bank building into a music box in Chestertown, Maryland. She is currently working on a new piece for Kronos as part of the Fifty for the Future project, and collaborating with choreographer Patricia Okenwa on a new piece to be premiered by Rambert Dance Company in London in February 2016. For more information, please see aleksandravrebalov.com. About My Desert, My Rose, Vrebalov writes: "My Desert, My Rose consists of a series of patterns open in length, meter, tempo and dynamics, different for each performer. The unfolding of the piece is almost entirely left to each
performer’s sensibility and responsiveness to the parts of other members of the group. Instinct and precision are each equally important in the performance of the piece. The patterns are (notated as) suggested rather than fixed musical lines, so the flow and the length of the piece are unique to each performance. The lines merge and align to separate and then meet again, each time in a more concrete and tighter way. The piece ends in a metric unison, like a seemingly coincidental meeting of the lines predestined to reunite. It is like a journey of four characters that start in distinctly different places, who after long searching and occasional, brief meeting points, end up in the same space, time, language. “The writing of this piece, in a form as open and as tightly coordinated at the same time, was possible thanks to twenty years of exposure to rehearsal and performance habits of the Kronos Quartet, a group for which I have written thirteen out of fourteen of my pieces involving string quartet." Aleksandra Vrebalov’s My Desert, My Rose was commissioned as part of the Kronos Performing Arts Association’s Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, which is made possible by a group of adventurous partners, including Carnegie Hall and many others. Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association has launched an exciting new commissioning initiative—Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Beginning in the 2015/16 season, Fifty for the Future will commission 50 new works—10 per year for five years— devoted to contemporary approaches to the quartet and designed expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. The works will be created by an eclectic group of composers—25 men and 25 women. Kronos will premiere each piece and create companion digital materials, including scores, recordings, and performance notes, which will be distributed online for free. Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will present string quartet music as a living art form. Kronos, Carnegie Hall, and an adventurous list of project partners will join forces to support this exciting new commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project of unprecedented scope and potential impact.
Nicole Lizée (b. 1973) The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop [Fibre-Optic Flowers] (2012)
Nicole Lizée is a composer, sound artist, and keyboardist based in Montréal, Québec. Her compositions range from works for large ensembles and solo turntablists featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, Simon and Merlin handheld games, and karaoke tapes. Lizée has received commissions from artists and ensembles such as l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, CBC, So Percussion, and Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society. In 2010 she was awarded a fellowship from the prestigious Civitella Ranieri Foundation based in New York City and Italy. She has twice been named a finalist for the Jules-Léger Prize, most recently in 2007 for This Will Not Be
Televised, scored for chamber ensemble and turntables, and recommended among the Top Ten at the 2008 International Rostrum of Composers. In 2002 she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize, and in 2004 she was nominated for an Opus Prize. About The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop, Lizée writes: “The BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s was a place where the role of electronic music in our sound world began to take shape and, in many ways, was defined for ensuing generations. A primordial aesthetic formed around the synthetic textures that emerged from the mother(s) of invention. New sounds were needed and wanted. The technology was simple but cutting edge. Delia Derbyshire coaxed a palette of otherworldly sounds from everyday objects (a favorite being a metallic green lampshade that produced a pure ringing tone when struck). The merging of the real with the unreal (on reel-to-reel) imbued this new music with a kind of pre-digital binary sheen. Positive and negative, aligning magnetically via ferric oxide, capturing the visionary results for positronic posterity. “This piece imagines a multi-sensory world in which the beauty of the artificial is integrated with the real in an organic way. Derbyshire spoke in a magazine interview of wanting to stop and smell the fibre-optic flowers. It’s a beautiful image that aligns perfectly with The Golden Age. While the Radiophonic Workshop didn’t work with acoustic instruments in the traditional sense, this piece makes the kind of sound that might have been conjured had a string quartet been readily available. Sitting among the electronic bricà-brac, I imagine the strings laying in wait for the moment when Delia might sneak in late at night and, in a moment of synergy, meld the wooden with the molten. The work is structured as a continuous movement where one sonic event unfurls or morphs into the next; akin to a vinyl record without track breaks. There are analogue sounds derived from hand-held proto-arcade games, turntables, reel-to-reel machines, and 4 track tape machines. Beats are played by the most analogue of data entry devices–the typewriter. In the end, these sounds all exist on equal footing as sources for musical expression in the post-Delia world.” Nicole Lizée's The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop [Fibre-Optic Flowers] was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by BBC Radio 3 and first performed by Kronos at the BBC Proms on July 24, 2012.
N. Rajam (b. 1938) Dadra in Raga Bhairavi (arr. 2015) Arranged by Reena Esmail
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail is a graduate of Juilliard and the Yale School of Music, and a 2011–12 Fulbright grantee to India. Her work draws elements from both Western and Hindustani (North Indian) classical music. Esmail’s works have received honors from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP, and have been performed throughout the
United States, in India and abroad. Esmail currently resides in Los Angeles, California. More information about her work is available at reenaesmail.com. About Dadra in Raga Bhairavi, Esmail writes: “Hindustani (North Indian) violinist N. Rajam occupies a rare and unique position in Indian music. While initially trained as a Carnatic (South Indian) violinist, she later adapted Carnatic violin technique to the performance of Hindustani music. N. Rajam plays in what is called the gakayi ang, the singing style, having trained on her instrument with such vocal legends as Omkarnath Thakur. Her melodies are direct and yet subtle: they seem, at once, guileless and ephemeral. “This arrangement of N. Rajam’s Dadra in Raga Bhairavi sets her improvised violin solo into the medium of string quartet. Raga Bhairavi, normally rendered in the late morning hours, is often used throughout the day in its semi-classical form (as heard here) in shorter, lighter pieces that come towards the end of a Hindustani classical performance. The metric cycle, Dadra, is also characteristic of a lighter piece of music. In this arrangement, the Dadra taal (metric cycle) is rendered on the body of the cello, as it imitates the strokes of the tabla (Hindustani percussion).” Reena Esmail’s arrangement of N. Rajam’s Dadra in Raga Bhairavi was commissioned for Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research & Development Fund.
Wu Man (b. 1963) Four Chinese Paintings (2015) Arranged by Danny Clay and Wu Man Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Grammy Award–nominated musician Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Wu Man is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by today’s most prominent composers. Wu Man’s efforts were recognized when she was named Musical America’s 2013 Instrumentalist of the Year, the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument. Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied with Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master's degree in pipa. Accepted into the conservatory at age 13, Wu Man’s audition was covered by national newspapers and she was hailed as a child prodigy, becoming a nationally recognized role model for young pipa players. In 1985 she made her first visit to the United States as a member of the China Youth Arts Troupe. Wu Man moved to the U.S. in 1990 and currently resides with her husband and son in California.
About Four Chinese Paintings, Wu Man writes: “After two decades of collaboration with Kronos Quartet, I am finally beginning to understand Western string instruments. With the group’s encouragement and support, I was able to write this—my first composition for string quartet. “Four Chinese Paintings is a suite consisting of four short pieces. In traditional Chinese music, there is often a poetic title that serves as a prompt foundation for musical content and style. I decided to continue this traditional form in this piece by presenting four traditional Chinese paintings. “The inspiration for these paintings came from several styles of Chinese folk music, including Uyghur music (western China, border of Central Asia) and tea-house music from my hometown of Hangzhou. My wish is for the audience to experience—to ‘see’—the Chinese landscape, and to hear each of the four stories in their local dialects. More importantly, listeners will experience Chinese culture. “Writing a piece for string quartet was a great challenge for me. Though I have written and improvised countelss works for the pipa, composing for Western string instruments was a brand new experience. My creative process began with improvising on the pipa, building layer upon layer until I had all four instrumental parts composed. I then worked with Danny Clay to arrange the piece. “I’d like to thank Kronos for their trust and encouragement, for letting me be a part of the Fifty for the Future Project, and for giving me this opportunity to share my musical culture with young string quartets around the world!” Wu Man’s Four Chinese Paintings was commissioned as part of the Kronos Performing Arts Association’s Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, which is made possible by a group of adventurous partners, including Carnegie Hall and many others. Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association has launched an exciting new commissioning initiative—Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Beginning in the 2015/16 season, Fifty for the Future will commission 50 new works—10 per year for five years— devoted to contemporary approaches to the quartet and designed expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. The works will be created by an eclectic group of composers—25 men and 25 women. Kronos will premiere each piece and create companion digital materials, including scores, recordings, and performance notes, which will be distributed online for free. Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will present string quartet music as a living art form. Kronos, Carnegie Hall, and an adventurous list of project partners will join forces to support this exciting new commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project of unprecedented scope and potential impact.
Karin Rehnqvist (b. 1957) All Those Strings! (2014) Karin Rehnqvist is one of Sweden’s best-known and widely performed composers. With regular performances throughout Europe, USA, and Scandinavia, her range extends to chamber, orchestral, stage, and vocal music. Above all, she enjoys working with unusual, cross-genre forms and ensembles. One strong characteristic feature of her work is her exploration of the areas between art and folk music. Both elements are integral and never merely used for effect or as a nostalgic element. In particular, Rehnqvist has explored the extraordinary and dramatic vocal technique of Kulning. Between 1976 and 1991 Karin Rehnqvist conducted and was the artistic director of the choir Stans Kör. This cemented her special affinity with vocal music and also fired her interest in experimental approaches to concert presentation. Between 2000 and 2004 Rehnqvist was Composer-in-Residence with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Svenska Kammarorkestern in collaboration. For them she composed a series of works including a concerto for clarinetist Martin Fröst, and the much performed symphonic work, Arktis Arktis!, inspired by a polar expedition in the summer of 1999. These two works are featured on Rehnqvist’s CD on the BIS label, released to critical acclaim in 2005. Rehnqvist’s skill for writing for musicians of different abilities, especially young performers, has often been praised: like the best music for young performers, her works make no artistic compromises, and challenge the musicians while recognizing realistic technical limits. Her choral symphony Light of Light, which features children’s choir and symphony orchestra, was singled out for critical acclaim at its world premiere in Paris in 2004, and has enjoyed subsequent performances in the UK and Sweden. In 2009 Rehnqvist was appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. She is the first woman to hold a chair in composition in Sweden. About All Those Strings!, Rehnqvist writes: “The world is made of strings. Strings like tiny, vibrating worms, open or in closed loops, are the building blocks of our universe. Science tells us so; the idea is known as string theory. “When I first heard of string theory, I pictured something quite different. Instead of microscopically small worms, I saw long, beautiful strings stretching across space—across the universe. The image fired my imagination. What incredible music must emanate from those strings, if only we could hear it! “This piece is about 54 tangible, highly visible strings. 38 belong to the kantele and four more to each of the instruments of the string quartet. These strings are of wire and gut. On the kantele, they are set vibrating with the fingertips, a plectrum, or the fingernails. On the
other instruments, they are usually stroked into life with a horsehair bow, although even here they can also be plucked with the fingers (pizzicato) or struck with the wood of the bow. Naturally, all these techniques sound different. The place where the string is activated also affects the sound. Near the fingerboard, the sound is more muted, muffled. Near the bridge, it is richer in overtones. The variations are innumerable. “The violin, viola, and cello need little introduction, but perhaps not everyone will know the Finnish zither, the kantele. This is an ancient instrument. In its simplest form, it consists of five strings stretched across a carved-out block of wood. That kind of kantele is still used, but new forms have also arisen, including an electric kantele. This piece uses an elaborate concert kantele. As on the concert harp, each string can be tuned up or down a semitone with an ingenious system of levers. The kantele is a sonorous instrument with a long sustain—up to 15 seconds. The player must constantly work to dampen the sounds that are not meant to resonate. “This piece is titled All Those Strings! In it, all 54 visible strings sound together in a variety of combinations. And those vanishingly small strings I spoke of earlier surely vibrate alongside. According to the latest science, they exist in no fewer than nine dimensions!” (English translation by Robin Blanton) All Those Strings! was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and was first performed at the Stockholm Concert House in May 2014.
Yotam Haber (b. 1976) break_break_break (2015)
Yotam Haber was born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and Milwaukee. He is the recipient of a 2013 Fromm Music Foundation commission, a 2013 NYFA award, the 2007 Rome Prize and a 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has received grants and fellowships from New Music USA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Yaddo, Bogliasco, MacDowell Colony, the Hermitage, ASCAP, and the Copland House. In 2015, Haber’s first monographic album of chamber music, Torus, was released on Roven Records and distributed by Naxos to wide critical acclaim. Recent commissions include works for Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor; an evening-length oratorio for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, CalARTS@REDCAT/ Disney Hall (Los Angeles); New York-based Contemporaneous, Gabriel Kahane, and Alarm Will Sound; the 2015 New York Philharmonic CONTACT! Series; the Venice Biennale; Bang on a Can Summer Festival; Neuvocalsolisten Stuttgart and ensemble l’arsenale; FLUX Quartet, JACK Quartet, Cantori New York, the Tel Aviv-based Meitar Ensemble, and the Berlin-based Quartet New Generation.
He is currently working on Voice Imitator, an evening-length cycle of piano works with visual artist and MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit Haber, based on the stories of Thomas Bernhard; New Water Music, an interactive work (premiering 2017) for the Louisiana Philharmonic and community musicians to be performed from boats and barges along Bayou St. John in New Orleans. About break_break_break, Haber writes: “While I was writing break_break_break, I was living in New Orleans, and preparing to leave for almost a year in Berlin with my family. Both of these cities are joined by a common, if not readily apparent, agent: water. Water in New Orleans has been a bringer of destruction to a city that despite all odds flourishes against its very nature, with land disappearing daily into the sea. Water is on everyone’s minds in Germany in a very different way: with a refugee crisis not seen since the end of WWII, reaching this “promised land” is often achieved by the most perilous of sea journeys. The constant barrage of images of families putting their lives in danger is painfully humbling. “My daughter was born while I was half-finished with the quartet, and it caused me to go back, erase, and re-think the entire piece. The pessimism and nihilism that were pulling the music into a very dark place began to lift. Instead, her birth pushed me toward finding a path of hope and thanksgiving: the power of water to destroy outweighed by the possibilities of forging ahead to a new life. “break_break_break is inspired by joyous, wild, and ecstatic sounds coming from recent music in South Africa’s rap-rave scene. Special thanks to composer Alvin Curran and his Fake Book (2015), from which his “Collected Air” is partially quoted with permission. “This quartet may be performed by an acoustic string quartet or amplified with electronics, with a system conceptualized, designed, and built by Philip White that listens to, follows, and reacts to the string quartet. “Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson” Yotam Haber’s break_break_break was commissioned as part of the Kronos Performing Arts Association’s Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, which is made possible by a group of adventurous partners, including Carnegie Hall and many others. Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association has launched an exciting new commissioning initiative—Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Beginning in the 2015/16 season, Fifty for the Future will commission 50 new works—10 per year for five years— devoted to contemporary approaches to the quartet and designed expressly
for the training of students and emerging professionals. The works will be created by an eclectic group of composers—25 men and 25 women. Kronos will premiere each piece and create companion digital materials, including scores, recordings, and performance notes, which will be distributed online for free. Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will present string quartet music as a living art form. Kronos, Carnegie Hall, and an adventurous list of project partners will join forces to support this exciting new commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project of unprecedented scope and potential impact.
Fodé Lassana Diabaté (b. 1971) Sunjata’s Time (2015) Arranged by Jacob Garchik Lassana Diabaté is a virtuoso balafon (22-key xylophone) player who comes originally from Guinea. The balafon dates back at least to the 13th century with the founding of the Mali empire. Lassana began playing balafon at the age of five at home in Conakry with his father, Djelisory Diabaté, a master balafon player, from Kindia, some 150 kms inland. Lassana later apprenticed himself to some of the celebrated balafon masters such as the late, great El Hadj Djeli Sory Kouyate, also from Kindia, as well as the late Alkali Camara. To this day, Lassana cherishes the rare recordings of his mentors, whose unique styles continue to be an important inspiration to him. Lassana settled in Mali in the late 1980s after being invited to join the band of Ami Koita, one of Mali’s most popular divas of the time, and has since recorded with many of Mali’s top artists such as Toumani Diabaté, Salif Keita, Babani Koné, Tiken Jah Fakoly, and Bassekou Kouyaté; he was also a member of the Grammy-nominated Mali-Cuba collaboration, Afrocubism. Sunjata’s Time is dedicated to Sunjata Keita, the warrior prince who founded the great Mali Empire in 1235, which at its height stretched across the West African savannah to the Atlantic shores. Sunjata’s legacy continues to be felt in many ways. During his time as emperor he established many of the cultural norms that remain in practice today – including the close relationship between patron and musician that is the hallmark of so much music in Mali. The word “time” is meant to denote both “rhythm,” an important element in balafon performance, and “epoch,” since the composition sets out to evoke the kinds of musical sounds that might have been heard in Sunjata’s time, drawing on older styles of balafon playing which Lassana Diabaté has learned while studying with elder masters of the instrument in Guinea. Each of the first four movements depicts a character who played a central role in Sunjata’s life, and each is fronted by one of the four instruments of the quartet. The fifth movement brings the quartet together in equality to portray the harmonious and peaceful reign of this great West African emperor who lived nearly eight centuries ago.
1. Sumaworo. Sumaworo Kante was the name of the sorcerer blacksmith king, Sunjata's opponent, who usurped the throne of Mande, a small kingdom on the border of present-day Guinea and Mali, to which Sunjata was the rightful heir. Sumaworo was a fearsome and powerful character who wore human skulls as a necklace. The balafon originally belonged to him and its sound was believed to have esoteric powers. (This movement is dedicated to the viola.) 2. Sogolon. Sogolon Koné was Sunjata's mother, a wise buffalo woman who came from the land of Do, by the Niger river in the central valley of Mali, where the music is very old and pentatonic and sounds like the roots of the blues. It was predicted that Sogolon would give birth to a great ruler, and so two hunters brought her to Mande, where she married the king. But her co-wives were jealous and mocked her son. When Sunjata’s father died, Sunjata’s half-brother took the throne, and Sunjata went into exile with his mother (dedicated to the second violin). 3. Nana Triban. Nana Triban was Sunjata's beautiful sister. When Sunjata went into exile, the sorcerer blacksmith wrested the throne from Sunjata’s half-brother. So the people of Mande went to find Sunjata, to beg him to return and help overthrow Sumaworo. Sunjata gathered an army from all the neighbouring kingdoms. But it seemed that the Sumaworo was invincible, drawing on his powers of sorcery to evade defeat. Finally, Nana Triban intervened. She used her skills of seduction to trick Sumaworo into revealing the secret of his vulnerability, escaping before the act was consummated. Armed with this knowledge, Sunjata was victorious, restoring peace to the land, and building West Africa’s most powerful empire (dedicated to the cello). 4. Bala Faseké. Bala Faseké Kouyaté was Sunjata's jeli (griot, or hereditary musician), and his instrument was the balafon, with its enchanting sound of rosewood keys and buzzing resonators. Bala Faseké was much more than just a musician: he was an adviser, educator, a go-between, and a loyal friend to Sunjata. And, of course, he was an astonishing virtuoso. The Mali empire would never have been formed without the music of Bala Faseké, and the history of West Africa would have been very different. (This movement is dedicated to the first violin.) 5. Bara kala ta. The title means, ‘he took up the archer’s bow’. Sunjata was unable to walk for the first seven years of his life; as a result, his mother was mercilessly taunted by her co-wives: “Is this the boy who is predicted to be king... who pulls himself along the ground and steals the food from our bowls?” (This is why he is called ‘Sunjata’, meaning ‘thieflion’). Finally, unable to take the insults any longer, Sunjata stood up on his own two feet – a moment that was immortalized in a well-known song, a version of which became the national anthem of Mali. In little time, he became a gifted archer and revealed his true nature as a leader. This final movement makes subtle reference to the traditional tune in praise of Sunjata,
known to all Mande griots. It brings together the quartet in a tribute to this great ruler – and the role that music played in his life. Notes about Sunjata’s Time by Lucy Durán Fodé Lassana Diabaté’s Sunjata’s Time was commissioned as part of the Kronos Performing Arts Association’s Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, which is made possible by a group of adventurous partners, including Carnegie Hall and many others. Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association has launched an exciting new commissioning initiative—Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. Beginning in the 2015/16 season, Fifty for the Future will commission 50 new works—10 per year for five years— devoted to contemporary approaches to the quartet and designed expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. The works will be created by an eclectic group of composers—25 men and 25 women. Kronos will premiere each piece and create companion digital materials, including scores, recordings, and performance notes, which will be distributed online for free. Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will present string quartet music as a living art form. Kronos, Carnegie Hall, and an adventurous list of project partners will join forces to support this exciting new commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project of unprecedented scope and potential impact.
Pete Townshend (b. 1945) Baba O’Riley (1971) Arranged by Jacob Garchik Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist and principal songwriter, was born into a musical family in Chiswick, West London. He attended Ealing Art College, where he broadened his mind on a diet of radical performance art and American blues music, both of which would eventually inform the Detours as they worked their passage through the West London club and pub circuit. With the arrival in 1964 of drummer Keith Moon and managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, The Who were on their way, with Townshend increasingly cast in the role of leader and spokesman. Townshend soon found himself at the forefront of the British musical boom of the Sixties. As guitarist and composer of the band, he became the driving force behind one of the most powerful, inventive and articulate bodies of work in rock. From early classic three-minute singles like “My Generation,” “Substitute,” and “I Can See For Miles,” to complete song cycles in the shape of Tommy, Lifehouse, and Quadrophenia, Townshend established himself as one of the most gifted and imaginative musicians working in the rock field. He has run his own book publishing company and worked as an editor at the literary house of Faber & Faber which, in 1985, published Horse’s Neck, a collection of his short stories. Townshend has published his memoir Who I Am and is currently working on Floss, an ambitious new music project.
“Baba O’Riley” (also known as “Teenage Wasteland”) was recorded by The Who for the 1971 album Who’s Next. The title is inspired by Meher Baba, the Indian spiritual master, and Terry Riley, whose A Rainbow in Curved Air was a great influence on Townshend. Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Baba O’Riley was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.
Albert Behar (b. 1991) Lost Wax (2015)
Albert Behar is a multifaceted composer of concert, film, and experimental music. He has collaborated with ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, Contemporaneous, and Europa Ritrovata. He draws upon American minimalism, French chanson, and Baroque music, but moves in a propulsive rhythmic direction. His work has been performed at Cité de la Musique, Coudenberg Palace, The Stone, Art Basel Miami, and the Ojai Music Festival. As a film composer, Behar has created original music for The New Yorker, PBS, Showtime and MSNBC, and scored a 2016 Academy Award shortlisted animation. Julia Wolfe and Morton Subotnick were Behar’s composition professors at New York University, where he graduated summa cum laude in Music Composition and French. He hails from Ojai, California, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. About Lost Wax, Behar writes: “Lost Wax is a deep dive into the field recordings of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The project began five years ago in conversation with David Harrington, the artistic director of the Kronos Quartet. We wanted to create a new piece that would connect the dots between Bartók's wax cylinder phonograph recordings and his string quartets. “After listening to hundreds of these ancient village songs, I became deeply moved by a recording from 1907, ‘Mikor gulás legény voltam’ (When I was a shepherd). It turned out that my connection to this melody was forged as a piano student, playing Bartók's Bagatelle #4. Throughout the writing process of Lost Wax, I felt an otherworldly sense of beauty communing with voices of the past. Mikor guláslegény voltam, When I was a shepherd Gula mellett etaludtam. I slept beside my flock Fölébredtem éjféltájba, When I woke at midnight Egy barmom sincs az állásba. My sheep had wandered off Kéket, kéket, kéket Blue, blue, blue, nyílik az ibolaszál. Violets bloom (Trans. Júlia Standovár)
Albert Behar’s Lost Wax was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.
Kronos Quartet For more than 40 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 850 works and arrangements for string quartet. In 2011, Kronos became the only recipients of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. The group’s numerous awards also include a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and “Musicians of the Year” (2003) from Musical America. Kronos’ adventurous approach dates back to the ensemble’s origins. In 1973, David Harrington was inspired to form Kronos after hearing George Crumb's Black Angels, a highly unorthodox, Vietnam War–inspired work featuring bowed water glasses, spoken word passages, and electronic effects. Kronos then began building a compellingly diverse repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Webern, Schnittke), contemporary composers (Sophia Gubaidulina, Bryce Dessner, Aleksandra Vrebalov), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Maria Schneider, Thelonious Monk), rock artists (guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Brazilian electronica artist Amon Tobin, and Icelandic indie-rock group Sigur Rós), and artists who truly defy genre (performance artist Laurie Anderson, composer/sound sculptor/inventor Trimpin, and singer-songwriter/poet Patti Smith). Integral to Kronos’ work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world’s foremost composers. One of the quartet’s most frequent composer-collaborators is “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, whose work with Kronos includes Salome Dances for Peace (1985–86); Sun Rings (2002), a multimedia, NASA-commissioned ode to the earth and its people, featuring celestial sounds and images from space; and The Serquent Risadome, premiered during Kronos’ 40th Anniversary Celebration at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Kronos commissioned and recorded the three string quartets of Polish composer Henryk Górecki, with whom the group worked for more than 25 years. The quartet has also collaborated extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, recording a CD of his string quartets in 1995 and premiering String Quartet No. 6 in 2013, among other projects; Azerbaijan’s Franghiz AliZadeh, whose works are featured on the full-length 2005 release Mugam Sayagi; Steve Reich, from Kronos’ performance of the Grammy-winning composition Different Trains (1989) to the September 11–themed WTC 9/11 (2011); and many more. In addition to composers, Kronos counts numerous performers from around the world among its collaborators, including the Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man; Azeri master vocalist Alim Qasimov; legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle, featured on Kronos’ 2005
Grammy-nominated CD You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood; Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq; indie rock band The National; Mexican rockers Café Tacvba; sound artist and instrument builder Walter Kitundu; and the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks. Kronos has performed live with the likes of Paul McCartney, Allen Ginsberg, Jarvis Cocker, Zakir Hussain, Modern Jazz Quartet, Noam Chomsky, Rokia Traoré, Tom Waits, Rhiannon Giddens, Howard Zinn, Betty Carter, and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Dan Zanes, Glenn Kotche, Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Joan Armatrading, and Don Walser. In dance, the famed choreographers Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Eiko & Koma, and Paul Lightfoot and Sol León (Nederlands Dans Theater) have created pieces with Kronos’ music. Kronos’ work has also featured prominently in a number of films, including two recent Academy Award–nominated documentaries: the AIDS-themed How to Survive a Plague (2012) and Dirty Wars (2013), an exposé of covert warfare for which Kronos’ David Harrington served as Music Supervisor. Kronos also performed scores by Philip Glass for the films Mishima and Dracula (a 1999 restored edition of the 1931 Tod Browning–Bela Lugosi classic) and by Clint Mansell for the Darren Aronofsky films Noah (2014), The Fountain (2006), and Requiem for a Dream (2000). Additional films featuring Kronos’ music include The Great Beauty (2013), Heat (1995), and True Stories (1986). The quartet spends five months of each year on tour, appearing in concert halls, clubs, and festivals around the world including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Big Ears, BAM Next Wave Festival, Chicago’s Harris Theater, Disney Hall, Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Barbican in London, WOMAD, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Shanghai Concert Hall, and Sydney Opera House. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on recordings. The ensemble’s expansive discography on Nonesuch Records includes collections like Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers, which simultaneously topped Billboard’s Classical and World Music lists; 1998’s ten-disc anthology, Kronos Quartet: 25 Years; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy–nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2004 Grammy-winner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, featuring renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw. Other more recent releases include Rainbow (Smithsonian Folkways, 2010), in collaboration with musicians from Afghanistan and Azerbaijan; and Aheym: Kronos Quartet Plays Music by Bryce Dessner (Anti-, 2013). In celebration of the quartet’s 40th anniversary season in 2014, Nonesuch released both Kronos Explorer Series, a five-CD retrospective boxed set, and the single-disc A Thousand Thoughts, featuring mostly unreleased recordings from throughout Kronos’ career. 2015 brought the release of Tundra Songs by Derek Charke as well as a boxed set of Terry Riley’s music written for and performed by Kronos in celebration of the composer’s 80th birthday. Music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Kronos have released two editions of Kronos Collection sheet music: Volume 1 (2006), featuring three Kronos-commissioned works; and Volume 2 (2014), featuring six Kronos-commissioned arrangements by composer Osvaldo Golijov. In addition to its role as a performing and recording ensemble, the quartet is committed to mentoring emerging performers and composers and has led workshops, master classes, and other education programs via the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the California State Summer School for the Arts, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, and other institutions in the U.S. and
overseas. Kronos has recently undertaken extended educational residencies at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances, The Clarice at the University of Maryland, and with the Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music. With a staff of 11 based in San Francisco, the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and local performances, education programs, and more. KPAA’s Kronos: Under 30 Project, a unique commissioning and residency program for composers under age 30, has now added five new works to the Kronos repertoire. KRONOS PRESENTS is a new presenting program showcasing Kronos’ commissioned works, artistic projects and far-ranging musical collaborations through an annual festival, education and community activities, and other events in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. In 2015 KPAA launched a new commissioning and education initiative – Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. With Carnegie Hall as a lead partner, KPAA is commissioning 50 new works – 10 per year for five years – devoted to contemporary approaches to the quartet and designed expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals. The works will be created by an eclectic group of composers – 25 women and 25 men. The quartet will premiere each piece and create companion materials, including scores and parts, recordings, videos, performance notes, and composer interviews, that will be distributed online for free. Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will present quartet music as a living art form, and provide young musicians with both an indispensable library of learning and a blueprint for their own future collaborations with composers. Kronos, Carnegie Hall, and an adventurous list of project partners that includes presenters, academic institutions, foundations and individuals, have joined forces to support this exciting new commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project of unprecedented scope and potential impact.
Ritva Koistinen Ritva Koistinen is well known as a sensitive interpreter of contemporary music written for kantele. In her youth she has played also a lot of traditional Karelian folk tunes. Koistinen works as a lecturer in kantele music in the Sibelius Academy since 1987, when she was invited to start the education of young kantele players. Koistinen has given the first performance for a big number of compositions written for kantele solo or for kantele with other instruments as well. She has recorded three solo albums. Koistinen has given concerts as soloist both in Finland and abroad, e.g. in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Germany, France, Spain, Israel, Russia, Canada and the USA. She has performed several kantele concertos of Finnish composers, Pekka Jalkanen and Pehr Henrik Nordgren to be mentioned. These concertos she has performed first of all with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Juha Kangas and with Sinfonia Lahti, conducted by Osmo Vänskä. Cooperation with the Kronos Quartet has been the most significant artistic project in Ritva Koistinen’s musical activity. In 2014 she performed with Kronos in Stockholm Concert Hall,
where they gave the first performance of Karin Rehnqvist’s All Those Strings!. Erik Wallrup wrote in Svenska Dagbladet: “With Koistinen’s very first notes, we enter a wholly magical musical realm. … In Rehnqvist and the kantele, the Quartet has struck upon a perfect combination. It was their idea to bring the two together, and Rehnqvist’s response is a work that bursts the seams of custom-made composition, revealing a whole new affective realm. Marvellous.” During the last years Koistinen has concentrated in research. Quite recently she has finished a doctoral work in the Development Study Program in the Sibelius Academy, University of Arts Helsinki. The title of her project is “Bodily Experience and the Art of Touching in Kantele Playing. ” Touching is a central phenomenon to playing the kantele: it is the means of producing the sound. As a holistic phenomenon, touching gives expression to the subtle and rich potential of human mind and body. As a practical demonstration of her work Koistinen has created a website with learning material entitled ‘Multisensory Motility in Kantele Playing Techniques’. The kantele is called the national instrument of Finland. In Koistinen’s family there are two important persons who have worked a lot for the development of kantele as a concert instrument: her father, kantele master Otto Koistinen (b. 1925), and her brother Hannu Koistinen who has developed the new generation of kanteles. The sound of their instruments is unique.
Philip White
Composer, performer and improviser Philip White works with electronics at the intersection of noise, jazz and contemporary concert music. Current projects include R WE WHO R WE (with Ted Hearne), duos with Chris Pitsiokos, Bob Bellerue, Taylor Levine, and Paula Matthusen, and cross-media collaborations with Jim Findlay, Ralph Lemon, Nora Chipaumire and Urban Bush Women. Recent presentations of his work have taken place at BAM Harvey Theater (Brooklyn), Fylkingen (Stockholm), American Academy in Rome, ISSUE Project Room (NYC) and other venues nationally and internationally. His music has been released on Carrier Records, New Focus Recordings, Infrequent Seams and Tape Drift Records. It has been described as “utterly gripping” (Time Out Chicago), “bona fide evocative music” (Brooklyn Rail), and a “vibrant textural tapestry” (Wall Street Journal). For the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association: Janet Cowperthwaite, Managing Director Sidney Chen, Artistic Administrator Mason Dille, Development Associate Scott Fraser, Sound Designer Gregory T. Kuhn, Production & Artistic Services Director Nikolás McConnie-Saad, Office Manager Kären Nagy, Strategic Initiatives Director Hannah Neff, Production Associate
Lucinda Toy, Business Operations Manager Contact: Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association P. O. Box 225340 San Francisco, CA 94122-5340 USA kronosquartet.org facebook.com/kronosquartet instagram.com/kronos_quartet Twitter: @kronosquartet #kronos The Kronos Quartet records for Nonesuch Records.