| Music Encyclopedia: Kronos Quartet |
American string quartet. Formed in 1978 and led by David Harrington, it is known for its unusual repertory and performance style. It is a keep champion of contemporary music and has performed works by such composers as Reich, Louis Andriessen and Terry Riley as well as arrangements of rock songs. They have also performed and recorded music from Asia, South America and Africa.
| Wikipedia: Kronos Quartet |
| Kronos Quartet | |
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 Kronos Quartet performing in Warsaw, Poland in the summer of 2006
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| Background information | |
| Origin | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Genres | Contemporary classical |
| Occupations | Chamber ensemble |
| Years active | 1973-present |
| Labels | Nonesuch |
| Website | www.KronosQuartet.org |
| Members | |
| David Harrington, violin John Sherba, violin Hank Dutt, viola Jeffrey Zeigler, cello |
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| Former members | |
| Jim Shallenberger (original member, 1973-75), violin Roy Lewis (1975-76), violin Tim Killian (original member, 1973-76), viola Walter Gray (original member, 1973-78), cello Joan Jeanrenaud, cello (1978-99) Jennifer Culp, cello (1999-2005) |
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Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers (from 1978 to 1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello. In 1999, Joan Jeanrenaud left Kronos because she was "eager for something new";[1] she was replaced by Jennifer Culp[2] who, in turn, left in 2005 and was replaced by Jeffrey Zeigler. With almost forty studio albums to their credit and having performed worldwide, they were called "probably the most famous 'new music' group in the world"[3] and were praised in philosophical studies of music for the inclusiveness of their repertoire.[4]
By the time the quartet celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary, in 1999, they had a repertoire of over 600 works, which included 400 string quartets written for them, more than 3,000 performances, seven first-prize ASCAP awards, Edison Awards in classical and popular music, and had sold more than 1.5 million records.[5]
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Kronos specializes in new music and has a long history of commissioning new works. In fact, over 600 works have been created for the Kronos Quartet. They have worked with many minimalist composers including Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Roberto Carnevale, Terry Riley, and Kevin Volans; collaborators hail from a diversity of countries--Kaija Saariaho from Finland, Pēteris Vasks from Latvia, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh from Azerbaijan, Roberto Paci Dalò from Italy, and Osvaldo Golijov from Argentina. Some of Kronos' "highly coveted string-quartet arrangements" were published in 2007.[6]
When Kronos turned 30, in 2003, they decided on a commissioning process for composers under the age of 30, in the hope of bringing some of the talented young composers to light. The program is now run in cooperation with Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Montalvo Arts Center. The first recipient was Alexandra du Bois (at the time a student at Indiana University, later a Juilliard School graduate),[7] followed by Perez Santiago (born in Mexico in 1973),[8] and Dan Visconti (born in Illinois in 1982);[9] in 2007, Israeli composer Aviya Kopelman became the fourth.[10]
Kronos covers a very broad range of musical genres: Mexican folk, experimental, pre-classical early music, movie soundtracks (Requiem for a Dream, Heat, The Fountain), jazz and tango. Kronos has even recorded adaptations of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze", Sigur Rós's "Flugufrelsarinn", Television's "Marquee Moon", and Raymond Scott's "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals".
Composers aside, Kronos has teamed up with artists from around the world, including Bollywood playback singer Asha Bhosle;[11] Mexican-American painter Gronk; the American soprano Dawn Upshaw; jazz composer/performer Pat Metheny; Mexican rockers Café Tacuba; and the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks.
Kronos has performed live with the likes of the late poet Allen Ginsberg, Astor Piazzolla, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, David Bowie, and Björk, and has appeared on recordings with such diverse artists as singer-songwriters Dave Matthews Band, Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traore, Joan Armatrading, Brazilian electronica artist Amon Tobin, Texas yodeler Don Walser, Faith No More, Tiger Lillies and David Grisman.
Most recently, Kronos appears on Nine Inch Nails' latest remix album, Year Zero Remixed, released November 20, 2007, doing a rendition of the track Another Version of the Truth. They also performed Lee Brooks' score for the short film 2081 (film), based on the Kurt Vonnegut short story "Harrison Bergeron."
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 | Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
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