Avant-garde aces the Kronos Quartet celebrates 50 year anniversary
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Kronos Quartet
When: Oct. 26, 8 p.m.
Where: Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, UBC
The Kronos Quartet was founded in 1973 in Seattle, Wash., by violinist David Harrington. His vision for the group was to bring contemporary classical music to a wider audience. It has done that and much more in the past five decades.
In the 50 years since its founding, Harrington and a rotating cast of other members have commissioned more than 1,000 pieces and expanded its musical explorations into everything from jazz and Jimi Hendrix to Bollywood legend Asha Bosle and Nine Inch Nails. It has released over 43 studio recordings, multiple compilations and soundtracks.
For its upcoming Vancouver performance, the group will showcase material from across its varied repertoire. Harrington reflects on why the Kronos Quartet, now under the banner of the wider Kronos Performing Arts Association, has endured so long.
“I don’t give that much thought really, because this is what I’ve always wanted to do since I first dreamt about it as a kid,” he said. “I deal with the violin as a force in life in order to play with another violinist, violist and a cellist to make the sound that is complete to me, so the string quartet is my instrument to explore the world of music. If you do that every day, and are lucky enough to enjoy good health, you look up one day and its 50 years.”
“The work I get to do gives me so much energy because it’s fun, fascinating and you never know where it’s going to go next, because there are endless possibilities for the members and our audience to discover and create together,” he said. “Exploring rabbit holes is so rewarding. That’s why I’m the Kluge Scholar in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress, looking at what is evolving out of the work we’ve done and will do.”
The John W. Kluge Centre at the Library of Congress is named after German-American TV industry mogul John Werner Kluge, who founded the academic centre for a diverse community of scholars at all stages of their careers to pursue learning and interdisciplinary exchange. The Kluge Prize is a $1 million award given in recognition of lifetime achievement in the human sciences similar to the Nobel prizes.
The Kronos Fifty for the Future project is a separate free library venture initiated by the Kronos Performing Arts Association. Harrington says that selecting 50 works from over 1,000 commissions was not an easy process. He hopes that making the scores available for free will expand the number of young musicians becoming familiar with the material and using it as a jumping off point for their own creative adventures.
“In music you can only kind of point out a direction and hope to present something of a guide and it’s a very hard process,” he said. “Depending on how you observe, listen or come into contact with 50 for the Future, what I was hoping we could communicate was the huge range of styles, sounds and techniques that two violins, a viola and a cello can make. We also wanted to show how music comes from so many different places, motivations and inspirations, but it’s only 50 and Kronos has worked with thousands.”
As long as the variety and possibilities available for performers is put out there, Harrington says the project will be a success. When the entire selection was performed live in Amsterdam and Paris last year, he said it was “absolutely thrilling to step back and hear this music interpreting this music and bringing it into their own process.”
Noticing how the challenging and demanding pieces were handled by various players left Harrington feeling positive for the future.
“Given all of the huge monumental issues facing the world right now in our time and how many things there are to be concerned about, we can definitely celebrate that the medium of the string quartet is in incredibly fine shape right now,” he said. “Kronos is so proud to have put together 50 for the Future for any group, audience member or person who is interested in this. My daughter has been in the San Francisco public school system for the past 20 years and has used music in her teaching, and one of the high points of my life was coming to her class to play composer Garth Knox’s Dimensions and getting a standing ovation.”
He says that experience reinforced that there is a clear path to building an audience for contemporary classical music moving forward and the Kronos Quartet is honoured to be able to work with all the dedicated musicians, educators, students and fans who have blessed it with five decades of joyous creativity.