Kronos Quartet Keeps Its Sound Fresh

Author: Trevor Snapp

Last Saturday, post-performance, the members of the Kronos Quartet sat in illuminated blue plastic chairs grinning and smiling.
David Harrington's hair lurched toward Dartmouth's Spalding Auditorium's high ceiling. Next to him, John Sherba sat happy and eager behind a long mustache.
The violist of the quartet, Hank Dutt, in a sharp, striking green suit, spoke enthusiastically into the microphone, reflecting on the newly-commissioned piece entitled, "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind," by composer Alexandra du Bois.
In the middle chair, Jennifer Culp, the cellist, smiled quietly, a long braid falling down the right side of her face.
The group, the Kronos Quartet, spoke with sincere care and appreciation for their latest project, "The Kronos: Under 30 Project," a collaboration between the Kronos Quartet, the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College and the American Music Center, recently premiered.
When asked about how the project came to be, first violinist Harrington told of the numerous scores submitted to the Quartet each week. Almost all of these came from older composers.
He also spoke about how after a concert (the Kronos performs at an incredible rate of 100 concerts per year) it was primarily those composers over the age of 30 who regularly approach the group.
For a group so devoted to the new and fresh, bringing constant experimentation to worldwide audiences since 1973, this response evoked a certain dissatisfaction. The Kronos hoped that this new project would bring them into contact with an underrepresented and critical range of composers.
Included in the night's program was a recent collaboration with the Icelandic band, Sigur Ros, who performed music off its "Agaoetis Byrjun" album.
This collaboration brought the entire amphitheater to a different space of existence, so that the entire room hummed like a space ship even as the audience applauded.
Such capacity to capture its refreshingly eclectic audience's attention emphasizes the group's dedication to maintaining a constant connection with the brilliance of young and new music.
The Kronos received over 300 diverse submissions from over 32 countries, using the selection process to both find the incredible talent that du Bois shows in her work as well as to embark on a continuing dialogue with young composers.
Du Bois's piece, which found its inspiration in Gandhi's famous words, is inextricably linked to the situation of the world today.
Meditating on the event of dawn, embodied in the croons of the mourning dove, du Bois used this as a platform with which to explore dawn as potential - potential for beauty, for work, for greatness, yet also for terror, death and the preparation of machines of war.
The piece begins with the slow, languid drawing of the bow across each instrument and then erupts in layered steps and circles weaving together, bringing the listener not to a climax so much as to a constant state of varied potential.
In a profound and dramatic transition, the piece ends, harkening back to the earlier mourning dove's inspired calls of its beginning.
Aside from playing six pieces off their brightly exquisite new album, "Nuevo," Sigur Ros' pieces, and du Bois's piece, the quartet played two other works, the first by John Zorn and the other by Scott Johnson.
They resonated both politically and musically with the brutal misunderstandings in the world today.
By the end of the planned performance, the audience was worked up enough to lure the Kronos members back on stage for a final, slightly lyrical and contemplative Indian piece, reaffirming the incredible breadth and musical precision of these vibrant performers.