CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Kronos Quartet

Zankel Hall
Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Pre-concert talk starts at 6:30 PM in Zankel Hall: David Harrington in conversation with Jeremy Geffen, Director of Artistic Planning, Carnegie Hall.

Kronos Quartet
·· David Harrington, Violin
·· John Sherba, Violin
·· Hank Dutt, Viola
·· Jeffrey Zeigler, Cello

GARY LEPORT Night of the Vampire (arr. Harry Whitney, World Premiere)
CLINT MANSELL Requiem for a Dream Suite (arr. David Lang, NY Premiere)
FERNANDO OTERO "El Cerezo (The Cherry Tree)" (World Premiere)
AVIYA KOPELMAN Widows & Lovers (World Premiere, Co-commissioned by The Carnegie Hall Corporation, Cal Performances, and the Kronos Performing Arts Association)
JOHN ADAMS Fellow Traveler (World Premiere)
TRAD. Lullaby (arr. Jacob Garchik, NY Premiere)
ALEKSANDRA VREBALOV ...hold me, neighbor, in this storm... (World Premiere, Co-commissioned by The Carnegie Hall Corporation)

Nonesuch at Carnegie

Carnegie Hall commissions in the 2007–2008 season are made possible, in part, by a grant from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Program Notes:

GARY LEPORT Night of the Vampire

Originally written by Gary Leport, this arrangement of Night of the Vampire by Harry Whitney was inspired by The Moontrekkers’ recording produced by Joe Meek (1929–1967).

This evening’s performance marks the work’s Carnegie Hall and New York premiere.

Night of the Vampire was originally recorded by The Moontrekkers, a British band that was encouraged both to change its name (from The Raiders) and to oust its lead singer (the then-unknown Rod Stewart) by the independent, innovative, and idiosyncratic record producer Joe Meek (1929–1967). Due to the song’s eerie graveyard and creaky coffin sound effects, as well as the blood-curdling scream by Meek himself at the end of the track, Night of the Vampire was declared “unsuitable for people of a nervous disposition” by the BBC and banned from the airwaves upon its release in 1961.

The original song, written by The Moontrekkers’ guitarist, was recorded in Meek’s home studio at 304 Holloway Road in Islington, North London, a flat above a leather goods shop where Meek famously experimented with homemade electronic sound-processing devices and unorthodox recording techniques. His enthusiastic electronic manipulation of recorded material with distortion, echo, reverb, compression, and other effects made the sound of his recordings markedly different from the music released by the major studios at that time, which were more concerned with fidelity. His most well-known recording is likely the futuristic “Telstar,” made famous by The Tornados, only one of the 45 Top-50 singles produced by Meek between 1960 and 1966. His recognition and exploration of the extended possibilities available in a studio environment was a major turn in the history of recorded sound production.

Meek was obsessed with other worlds, the occult, and death—an interest that manifested in songs like “Night of the Vampire”—and he often connected with spirits (notably Buddy Holly) in weekly séances, which were said to have influenced his work significantly. His success as a producer and songwriter slowed by the mid-1960s, and he found himself fraught with financial difficulties and lawsuits brought against him by artists he had worked with. Toward the end of his short life, he developed an addiction to barbituates and fell prey to depression and extreme paranoia, believing his home had been bugged by other studios trying to steal details of his recording techniques. At a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK, he was charged with “importuning for immoral purposes,” and in 1967, along with many other known gay men, Meek came under scrutiny in the investigation of the murder of an alleged male prostitute. One month later, on the anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, he committed suicide by shooting himself and his landlady from the leather goods shop with a shotgun.

Arranger Harry Whitney is a composer and pianist studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has released a CD of original compositions and improvisations entitled Far Yet Near, and his music has been performed around San Francisco by the Marin Youth Symphony Orchestra, at festivals and performance spaces, and for silent films.

Harry Whitney’s arrangement of Night of the Vampire by Joe Meek was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.

—Sidney Chen

CLINT MANSELL Requiem for a Dream Suite

Born in 1963, Clint Mansell originally wrote for the 2000 film Requiem for a Dream; the Suite was later arranged by David Lang. This evening’s performance marks the work’s Carnegie Hall and New York premiere.

Requiem for a Dream (2007), a feature film directed and co-written by Darren Aronofsky, was adapted from the 1978 novel by Hubert Selby Jr. Set on the streets of Coney Island, Brooklyn, the film is a harrowing journey into the psyches of four people addicted to their visions of a happier life.

Clint Mansell, composer of the score to Requiem for a Dream, was the front man and a founding member of the pioneering English rock / hip hop band Pop Will Eat Itself. Mansell played guitar and keyboards for the band, which released a total of five albums for RCA/BMG Records and Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records between 1986 and 1996.

Mansell first worked with Aronofsky when he composed the original score for PI in 1997. Since then, Mansell has worked on scores and soundtracks for such films as World Traveler (2002) and Abandon (2002), and produced remixes from PI and Requiem for a Dream. The pair’s most recent collaboration, also featuring performances by Kronos, can be heard on the soundtrack to The Fountain (2006); this score was nominated for a Best Original Score Golden Globe Award and won two 2007 World Soundtrack Awards for Best Original Score of the Year and the Public Choice Award. Mansell’s music for Requiem for a Dream has become extremely popular, appearing in numerous film trailers and sampled by artists ranging from Paul Oakenfold to Lil Jon.

Composer David Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of Bang on a Can, an organization dedicated to adventurous new music. Lang’s recent projects include the amplified orchestra piece The Passing Measures (named one of the best CDs of 2001 by The New Yorker); Writing on Water for the London Sinfonietta, with visuals by English filmmaker Peter Greenaway; The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, an opera for the Kronos Quartet; Grind to a Halt for the San Francisco Symphony; and The Little Match Girl Passion, an opera with Paul Hiller and Theatre of Voices that premiered in Carnegie Hall in 2007. His most recent CD is Elevated (Cantaloupe), which includes a DVD of Lang’s collaborations with visual artists William Wegman, Bill Morrison, and Matt Mullican.

The soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream, featuring the Kronos Quartet, was released on Nonesuch Records.

FERNANDO OTERO El Cerezo (“The Cherry Tree”)

Born in Buenos Aires 1968, Otero wrote El Cerezo in 2007. This evening’s performance marks the work’s world premiere.

Argentine composer and pianist Fernando Otero found his voice as writer, musician, and bandleader when, at the urging of one of his music teachers, he began to incorporate the indigenous sounds of his native Buenos Aires into his work. As a composer, Otero is both rigorous and playful. At times, his pieces echo the elegant nuevo tango of Astor Piazzolla, but they also harbor a mischievous spirit that suggests Carl Stallings’s ingenious scoring for animated cartoons. He now lives in New York City, after brief stops in London and Madrid.

Otero has been a well-kept secret among jazz and classical insiders. His CD Plan has circulated among fellow musicians and attracted them to his recitals. Otero has composed and performed with several symphonies and chamber groups in the US and Mexico, and has also written for ballet and theatre companies. He has collaborated with one-time Bill Evans sideman Eddie Gomez, flutist Dave Valentin and pianist/film composer Dave Grusin, among others; he played with Chico O’Farrill’s Jazz Orchestra at Jazz @ Lincoln Center; and, most recently, he has joined clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera on stage and in the studio. His album Pagina de Buenos Aires is available on Nonesuch Records.

About El Cerezo, Otero writes:

“I met with David Harrington in midtown Manhattan and we went out for a walk. We were both very hungry and could barely exchange a word unrelated to food until we were seated in an Italian restaurant and the appetizers had arrived. Even then, we continued to discuss possible ways of cooking calamari, recipes of favorite dishes, and the benefits of New York’s cultural diversity on cuisine—the varied palette of available choices when making dinner decisions. We continued talking about the unique qualities of each culture and, ultimately, how unique each individual is within each culture, understanding that each individual has an exclusive mission and special talent to offer others.

“A few days before meeting David, I had read an article written by the Japanese writer and humanist Daisaku Ikeda who cites the 13th-century Japanese philosopher Nichiren Daishonin’s text The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, which highlights the beauty of individuality, diversity, and the manifestation of one’s true nature. Using trees as poetic metaphor, he describes how each tree provides a different blossom––the cherry, the plum, the peach, the damson––contributing to a general balance and harmony.

“For more than three decades, the Kronos Quartet has showcased outstanding compositions from all parts of the world, opening doors to the beauty of diversity and, in the process, enriching our lives. The Kronos Quartet is a beautiful blossom in our grove of metaphoric trees and I want to express my gratitude to them for giving me the opportunity to contribute El Cerezo, “The Cherry Tree.” It is a one-movement piece influenced by the music from my hometown, Buenos Aires.”

Fernando Otero’s El Cerezo was written for the Kronos Quartet.

—Adapted from note by Michael Hill

AVIYA KOPELMAN Widows & Lovers

Born in Moscow in 1978, Kopelman, wrote Widows & Lovers in 2007. This evening’s performance marks the work’s world premiere.

Aviya Kopelman was selected as the recipient of the fourth commission offered through the Kronos: Under 30 Project. Begun in 2003, the project is a commissioning and residency program for composers under 30 years of age, created to acknowledge the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Kronos Quartet. The program supports the creation of new work by young artists, and helps Kronos cultivate stronger connections with young composers in order to develop lasting artistic relationships with the next creative generation.

Kopelman was born in Moscow in 1978 and immigrated to Israel in 1987. She began taking piano lessons at her own initiative at the age of 12. She graduated from the Rubin Music Academy in Jerusalem, where she studied composition with Tzvi Avni. In 2000, Kopelman was commissioned by composer Michael Wolpe to write a string quartet for the Sounds in the Desert Festival. Since then, her works have been performed regularly in Israel and abroad by the Israel Chamber Orchestra, Israel Camerata, Tel Aviv Chamber Choir, Octet Conjunto Iberico, Ensemble de la Paix, Les Solistes de Waterloo, and Jerusalem Trio, among others. Last year, Kopelman was commissioned to write an obligatory work for the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition. She has worked with and been influenced by composers such as Andre Hajdu, Oded Zehavi, Ronen Shapira. Kopelman teaches composition at the Hed College for Music in Tel Aviv and at the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music.

About Widows & Lovers, Kopelman writes:

“Widows & Lovers consists of three parts: “White Widow,” a potent and rare species of marijuana; “Lovers”; and “Black Widow,” a species of spider whose female consumes the male directly after mating.

“It was crucial for me to question the relevance of such a homogeneous ensemble as a string quartet in a time when electronic music has stretched the limits of orchestration and sound. I wanted to address the sonic universe that surrounds me, exploring and using the numerous technical possibilities for live performance offered by Kronos Quartet, but without forsaking the strength of the strings as I perceive it: a warm, living, breathing, and deeply expressive sound, which echoes in the heart over centuries.
 
“The position of an amplified string quartet was another issue to be examined. Technically, nothing inhibits a string quartet from performing in a concert hall as well as in a club. This allows for different listening experience and a different audience. While writing this piece, I imagined it in both contexts.

“Widows & Lovers developed out of a game of free associations, and moves between who I am and who I wish to be, between Kronos Quartet and myself, between classical chamber music and contemporary life.”

Aviya Kopelman’s Widows & Lovers was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet as part of the Kronos: Under 30 Project / #4 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation, Cal Performances, and the Kronos Performing Arts Association. Additional support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, Stephen K. Cassidy, and the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Programs at Montalvo Arts Center.

JOHN ADAMS Fellow Traveler
Born February 15, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts; now living in California.

Adams wrote Fellow Traveler in 2007. This evening’s performance marks the work’s world premiere.

Born and raised in New England, John Adams learned the clarinet from his father and began composing at the age of ten. After earning two degrees from Harvard University, he moved to Northern California in 1971 and has since lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Adams taught for ten years at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music before becoming composer–in-residence with the San Francisco Symphony (1982–85) and creating the orchestra’s highly successful and controversial “New and Unusual Music” series.

In 1985, Adams began a collaboration with the poet Alice Goodman and stage director Peter Sellars that resulted in two operas, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, which are now among the most performed operas in recent history. After these operas, Adams completed three further stage works with Sellars: the 1995 “songplay” I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, with libretto by June Jordan; El Niño, a multi-lingual retelling of the Nativity story composed for the celebration of the Millennium; and Doctor Atomic (2005), about the first atomic bomb and its creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Adams’s latest opera, A Flowering Tree—inspired by Mozart’s The Magic Flute—premiered in November 2006 in Vienna.

In 2002, Adams composed On the Transmigration of Souls for the New York Philharmonic in commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. This work received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and the Nonesuch recording won a rare “triple crown” at the Grammys, including Best Classical Recording, Best Orchestral Performance, and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Including the release of Harmonielehre in 1985, all of Adams’s works, both symphonic and theatrical, have first appeared on Nonesuch Records. A ten-CD set, The John Adams Earbox, documents his recorded music through 2000.

Currently holding Carnegie Hall’s Debs Composer’s Chair, Adams also maintains an active life as a conductor. As a guest conductor and director of music festivals in the US and Europe, he has appeared with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Symphony.

John Adams’s Fellow Traveler was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Greg G. Minshall. The composer dedicates Fellow Traveler to Peter Sellars, for his 50th birthday.

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

TRADITIONAL Lullaby
A traditional work, Lullaby was arranged Jacob Garchik in 2006. This evening’s performance marks the work’s Carnegie Hall and New York premiere.

For most people, Iran won’t conjure up a musical image—unlike India or Turkey, perhaps. It’s partly because the West’s political agenda and media portrayal of Iraq by are preoccupied with fundamentalist mullahs, oil reserves, and nuclear proliferation. It’s certainly true that in the West, we don’t get much access to Iranian music—and it’s not because this nation of 70 million doesn’t enjoy or contain a rich variety of music.

It’s true that when the Islamic Revolution swept away the Shah’s regime in 1979, in an excess of fundamentalist zeal, strict restrictions were placed on music. But apart from a ban on Westernized pop music, these were swiftly dropped. It’s often forgotten that the Iranian Revolution was as much about reclaiming traditional Persian culture as espousing an Islamist agenda. Indeed, the long-term musical effect of the revolution has been a revival of Persian classical music, which had suffered in the face of heavy Westernization during the Shah’s regime.

Folk music in Iran is a strong living tradition and has probably also been boosted by the “back-to-roots” aspects of the revolution—although, beneath the radar, out of the urban centers, it has essentially been able to carry on untroubled, regardless of official policy.

The group Jahlé is based in Bandar Abbas, Iran’s largest port city, which holds a sizable community of black Iranians descended from Arabian traders and African slaves. Jahlé’s performance of this traditional lullaby—which inspired Kronos’s version—was recorded by the BBC’s James Birtwistle when Andy Kershaw was gathering material for a program on Iran in 2004. With vocals by Isa Baluchestani, guitar from Hamid Saeed, and the plangent nay jofti (double flute) playing of Ghanbar Rastgoo, Jahlé’s performance is quite mesmerizing. The double-flute player Rastgoo is also a Baba Zar, a man who leads the ecstatic zar rituals practiced by the black Iranians of the region.

Trombonist and composer Jacob Garchik has performed with Lee Konitz, Steve Swallow, and Joe Maneri, and is a member of the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Slavic Soul Party!, and other ensembles.

Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Lullaby was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Deborah and Creig Hoyt.

Note adapted from the liner notes to The Rough Guide to the Music of Iran, compiled by Simon Broughton, editor of the world-music magazine Songlines. Used with permission.

ALEKSANDRA VREBALOV ... hold me, neighbor, in this storm ...
Born in 1970, Vrebalov wrote ... hold me, neighbor, in this storm ... in 2007. This evening’s performance marks the work’s world premiere.

Aleksandra Vrebalov, a native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and continued her education in the United States. She holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Evan Chambers and Michael Daugherty, and a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, where her teacher was Elinor Armer. Vrebalov has participated in numerous master classes and workshops, such as the New York University Summer Composition Workshop, Music Courses in Darmstadt (Germany), Szombathely (Hungary), and Kazimierz Dolny (Poland) in collaboration with IRCAM, and the Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz, California. She now teaches at the City College of New York.

Vrebalov’s works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Jorge Caballero, the Sausalito Quartet, Dusan Tynek Dance Company, IJsbreker, and the Moravian Philharmonic, among others. Her music has been recorded for Nonesuch and Vienna Modern Masters.

In 2005, Vrebalov’s Lila premiered in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall with violinist Ana Milosavljevic. The premiere of her orchestral work Orbits opened the 30th Novi Sad Music Festivities and broadcasted live on national television, on the NS Channel. The same channel produced a 30-minute television biography of Vrebalov. That year, she also worked on the score for Sleeping Beauty, an experimental film introduced at New York City’s Anthology Film Archives.

About …hold me, neighbor, in this storm…, Vrebalov writes:
“The Balkans, with its multitude of cultural and religious identities, has had a troubled history of ethnic intolerance. For my generation of Tito’s pioneers and children of communists, growing up in the former Yugoslavia meant learning about and carrying in our minds the battles and numberless ethnic and religious conflicts dating back half a millennium, and honoring ancestors who died in them. By then, that distant history had merged with the nearer past, so those we remember from World War II are our grandparents. Their stories we heard firsthand. After several devastating ethnic wars in the 1990s, we entered a new century, this time each of us knowing in person someone who perished. As I write this in November 2007, a new generation of Albanians and Serbs post their war-songs on YouTube, bracing for another conflict, claiming their separate entitlements to the land and history, rather than a different kind of future, together.

“Strangely, the cultural and religious differences that led to enmity in everyday life produced—after centuries of turbulently living together—most incredible fusions in music. It is almost as if what we weren’t able to achieve through words and deeds—to fuse, and mix, and become something better and richer together—was instead so famously accomplished in our music.

“ …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… is inspired by folk and religious music from the region, whose insistent rhythms and harmonies create a sense of inevitability, a ritual trance with an obsessive, dark energy. Peaceful passages of the work grew out of the delicately curved, elusive, often microtonal melodies of prayers, as well as escapist tavern songs from the region, as my grandmother remembers them.

“For me, …hold me, neighbor… is a way to bring together the sounds of the church bells of Serbian orthodox monasteries and the Islamic calls for prayer. It is a way to connect histories and places by unifying one of the most civilized sounds of Western classical music—that of the string quartet—with ethnic Balkan instruments, the gusle [a bowed string instrument] and tapan [large double-headed drum]. It is a way to piece together our identities fractured by centuries of intolerance, and to reach out and celebrate the land so rich in its diversity, the land that would be ashen, empty, sallow, if any one of us, all so different, weren’t there.”

Aleksandra Vrebalov’s ...hold me, neighbor, in this storm... was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by The Carnegie Hall Corporation and by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland with funds from The Leading College and University Presenters Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Kronos Quartet
·· David Harrington, Violin
·· John Sherba, Violin
·· Hank Dutt, Viola
·· Jeffrey Zeigler, Cello
For more than 30 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Jeffrey Zeigler (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time: performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 40 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world’s most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning hundreds of works and arrangements for string quartet. The group’s work has also garnered numerous awards, including a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and “Musicians of the Year” (2003) from Musical America.

The Quartet’s adventurous approach dates back to the ensemble’s origins. In 1973, David Harrington was inspired to form Kronos after hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels, a highly unorthodox, Vietnam War–inspired work featuring bowed water glasses, spoken word passages, and electronic effects. Kronos then began building a compellingly diverse repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Shostakovich, Webern), contemporary composers (Sofia Gubaidulina, Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), and artists from even farther afield (rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn).

Integral to Kronos’s work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world’s foremost composers. One of the quartet’s most frequent composer-collaborators is “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, whose work with Kronos includes the early Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector; Cadenza on the Night Plain and Salome Dances for Peace; 2002’s Sun Rings, a multimedia, NASA-commissioned ode to the earth and its people, featuring celestial sounds and images from space; and, most recently, The Cusp of Magic, commissioned in honor of Riley’s 70th birthday celebrations and premiered by Kronos and Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man in 2005. Kronos commissioned and recorded the three string quartets of Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, with whom the group has been working for nearly 20 years. The quartet has also collaborated extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, recording his complete string quartets and scores to films like Mishima and Dracula (a restored edition of the Béla Lugosi classic); Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose works are featured on the full-length 2005 release Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; Steve Reich, whose Kronos-recorded Different Trains earned a Grammy; Argentina’s Osvaldo Golijov, whose work with Kronos includes both compositions and extensive arrangements for albums like Kronos Caravan and Nuevo; and many more.

In addition to composers, Kronos counts numerous artists from around the world among its collaborators, including the legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle, featured on Kronos’s Grammy-nominated CD, You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R. D. Burman’s Bollywood; the renowned American soprano Dawn Upshaw; Mexican rockers Café Tacuba; the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks; and the unbridled British cabaret trio, the Tiger Lillies. Kronos has performed live with the likes of icons Allen Ginsberg, Zakir Hussain, Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, Betty Carter, and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by such diverse talents as Amon Tobin, Dan Zanes, DJ Spooky, Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traoré, Joan Armatrading, and Don Walser.

The Quartet’s music has also featured prominently in other media, including film (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, 21 Grams, Heat, True Stories) and dance, with noted choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and the duo Eiko & Koma setting pieces to Kronos’s music.

Kronos spends five months of each year on tour, appearing in concert halls, clubs, and festivals around the world including BAM Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Barbican in London, WOMAD, UCLA’s Royce Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Shanghai Concert Hall, and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet is equally prolific and wide-ranging on disc. The ensemble’s expansive discography on Nonesuch Records includes collections like Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers, which simultaneously topped Billboard’s Classical and World Music lists; 2000’s Kronos Caravan, whose musical “travels” span North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East; 1998’s ten-disc anthology, Kronos Quartet: 25 Years; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy–nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2003 Grammy-winner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite.

The Quartet’s recording and performances reveal only a fraction of the group’s commitment to new music. As a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, the Kronos Quartet / Kronos Performing Arts Association has commissioned more than 500 new works and arrangements for string quartet. Music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Kronos have recently released sheet music for three signature works, all commissioned for Kronos, in the first volume of the Kronos Collection, a performing edition edited by Kronos. The quartet is committed to mentoring emerging professional performers, and in 2007 Kronos led its first Professional Training Workshop with four string quartets as part of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. One of Kronos’s most exciting initiatives is the Kronos: Under 30 Project, a unique commissioning and composer-in-residence program for composers under 30 years old, launched in conjunction with the Quartet’s own 30th birthday in 2003. By cultivating creative relationships with such emerging talents and a wealth of other artists from around the world, Kronos reaps the benefit of 30 years’ wisdom while maintaining a fresh approach to music-making inspired by a new generation of composers and performers.