Kronos at zankel

KRONOS QUARTET David Harrington, violin John Sherba, violin Hank Dutt, viola Sunny Yang, cello

Zankel Hall Carnegie Hall New York, New York March 7, 2015 Merlijn Twaalfhoven / On Parole * World premiere with special guests Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music Bryce Dessner / Tenebre * Derek Charke / Dear Creator, help us return to the centre of our hearts * World premiere I. Prelude II. Peace and Love III. Zone of Influence IV. Upgrade to CO2 V. CHOPS (Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand) VI. Respect Mother Earth VII. Bitumen Night Shift VIII. Dear Creator INTERMISSION Beyond Zero: 1914–1918 * New York premiere for quartet with film

Aleksandra Vrebalov, composer Bill Morrison, filmmaker David Harrington and Drew Cameron, creative consultants Janet Cowperthwaite, producer Kronos Performing Arts Association, production management PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE – Updated: 01/12/2015 * Written for Kronos / + Arranged for Kronos Kronos Quartet / P. O. Box 225340 / San Francisco, CA 94122-5340 Tel: 415/731-3533 / Fax: 415/664-7590 / www.kronosquartet.org / www.facebook.com/kronosquartet

Merlijn Twaalfhoven (b. 1976) On Parole (2015) Composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven connects styles and cultures, but first of all people. He has worked with symphony orchestras, choirs and classical soloists as well as rock bands, folk singers, DJs, dance and theatre.

With a passion for spectacular monumental locations – a shipyard, an old factory, on rooftops, in churches or a submarine – he includes non-Western musical traditions (Japanese, Arabic, Indian) and designs events for places with political and social tension. He has created innovative projects in refugee camps, a Roma ghetto and across dividing lines in Cyprus, Palestine and Syria, involving children and the local communities, and connecting professional and amateur musicians.

Currently he is working on audience engagement and interactive concerts in the world of classical music, building a network of innovative singers and choirs and developing a method for musicians and other artists to engage more directly in society.

He received an UNESCO award and presented his vision on the role of the artist in society at the Aspen Institute in Washington, the EU Forum in Brussels, TEDxAmsterdam and at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

About On Parole, Twaalfhoven writes: "Isn’t the synergy and unanimity of the players the essence of music? Real harmony can only exist when musicians open themselves up towards the others and find a unity together.

“Western music uses bar lines, the time signature and the movement of a conductor to facilitate the effective togetherness of the players. Such tools became a big success in music history and today it’s self-evident that we notate music in bars, beats and systems. Is playing together the same as playing in time? Not at all. Especially in chamber music, you can witness sometimes the magical moment when the musicians overcome the bare structure of the music and seem to play freely, independent of the bar lines. This phenomenon inspired me to search for the tension between freedom and togetherness.

“At the start of On Parole, there are no bar lines to restrict or imprison the notes. The musicians play together but not in the same beat, encouraged to experience a freedom that’s rare in classical music.

“This freedom is not boundless though. The music’s meaning would diminish if the musicians lose contact with each other and play just for themselves. Therefore the composition is a constant search for togetherness in the realm of freedom.”

The string quartet version of On Parole by Merlijn Twaalfhoven was written for the Kronos Quartet.

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Bryce Dessner (b. 1976) Tenebre (2011) Bryce Dessner is a composer/guitarist/curator based in New York City, best known as the guitarist for the rock band The National. Their albums Alligator (2005) and Boxer (2007) were named albums of the year in publications throughout the world; High Violet was released in 2010. Dessner has received widespread acclaim as a composer and guitarist for the improvising quartet Clogs. He has performed and/or recorded with Sufjan Stevens, Antony Hegarty, Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo, Philip Glass, Michael Gordon, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and visual artist Matthew Ritchie, among others. He premiered and recorded 2x5 by Steve Reich in 2009.

As a composer, he is the recipient of a Jerome Grant from the American Composers Forum and the Kitchen (New York), for a full concert of his music in 2007, and a commission from Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna) to create a 40-minute spatial sound work for the Morning Line, an outdoor sound pavilion by Matthew Ritchie. He has also received commissions from the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial, and BAM’s Next Wave Festival, for The Long Count, an evening-length work with his brother Aaron Dessner. He composed the score for Turn the River, a film written and directed by Chris Eigman.

Dessner is the creator and artistic director of the Music Now Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the co-founder and owner of the Brassland record label. He and Aaron Dessner recently produced an AIDS charity compilation, Dark Was the Night, for the Red Hot Organization. Dessner serves on the board of The Kitchen, and is a graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Music.

About Tenebre, Dessner writes: “Tenebre began as a conversation with Kronos about writing a piece for Larry Neff, Kronos' longtime lighting designer, for his 25th year with Kronos and his 50th birthday. The idea was to commission a new work for him as a gift to thank him for everything he had done for Kronos over the years and for his contribution to their concerts. The importance of light in music is huge – a lighting director is like another musician, in a way.

“I spent a lot of time investigating this relationship between music and light: different composers who've worked with that idea, different writers who have thought about it, different pieces of music. What I came to was the service called Tenebrae, a mass service during the Holy Week before Easter that many great Renaissance composers, and even baroque and some modern composers, have written music for.

“What was significant about the Tenebrae service for me was that it deals with light. There are 15 candles extinguished through the service, the final darkness symbolizing in the Christian service the death of Christ. I was looking at it not in the context of religion but in the use of light, and how composers score the descent into darkness. It was an opportunity to study some of my favorite Renaissance vocal music, and I chose to reference some of the settings by Tallis, Gesualdo and Palestrina; there’s also incredible Tenebrae service music by Couperin. I also referred to Britten’s Les Illuminations, a setting of poetry by Rimbaud, which has nothing to do Macintosh HD:Users:evhrr10:Downloads:program notes:DESSNER Tenebre copy.doc

with Tenebrae but obviously relates to the subject of light. It’s woven together in an abstract way, with small quotes and loose references to these different composers. My Tenebre inverts the form of the service: rather than going from light into darkness, we go from dark to light, to symbolize Larry’s illumination of Kronos’ music.

“Something I found interesting about the Tenebrae service, since my background is Jewish, was that it includes an Old Testament text from the book of Lamentations by the prophet Jeremiah, which tells the story of the destruction of the first two temples of Israel. Since the book of Lamentations was constructed as poetry and each chapter is built as an alphabetical acrostic, the Hebrew alphabet is sung; Couperin in particular set long, 16-bar phrases on individual letters of the alphabet, and I found this idea of individually illuminated letters really beautiful.

“Since Tenebre is built and inspired by vocal music, at the end of the piece you'll hear voices, symbolizing the flooding of light into the room. There are suddenly three quartets playing, two previously recorded by Kronos, and an octet of voices sung by my friend Sufjan Stevens, who is in my opinion one of the great folk singers of our generation. He sings for us a layered amoebalike melody of Hebrew letters, and then the first line of the Tenebrae reading, Incipit Lamentatio Ieremiae Prophetae, which in Latin is, ‘Here begins the Lamentation of Jeremiah the Prophet.’

So the piece ends where it should begin, with this Latin inscription.”

Bryce Dessner's Tenebre was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the family and friends of Laurence Glyn Neff in celebration of his 50th birthday, the Barbican/London, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Kronos Performing Arts Association. Kronos’ recording of Tenebrae appears on the Anti- CD Aheym: Kronos Quartet plays music by Bryce Dessner.

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Derek Charke (b. 1974) Dear Creator, help us return to the centre of our hearts (2014) Derek Charke, a JUNO and ECMA award-winning composer and flutist, has been commissioned by artists including the Kronos Quartet, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis. His music has been heard in venues like Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, Roy Thomson Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Charke is a professor at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where he teaches composition and theory. He is the president of the Acadia New Music Society, which runs the annual Shattering the Silence New Music Festival, and he continues to perform regularly as a new music performer and improvisor on the flute.

Charke has had a long-standing collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. Works include his Concerto for String Quartet, Cercle du Nord III, Inuit Throat Song Games, and Tundra Songs, a 30-minute work commissioned for Kronos and Tagaq by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Many of his compositions explore environmental issues. His Symphony No. 1 ‘Transient Energies’, commissioned for Symphony Nova Scotia, explores a soundscape of energy production sounds. Falling from Cloudless Skies, commissioned for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, focuses on a soundscape of falling ice sounds. Warning Gustandoes Ahead (for the National Flute Association) deals with destructive nature of wind.

Charke has received grants and commissions from the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, SOCAN Foundation, CBC Radio, Radio Canada, the National Flute Association, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Carnegie Hall, and others. What do the Birds Think? garnered a special mention from the Kubik Prize and his work Xynith won him a BMI student composer award. He holds a Ph.D. in composition and a Master’s degree in flute performance from SUNY Buffalo. For more information, visit charke.com.

About Dear Creator, help us return to the centre of our hearts, Charke writes: “If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.

And if there is to be peace between neighbours, there must be peace in the homes.

And if there is to be peace in the homes, there must be peace, and love, in our hearts.”

– Elsie Yanik “From June 12 to 23, 2013, I visited the Athabasca Oil Sands in northern Alberta. I toured the Suncor site and the Wapisiw reclamation area. I travelled on Highway 63, with its endless number of white pickup trucks and Diversified buses. I drove next to Syncrude, Athabasca and the other big oil companies. I saw the extent of the tailings ponds and heard the bird canons. I took a private flight and witnessed the enormity of the mining operations from above. I visited reclamation sites including Crane Lake and Gateway Hill. I spent a morning at the Finning repair shop and another morning at the Fort McMurray waste management facility where I recorded sounds of dump trucks and heavy machinery. I flew north to Fort Chipewyan and travelled by boat to a remote cabin where I spent an evening in the wilderness. I took in Treaty Days at Fort McKay. I went for walks in the parks of Fort McMurray, and I heard the birds in the morning. I stood on Franklin Avenue and watched as people from around the world strolled the streets.

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“The oil sands (the tar sands, or the bitumen sands) are a polarizing topic. I was curious to experience it, to visit the mining operations and surrounding communities, and to speak with the people who live and work there. Hundreds of Diversified coach buses shuttle workers to and from the mines 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Another 40,000 to 60,000 workers live in camps adjacent to the sites. People commute from all across Canada — particularly from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia — and from every corner of the globe. As a result multiculturalism is thriving.

The airport is one of the busiest in Canada. There is a distinct feeling of unmitigated growth.

There’s money, and lots of it. The average age is 32 (it’s a very young town). When workers have time off they're unsure how to spend their huge paycheques. Brand new Harley Davidson motorcycles roar down the streets on the weekends. Construction looms everywhere. Companies are required to invest in the local infrastructure and as a result the quality of parks and attractions goes way beyond what any similar sized community could dream to afford. The wilderness surrounding everything only serves to amplify the surrealism of the town, the population, and the oil sand operations. When the oil sands run dry, will the region survive?

“Respect mother Earth, don't take from her any more than you can.”

– Elsie Yanik

“Dear Creator is a reflection of my experience from this trip. A soundtrack accompanies the quartet, but not constantly. At first is it subtle. Sounds of trucks and heavy equipment, sounds of steam from the processing plants, sounds of wildlife, birds and nature from the beautiful landscapes that surround the mines, sounds of traffic on highway 63, and the sounds of people; workers at the Finning repair shop, dump truck drivers, an airplane pilot, a community gathering in Fort McKay, and young kids swearing in Fort Chipewyan are interspersed throughout the 30 minutes of a fully notated string quartet score.

“During my travels I searched for a way to respect the human element. The breakthrough came when I met Elsie Yanik, a 94 year-old Métis Elder originally from Fort Chipewyan who lives in an apartment in downtown Fort McMurray. Elsie has lived through the developments of the last 94 years. She becomes a metaphor for the story of the region. Elsie’s prayers and musings inform the very core of this work.

“It's obvious that we're not being kind to our planet. But it’s not a simple fix. Reclaimed tailings ponds and using state-of-the art science to mitigate environmental consequences of oil sands extraction and production is on the minds of everyone. But, still, it seems our hands are tied.

We’re reliant on oil. There are human lives that are affected both locally and globally, for good and for bad, because of the oil sands.

“Elsie encapsulates my feelings best when she says: ‘We were all given freedom. And with that freedom, you have choices.’ Yes! We all have choices. Let’s hope we can make the right ones.

“This work would not have been possible without the support of numerous people. I especially wish to thank David Harrington and the Kronos Quartet for their encouragement and unwavering vision; Carnegie Hall, the Canada Council for the Arts, and Arts Nova Scotia for their generous funding; Dianne Farkouh, Bryan Jackson and Russell Thomas who helped show me the real Fort

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McMurray; Robert Grandjambe who took me to his cabin in Fort Chipewyan; and finally, Elsie Yanik for sharing her remarkable stories.�

Derek Charke's Dear Creator, help us return to the centre of our hearts was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by: Carnegie Hall; the Canada Council for the Arts; Peggy Dorfman and the Ralph I. Dorfman Family Fund; and the David Harrington Research and Development Fund, with the support of individual Kickstarter backers. Recording expedition to the Oil Sands funded

by Arts Nova Scotia.

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About Beyond Zero: 1914–1918 Unlike official histories, that have often romanticized and glorified the war, artists have typically been the keepers of sanity, showing its brutality, destruction, and ugliness. For many, across history, creating art in those circumstances served as a survival mechanism.

While working on Beyond Zero: 1914–1918, I was inspired by anti-war writings, music, and art created during and immediately after World War I, including, for example, the writings of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, the music of Satie and Debussy, and the Dada movement.

The piece draws from their disillusionment about heroism and patriotism, summed up in Owen’s line from Dulce et Decorum, that to die for one’s country is the old lie.

Throughout the piece, there are several documentary recordings from different wars – from the horrific “Loyalty Speech” of James Watson Gerard who served as a U.S. Ambassador to Germany until 1917, to military commands of Serbian and Bosnian troupes during the conflicts that led to the brutal falling apart of Yugoslavia in 1990s, to the chilling sound of air-raid sirens during the bombing of London in World War II. My intention was to juxtapose these historical accounts of war with the finest expressions of spirit and creativity occurring at the same time – therefore Béla Bartók’s own playing of his Piano Suite written in 1916, and Huelsenbeck’s reading of his Chorus Sanctus, also written in 1916. A girl calling her cats is a symbolic reminder of suffering of women and children, and of longing for lost safety and domesticity. Beyond Zero: 1914–1918 ends with fragments of a dark Byzantine hymn “Eternal Memory to the Virtuous,” chanted by the monks from the Kovilj monastery in Serbia, in remembrance to all who lost their lives in the Great War and every war

since then.

–Aleksandra Vrebalov The film portion of Beyond Zero: 1914–1918 is comprised of films that have never been seen by modern audiences. I searched archives for rare 35mm nitrate films shot during the Great War, and made new brand new HD scans from the originals. In many cases this is the last expression of these films – some original copies were determined to not be worth preserving beyond this transfer to digital media.

What we are left with is a glimpse of a war fought in fields, in trenches, and in the air. Most of the footage shows some emulsion deterioration – the by-product of a history stored on an unstable base for 100 years. Through a veil of physical degradation and original film dyes, we see training exercises, parades, and troop movement. Some of the battle footage was re-enacted for the camera, and some depicts actual live rounds. All of it was shot on film at the time of the conflict.

We see a record of a war as a series of documents passed along to us like a message in a bottle.

None is more powerful than the record of the film itself, made visible by its own deterioration.

We are constantly reminded of its materiality: this film was out on these same fields with these

soldiers 100 years ago, a collaborator, and a survivor. It is being seen now as a digital image for the first time.

If these are images that we, as viewers, were once intended to see, to convince us of the necessity and valor of war, they now read as images that have fought to remain on the screen. They are threatened on all sides by the unstable nitrate base they were recorded on, and the prism of nearly one hundred uninterrupted years of war, through which we now view them. –Bill Morrison