September 11, 2001
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

New music pioneers Kronos Quartet
perform at UCSB Arts & Lectures

Summary Facts:

• Kronos Quartet perform at UCSB
• The world’s leading string quartet voice for new compositions
• Prime interpreters of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Cage
• Friday, October 19
• 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
• General: $28/$25, UCSB students: $19/$16
• Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

The Kronos Quartet, known for its unique artistic vision and fearless dedication to experimentation, will perform on Friday, October 19 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Synonymous with musical innovation, Kronos has assembled since its inception in 1973 a body of work unparalleled in its range and scope of expression. The Christian Science Monitor lauds Kronos’s “power to move an audience with music we might never have appreciated if this adventurous group weren’t on the lookout for new material...from its beginnings Kronos has always put energy, enthusiasm and sheer entertainment value at the head of its agenda.”

Kronos is one of the leading interpreters of the late 20th Century’s greatest composers, having recorded works by Philip Glass, John Adams, Steve Reich, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Wu Man and others. The quartet has won numerous international awards, including three Edison Prizes (The Netherlands), the Rolf Schock Prize in Music (Sweden), eight ASCAP/Chamber Music America Awards for Adventurous Programming (United States), the Australian Broadcasting Company Classic FM Best International Recording of the Year and six Grammy nominations.

Kronos is comprised of David Harrington, violin, John Sherba, violin, Hank Dutt, viola and newest member Jennifer Culp, cello (she replaced long-time member Joan Jeanrenaud in 1999). Their UCSB concert will primarily feature music from their 2000 release Caravan (Nonesuch), a CD that establishes its globetrotting theme with “Pannonia Boundless” by composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. Pannonia is the territory that connects northeastern Europe with the Mediterranean and the Orient. The CD, and the scheduled program for the UCSB concert, travel those lands and beyond, ranging from “Aaj Ki Raat (Tonight Is the Night),” a piece by Rahul Dev Burman composed for the 1973 Indian film musical Anamika to “Responso,” an Argentinean tango-based eulogy by An’bal Troilo.

The non-Caravan pieces on the program also attest to the Kronos’ searching spirit. Famed minimalist Steve Reich has written “Triple Quartet” expressly for Kronos, a piece in which the group plays live over two performances on tape. Playing Charles Mingus’ “Myself When I Am Real” extends the quartet’s fascination with bridging the genre gap between classical music and jazz. Kronos will also perform “Requiem for a Dream Suite,” music they played for the soundtrack, composed by David Mansell, for Darren Aronofsky’s gripping film about addiction.

The capstone of the evening will be “Vespers,” a new composition from Argentina-born Osvaldo Golijov, a frequent Kronos collaborator who arranged much of Caravan and wrote the greatly-praised Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (1994) for the quartet. The New Yorker claims, “Golijov is a huge talent, with limitless possibilities in front of him.”

Associating themselves with the most brilliant of composers is nothing new for Kronos, as they have commissioned over 400 works in their 28 years of existence. David Harrington founded the group in 1973 in response to hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels on the radio. (The Kronos’ version of Crumb’s intense response to the horrors of Vietnam would later become a signature recording for the quartet.) Eschewing the black tux formality most often associated with chamber music, Kronos played Hendrix, Howl and Henryk Mikolaj Górecki rather than Bach, Brahms and Beethoven.

David Harrington explains the Kronos mission: “I’ve always wanted the string quartet to be vital, and energetic, and alive, and cool, and not afraid to kick ass and be absolutely beautiful and ugly if it has to be. But it has to be expressive of life. To tell the story with grace and humor and depth. And to tell the whole story, if possible.”

Arts & Lectures has presented the Kronos Quartet three times previously: on April 17, 1997, on October 10, 1993 and on January 15, 1991.

The Kronos Quartet is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and the UCSB Department of Music and is sponsored by KCBX Public Radio. This residency is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment of the Arts, a federal agency.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.