![]() ![]() “Every cellist that travels has to have a ticket for their cello, and depending on where you’re going there’s all kinds of extra stuff involved with being the cellist … I don’t know if that has something to do with it.”Ī week after the Richmond performance and recording, Kronos heads to legendary Carnegie Hall in New York City for a concert that includes the work of Javanese singer, Peni Candra Rini, who Style recently profiled because she is a visiting Fulbright scholar this spring at UR and Virginia Commonwealth University.Īsked why Kronos was recording “At War with Ourselves” in Richmond for a potential album (details are unconfirmed at press time), Harrington explains that this performance has been a long time coming for many reasons. We have not had a bad moment ever in the past 10 years,” Harrington says.Īlthough he doesn’t have an answer as to why it’s always been the cellist position, like the drummer in Spinal Tap, that keeps changing in Kronos over the chamber group’s long history. John, Hank and I feel that Sunny has brought Kronos so much poetry and happiness and really great rehearsals. “As musicians, we’ve had the best time in the last ten years that you can imagine. The group’s handful of January concerts will also mark the final performances of Kronos cellist Sunny Yang, who has been with the group for a decade, and who is being replaced by cellist and composer Paul Wiancko in February. ![]() Like, 'I think we can do this.' That’s what I get from it.” We are responding to each other in a really thorough way … But you feel good after this. “We might be playing the same pitches from one night to the next but the essence of the experience can be totally different. “Also having Nikky right there in the center between the members of Kronos is such a powerful experience to hear her words and the intonation of them and the way she varies that depending on the way we play,” he explains. Harrington says that "At War With Ourselves" has been performed around 10 times so far, having premiered in Texas – but each 80-minute performance takes on a different feel, partly due to its community participants. Kronos Quartet are: John Sherba (violin), David Harrington (violin), Hank Dutt (viola) and Sunny Yang (cello).After the concert ends, the Kronos Quartet, Finney, Abels, and Janet Cowperthwaite, the longtime managing director of Kronos Quartet, will be involved in an audience discussion and Q&A. The musical work “explores race relations, social justice, and civil rights in 21st century America” and also features a chorus (which will include nine local singers) conduced by Valérie Sainte-Agathe, artistic director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus with music written by Michael Abels, composer for the Jordan Peele films “Get Out” and “Us,” who will also be in attendance. 21 at the University of Richmond's Modlin Center for the Arts, with powerful narration by National Book award-winning poet Nikky Finney, whose 2013 poem “The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy” inspired the libretto. Now Richmonders will get a chance to become part of a new Kronos Quartet recording when the group performs “At War with Ourselves – 400 Years of You” on Saturday, Jan. They’ve released more than 70 recordings, winning over 40 major awards including three Grammys, and have worked with everyone from Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich to Laurie Anderson, Tom Waits, Allen Ginsberg, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh from Azerbaijan, and Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle those are just a few, the list goes much longer. Since the early 1970s, Kronos has been joyfully exploring this mystery by performing a wide variety of international composers’ work, as well as thousands of concerts worldwide, often touring five months of the year. “Like Górecki once said to me, ‘ How does it work?’” None of us own it,” he continues, laughing. I thanked him for being kind to a young, inexperienced arts journalist who knew little about classical music, certainly not enough to talk to the founder of a group that, over the last 50 years, has become known for broadening and reimagining the string quartet experience. ![]() I had just informed him that he was one of the first musicians I ever interviewed some 25 years ago, before a concert at Stanford University. ![]() This is what violinist David Harrington, founder of the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet from San Francisco, tells me recently on the phone. “Can I tell you something? Nobody knows anything about music. ![]()
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