Kronos Quartet DAVID HARRINGTON, violin JOHN SHERBA, violin HANK DUTT, viola JEFFREY ZEIGLER, cello
Laurence Neff, lighting designer Brian Mohr, audio engineer Good Medicine from Salome Dances for Peace *.............................................................Terry Riley Ya Habibi Ta’ala (My Love, Come Quickly) +.....................Midhat Assem (arr. Osvaldo Golijov) Smyrneiko Minore +............................................................................ Traditional (arr. Jacob Garchik) Tashweesh *....................................................................Ramallah Underground (arr. Jacob Garchik) The Ecstasy: At the Summit from Salome Dances for Piece..........................................Terry Riley Aheym (Homeward) *...................................................................................................... Bryce Dessner INTERMISSION Crossfader *............................................................................................................................. Raz Mesinai One Earth, One People, One Love from Sun Rings *.......................................................Terry Riley …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… *...............................................................Aleksandra Vrebalov PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE * 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 www.myspace.com/kronosquartet
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program notes Good Medicine and The Ecstasy: At the Summit from Salome Dances for Peace Terry Riley (b. 1935) Terry Riley first came to prominence in 1964 when he subverted the world of tightly organized atonal composition then in fashion. With the groundbreaking In C—a work built upon steady pulse throughout, simple repeated melodic motives, and static harmonies—Riley achieved an elegant and non-nostalgic return to tonality. In demonstrating the hypnotic allure of complex musical patterns made of basic means, he produced the seminal work of the so-called “minimal” school. Riley’s facility for complex pattern-making is the product of his virtuosity as a keyboard improviser. He quit formal composition following In C in order to concentrate on improvisation, and in the late 1960s and early 70s he became known for weaving dazzlingly intricate skeins of music from improvisations on organ and synthesizer. At this time, Riley also devoted himself to studying North Indian vocal techniques under the legendary Pandit Pran Nath, and a new element entered his music: longlimbed melody. From his work in Indian music, moreover, he became interested in the subtle distinctions of tuning that would be hard to achieve with a traditional classical ensemble. Riley began notating music again in 1979, expressly at David Harrington’s request, when both he and the Kronos Quartet were on the faculty at Mills College in Oakland. By collaborating with Kronos, he discovered that his various musical passions could be integrated, not as pastiche, but as different sides of similar musical impulses that still maintained something of the oral performing traditions of India and jazz. Riley’s first quartets were inspired by his keyboard improvisations, but his knowledge of string
quartets became more sophisticated through his work with Kronos, combining rigorous compositional ideas with a more performance-oriented approach. Kronos’ long relationship with Riley has produced more than 25 new works. Salome Dances for Peace, an epic, twohour-long string quartet in five sections. At the Summit comes from The Ecstasy, the fourth section; Good Medicine is the final section. About Salome Riley has said: “The idea for Salome Dances for Peace came out of an improvisation theme from The Harp of New Albion. I realized this was potentially a whole new piece. Around that time, David Harrington called me and asked me to write another string quartet. “I thought that it should be a ballet about Salome using her alluring powers to actually create peace in the world. So Salome in this case becomes like a goddess who—drawn out of antiquity, having done evil kinds of deeds—reincarnates and is trained as a sorceress, as a shaman. And through her dancing, she is able to become both a warrior and an influence on the world leaders’ actions. “I’m always trying to find ways that I can, besides doing music, contribute to world peace, or maybe neighborhood peace or home peace. I told David that when we first started that I thought we ought to create a piece that can be played at the United Nations on special holidays. It would not be just a concert piece but a piece that could be played as a rite.” Salome Dances for Peace was commissioned for Kronos by IRCAM and Betty Freeman, and recorded by Kronos for Nonesuch Records.
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Ya Habibi Ta’ala (My Love, Come Quickly) Midhat Assem (arr. Osvaldo Golijov) (b. 1960) This arrangement was inspired by a recording by the legendary Asmahan, one of the greatest Arab singers of the 20th century. She was born Amal El Atrache in 1918 into a royal and worldly family, living in Lebanon and Turkey as the daughter of a Druze prince until her father’s death in 1924. The family was forced to emigrate to Egypt, where her mother, who was acquainted with both classical Arabic music and Western operettas, sang in nightclubs and at private parties to support her four children. In the 1930s, Amal and her older brother Farid El Atrache began performing on the radio, and then singing and starring in the movie musicals that were then capturing Egypt’s attention. Adopting Asmahan as a stage name, she gained fame as a glamorous movie star and some notoriety as a strongly independent, modern woman. (Farid became a legend in his own right, as one of the great Arabic film actors and singers of his time.) Her singing was known not only for its virtuosity and its sensual, erotic immediacy, but also its natural blending of classical Arabic song interpretation and Western vocal technique. She died at the age of 26 in a car accident, the circumstances of which are unclear; it is rumored that she was a secret agent in World War II and that her death may have been an act of counterespionage. It is said that had Asmahan lived, she would have rivaled even Umm Kulthum in popularity and influence. This work, one of Asmahan’s most famous recordings, was composed by Midhat Assem, who was the director of Egyptian national radio in the 1930s. The original lyrics are the private outpourings of a woman separated from her secret lover: “My love, come quickly and see what has happened to me/ Since you have been away... / I try
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to hide my love, and my love is about to kill me... / I sacrifice my heart, my soul and my money, / I leave my people, / And all this does not make you come back to me.” Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina. He was raised surrounded by Western classical music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla. He moved to Israel in 1983, where he studied with Mark Kopytman at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy and immersed himself in the colliding musical traditions of that city. Upon moving to the United States in 1986, Golijov earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George Crumb, and was a fellow at Tanglewood, studying with Oliver Knussen in the early 1990s. Golijov became personally acquainted with the Kronos Quartet at Tanglewood, and has since collaborated with the group on about 30 works. Golijov is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other awards. Osvaldo Golijov’s arrangement of Ya Habibi Ta’ala by Midhat Assem was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Greg G. Minshall.
Smyrneiko Minore (as sung by Marika Papagika) Traditional (arr. Jacob Garchik) (b. 1976) This arrangement of Smyrneiko Minore is inspired by a 1918 recording by Greek singer Marika Papagika. Of the many immigrant groups arriving in America via Ellis Island to begin new lives, the Greek community was one of the more persistent and enduring. By the mid 1920s, when the major explosion of ethnic recording was taking place in the United States, the Greek catalogues already boasted more than a decade’s worth of comprehensive input. The breeding ground of GreekAmerican music was often the “café Amans,” atmospheric gathering places filled with cultural reassurance, Greek newspapaers, home-cooked food, ouzo, strong coffee and,
always, music. One of the most popular was a New York-based operation run by the husband and wife team of Kostas and Marika Papagika. Marika Papagika was born on the island of Kos in 1890. Her family moved to Egypt, probably settling in Alexandria, when she was a teenager and it was there that she began her singing career. She and her husband arrived in New York in 1915, on board the Themistocles, a ship that had sailed from the Greek port of Piraeus, and by 1925 they had moved to 215 West 34th Street, where they owned and operated their own club. She became a noted exponent of the Smyrnaic Greek style of the rebetiko tragoudi, the freshly reinvented and garrulous music that had first emerged in Smyrna, and was then tempered by the tragic events of the 1922 Turkish expulsions that transplanted the Greek community into the ramshackle world of Piraeus. By this time Papagika was also an established recording artist, having initially signed with Victor in 1918, and she was one of the first to commit rembetika to wax in the new world. Interestingly, as well as Greek songs, operetta, influences from French café music and an adventurous utilizing of unusual combinations of instruments, her repertoire also included a few Turkish songs. This willingness to perform both Turkish and Greek works at a time of strained relations between the two countries points, perhaps, to the immigrant’s differing perspective of events. She saw herself, it seems, at least as much as a product of the crumbling Ottoman Empire as of her culturally Greek background. Papagika’s first four-song session for Victor took place in New York in 1918 including the celebrated Smyrneiko Minore. This recording has been re-released on Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics (19181954), complied by Ian Nagoski for Dust-toDigital Records. Among the song’s lyrics is the stanza, “If you love me and it’s a dream/ May I never wake up/ In the sweet dawn/
God lets me take my soul away.” Between that first session and 1929, she cut 232 performances. The Papagikas fell victim to the Great Depression, and in the economic collapse they lost the business sometime in 1930. Her recording career ended with only one further session in 1937, and she died in her Long Island home in 1943. Trombonist and composer Jacob Garchik, born in San Francisco, has lived in New York since 1994. Since 2006 Garchik has contributed arrangements and transcriptions for the Kronos Quartet of music from all over the world. An active freelance trombonist, he plays with groups including the Lee Konitz New Nonet, the Ohad Talmor/Steve Swallow Sextet, Slavic Soul Party, the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, and the Four Bags. He has also worked with composers George Lewis, Joe Maneri, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Coleman and James Tenney, choreographers Yoshiko Chuma and Anita Cheng, and the Theatre of a Twoheaded Calf. His second, independently released album, Romance, was hailed by Ben Ratliff in the New York Times as “odd and excellent...taut with paradox...slow and beautiful art songs.” He has recorded for Piranha, Omnitone, Fresh Sound New Talent, NCM East, Tzadik, New World and Palmetto. Garchik also plays accordion, bass trombone, tuba, computer and piano. Program note by Paul Vernon, adapted from the article Seeking Marika, which appeared in the world music magazine fRoots. Reprinted with permission. Smyrneiko Minore, arranged by Jacob Garchik, was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.
Tashweesh Ramallah Underground (arr. Jacob Garchik) (b. 1976) Ramallah Underground (RU) is a musical collective, based in Ramallah, Palestine, attempting to rejuvenate Arabic culture through music. RU was founded by artists Boikutt, Stormtrap and Aswatt. The group
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produces music ranging from hip-hop to triphop to down tempo. The members started as producers; Boikutt and Stormtrap later picked up the microphone and began to rap in Arabic, which added a political layer to the music. RU’s work comes out of a deep sense of local culture and the imposing presence of Palestine in the member’s lives. The members of RU, as producers and as MCs, have collaborated and performed with artists across the globe, from Lebanon, United Kingdom, Switzerland, United States, France, The Netherlands and other countries. RU has also performed live shows in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Vienna, London, Cairo, Lausanne, Brussels, Amsterdam and Washington, D.C. In recent live performances, RU has incorporated a visual set, created by Palestinian visual artist Ruanne. RU’s main hope is to give a voice to Palestinians and Arabs, bringing an alternative voice from the Arab world. About Tashweesh, David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet writes, “I first heard Ramallah Underground on MySpace. The sound was distinctive, and seemed very interesting as a group. The members were open to the world of music. I began an e-mail correspondence with them, and found that one member lived in Palestine, another in Vienna and the third in Dubai. I sent them a bunch of Kronos CDs and in exchange they sent me a lot of their music. After I had spent a lot of time with their work, I felt it would be great if they would write for Kronos. Tashweesh is the result.” Ramallah Underground’s Tashweesh, arranged by Jacob Garchik, was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Columbia Foundation and the David Harrington Research and Development Fund. Kronos’ recording is available on Floodplain, released on Nonesuch Records.
Aheym (Homeward) Bryce Dessner (b. 1976) Bryce Dessner is a composer/guitarist/ curator based in New York City, best known as the guitarist for the rock band, The National. The group’s albums Alligator (2005) and Boxer (2007) were named albums of the year in publications throughout the world. 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 AllStars and visual artist Matthew Ritchie, among others. He premiered and recorded a new work by Steve Reich in 2009. As a composer, Dessner was 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. Dessner has also received commissions from the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial, and BAM’s Next Wave Festival, for 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 Aheym, Dessner writes, “David Harrington asked me to write a piece for Kronos Quartet for a performance in
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Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I live just two blocks from the park and spend many mornings running around it. The park for me symbolizes much of what I love about New York, especially the stunning diversity of Brooklyn with its myriad cultures and communities. My father’s family, Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia, also lived near the park for many years in the 1940s and 50s before moving to Queens. In discussing the new piece, David proposed to perform the work in Brooklyn, and then to retrace the journey of my grandparents and perform it in Lodz, Poland, a city where my great-grandparents lived and through which my grandmother passed on her voyage to America. “‘Aheym’ means ‘homeward’ in Yiddish, and this piece is written as musical evocation of the idea of flight and passage. As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past. In her poem “Di rayze aheym,” the American-Yiddish poet Irena Klepfisz, a professor at Barnard in New York and one of the few child survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, writes: “Among strangers is her home. Here right here she must live. Her memories will become monuments.” “Aheym is dedicated to my grandmother, Sarah Dessner.” Bryce Dessner’s Aheym was written for the Kronos Quartet.
Crossfader Raz Mesinai (b. 1973) Raz Mesinai was born in Jerusalem in 1973. His first two decades were spent in frequent transit between Jerusalem and New York City, where he became immersed in both the worlds of traditional Middle Eastern
music, and the dub and hip-hop scenes of the 1980s and early 1990s in New York City. He became involved in the avant-garde, downtown music scene of New York City, performing, improvising and leading his own ensembles on percussion, piano and sampler. Mesinai’s electronic and electro-acoustic music exists at the crossroads of composition, sound design and modern studio production. His acclaimed recordings under the moniker Badawi, and as one half of the seminal duo Sub Dub (with John Ward), are difficult to classify, but have been called hybrid electronica/dub/percussion/ avant-garde compositions. Since 1999, Mesinai has been releasing music under his own name as well, including three releases on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Mesinai has collaborated with many of New York’s top musicians, including Eyvind Kang, Mark Dresser, Marc Ribot, Mark Feldman, John Zorn, Shelley Hirsch, Elliott Sharp and Zeena Parkins, among many others. His work has been commissioned by the Lincoln Center Festival, the Jerome Foundation and the American Music Center. In 2001, Soldier of Midian (ROIR) received an award from the Ars Electronica festival. In 2002, Mesinai was a featured artist in the “Next, Next Wave” festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and opened for Nubian master musician Hamza El Din at Lincoln Center. In 2004, following his developing interest in visual narrative and storytelling in music, Mesinai was a Fellow at the Sundance Composer’s Lab where he had the opportunity to participate in workshops with such artists as John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov and Thomas Newman. He is currently scoring several films. About Crossfader, Mesinai writes, “Written for the Kronos Quartet, Crossfader incorporates the rhythms, pulses and fullthrottle energy of electronic dance music into the string quartet medium. Although it was initially written for string quartet and electronics, I realized that all of the
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sounds I wanted could be derived straight from the instruments alone. By using the many splendid extended techniques that a stringed instrument can deliver, the players simulate such effects as delays, phasers, and flanging used in modern electronic dance music.” Raz Mesinai’s Crossfader was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Deborah and Creig Hoyt.
One Earth, One People, One Love from Sun Rings Terry Riley (b. 1935) In the 2002 work, Sun Rings, technology meets the expansive imagination of Terry Riley, bringing the music of the spheres to life. The evening-length composition includes sounds harvested from our solar system—the crackling of solar winds, the whistling of deep-space lightning, and other cosmic events. The project began with Dr. Don Gurnett, a plasma physicist at the University of Iowa who has spent the last 40 years recording extraterrestrial sounds called “whistlers,” created by, among other things, lightning discharges in the plasma of space. Bertram Ulrich, curator of the NASA Art Program, had been long intrigued by Gurnett’s “whistlers” and a great fan of the Kronos Quartet. Ulrich offered Kronos a commission to turn these random tones from outer space into music. Kronos’ David Harrington then turned to longtime Kronos collaborator Terry Riley to serve as the project’s composer. The Sun Rings project was nearly derailed by the tragic events of Sept. 11, after which all parties concerned questioned Sun Rings’ relevance in the wake of the terrorist attacks and the impending war in Afghanistan. But then, Riley discovered a breakthrough in a new and vital link. As the L.A. Times put it: “Riley heard poet and novelist Alice Walker on the radio talking about how she had made up a Sept. 11 mantra—‘One Earth, One People, One Love.’ It suddenly occurred to him that contemplating outer space could
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be a way to put the problems on Earth into perspective.” Walker’s mantra not only gave Riley the inspiration to continue—it also provided a title and focal point for Sun Rings’ concluding movement, the excerpt performed by Kronos in the present program. Furthermore, the sound of Walker’s voice intoning the words “One Earth, One People, One Love” became an integral component of the movement itself. As Riley describes his fully realized, postSept. 11 conception of Sun Rings: “This work is largely about humans as they reach out from Earth to gain an awareness of their solar system neighborhood….Space is surely the realm of dreams and imagination and a fertile feeding ground for poets and musicians. Do the stars welcome us into their realms? I think so or we would not have made it this far. Do they wish us to come in Peace? I am sure of it.” Sun Rings was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the NASA Art Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation’s Multi-Arts Production Fund, Hancher Auditorium/University of Iowa, Society for the Performing Arts, Eclectic Orange Festival/ Philharmonic Society of Orange County, SFJAZZ, Barbican, London, U.K., and University of Texas Performing Arts Center, Austin (with the support of the Topfer Endowment for Performing Arts). Additional contributions from Stephen K. Cassidy, Margaret Lyon, Greg G. Minshall, and David A. and Evelyne T. Lennette made this work possible.
…hold me, neighbor, in this storm… Aleksandra Vrebalov (b. 1970) Aleksandra Vrebalov, a native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and continued her education in the United States. She holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory. She has participated in the NYU Summer Composition Workshop, Music Courses in Darmstadt (Germany), Szombathely (Hungary) and Kazimierz Dolny (Poland) in collaboration with IRCAM, and
the Cabrillo Festival (California). She now teaches at the City College of New York. Her music has been recorded for Nonesuch and Vienna Modern Masters. She is the subject of a 30-minute television biography, produced by the NS Channel. About …hold me, neighbor, in this storm…, Vrebalov writes: “The Balkans, with its multitude of cultural and religious identities, has had a troubled history of ethnic intolerance. For my generation of Tito’s pioneers and children of Communists, growing up in the former Yugoslavia meant learning about and carrying in our minds the battles and numberless ethnic and religious conflicts dating back half a millennium, and honoring ancestors who died in them.… After several devastating ethnic wars in the 1990s we entered a new century, this time each of us knowing in person someone who perished. As I write this in November 2007, on YouTube a new generation of Albanians and Serbs post their war-songs bracing for another conflict, claiming their separate entitlements to the land and history.…
better and richer together—our music so famously accomplished instead. …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… is inspired by folk and religious music from the region, whose insistent rhythms and harmonies create a sense of inevitability, a ritual trance with an obsessive, dark energy. Peaceful passages of the work grew out of the delicately curved, elusive, often microtonal melodies of prayers, as well as escapist tavern songs from the region, as my grandmother remembers them. “For me, …hold me, neighbor… is a way to bring together the sounds of the church bells of Serbian orthodox monasteries and the Islamic calls for prayer. It is a way to connect histories and places by unifying one of the most civilized sounds of Western classical music—that of the string quartet— with ethnic Balkan instruments, the gusle (a bowed string instrument) and tapan (large double-headed drum). It is a way to piece together our identities fractured by centuries of intolerance, and to reach out and celebrate the land so rich in its diversity…”
“Strangely, the cultural and religious differences that led to enmity in everyday life produced—after centuries of turbulently living together—most incredible fusions in music. It is almost as if what we weren’t able to achieve through words and deeds—to fuse, and mix, and become something
Aleksandra Vrebalov’s ...hold me, neighbor, in this storm... was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Carnegie Hall and by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland with funds from The Leading College and University Presenters Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional support was provided by The James Irvine Foundation.
For the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association:
Contact:
Janet Cowperthwaite, managing director Laird Rodet, associate director Sidney Chen, artistic administrator Scott Fraser, sound designer Christina Johnson, communications manager Calvin Ll. Jones, production associate Asheton Lemay, intern Nikolás McConnie-Saad, administrative assistant Brian Mohr, audio engineer Laurence Neff, production director Lucinda Toy, business operations manager Julie Yip, administrative assistant
Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association P. O. Box 225340 San Francisco, CA 94122-5340 USA www.kronosquartet.org www.facebook.com/kronosquartet www.myspace.com/kronosquartet Twitter: @kronosquartet #kronos The Kronos Quartet records exclusively for Nonesuch Records. Booking direction by David Lieberman / Artists’ Representative P.O. Box 10368, Newport Beach, CA 92658 info@dlartists.com
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kronos quartet For more than 30 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington, John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola) and Jeffrey Zeigler (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 45 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world’s most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning more than 650 new works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos’ work has also garnered numerous awards, including a Grammy for best chamber music performance (2004) and musicians of the year (2003) from Musical America.
work with Kronos includes both compositions and extensive arrangements for albums like Kronos Caravan and Nuevo; and many more.
Since 1973, Kronos has built a compellingly eclectic repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20thcentury masters (Bartók, Shostakovich, Webern), contemporary composers (Aleksandra Vrebalov, John Adams, Alfred Schnittke), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), and artists from even farther afield (rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov, avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn).
A nonprofit organization, the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association is committed to mentoring emerging musicians and composers, and to creating, performing and recording new works. The Quartet spends five months of each year on tour, appearing in concert halls, clubs and festivals around the world including BAM Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Barbican in London, WOMAD, UCLA’s Royce Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Shanghai Concert Hall and the Sydney Opera House. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging in recordings. The ensemble’s expansive discography on Nonesuch Records includes collections such as Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers, which simultaneously topped Billboard’s classical and world music lists; 2000’s Caravan, whose musical “travels” span North and South America, Europe and the Middle East; 1998’s 10-disc anthology, Kronos Quartet: 25 Years; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy-nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2003 Grammywinner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite.
Integral to Kronos’ work is a series of longrunning, in-depth collaborations with many of the world’s foremost composers. Kronos has worked extensively with composers such as “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, whose work with Kronos includes Salome Dances for Peace, the multimedia production Sun Rings, and 2005’s The Cusp of Magic; Philip Glass, recording his complete string quartets and scores to films like Mishima and Dracula; Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, featured on the 2005 release Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; Steve Reich, whose Kronos-recorded Different Trains earned a Grammy; Argentina’s Osvaldo Golijov, whose
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In addition to composers, Kronos counts numerous artists from around the world among its regular collaborators, including Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man; the legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle; Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq; Mexican rockers Café Tacuba; the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks; and the renowned American soprano Dawn Upshaw. Kronos has performed live with the likes of icons Allen Ginsberg, Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, David Barsamian, Howard Zinn, Betty Carter and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by such diverse talents as Nine Inch Nails, Amon Tobin, Dan Zanes, DJ Spooky, Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traoré, Joan Armatrading and Don Walser.
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