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1995 Next Wa Ve Festival Thekronosquartetperforms For Further Press Information: William Murray or Heidi Feldman at BAM (718) 636-4129 BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC (BAM) 1995 NEXT WA VE FESTIVAL EXCLUSIVE NEW YORK ENGAGEMENT THEKRONOSQUARTETPERFORMS TWO WORLD PREMIERES DMITRI YANOV-YANOVSKY'S CONJUNCTIONS AND ZHOU LONG'S THE ALTERNATIVES SELECTIONS FROM STEVE REICH'S THE CA VE, A WORK BY FRANGHIZ ALI-ZADEH PLUS NEW YORK PREMIERES BY: JULIA WOLFE, MARIO LA VISTA, P.Q. PHAN AND HARRY PARTCH KRONOS QUARTET CONCERT, NOVEMBER 16, BAM CAREY PLAYHOUSE KRONOS QUARTET CONCERT WITH THE BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA NOVEMBER 17 AND 18, BAM OPERA HOUSE The Kronos Quartet will perform a concert on November 16 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's (BAM) Carey Playhouse, during the 1995 NEXT WA VE Festival, sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc. As part of its ongoing exclusive New York residency at BAM, the quartet presents selections from Steve Reich's The Cm•e and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh's Mugam Sayagi and the New York premieres of Julia Wolfe's new work Dig Deep, of Mario Lavista's Musica para Mi Vecino, of P.Q. Phan's Cltildren's Games and Tragedy at the Opera and of Barstow: Eight Hitchhikers' Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California, composed by Harry Partch and arranged by Ben Johnston. The Wolfe, Lavista, Phan and Ali-Zadeh pieces were written and the Partch piece was arranged for the Kronos Quartet. In addition, the quartet, with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, will perform two world premieres, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky's Conjunctions for String Quartet, Orchestra and Tape and Zhou Long's Alternatives for String Quartet and Orchestra both written for the Kronos Quartet, and Lou Harrison's New First Suite for Strings and Bela Bartok's Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin on November 17 and 18 at the BAM Opera House . Both the BAM Carey Playhouse and Opera House are located at 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y . The Kronos Quartet, which is dedicated to the promotion and performance of contemporary music and to the development of the 2 string quartet repertoire, performs a range of new works by composers from the around the world . The Kronos Quartet has served as a sounding board for ideas that would hardly ever permeate the conventional quartet and has done much to alter the public perception of a string quartet's repertoire. Combining a unique musical vision with a fearless dedication to experimentation, the critically acclaimed Kronos Quartet has assembled a body of work unparalleled in its range and scope of expression, and in the process, has captured the attention of audiences world-wide. The Kronos Quartet is comprised of David Harrington and John Sherba, violins, Hank Dutt, viola, Joan Jeanrenaud, cello. When the Kronos Quartet started in 1973, it was the only string quartet dedicated exclusively to 20th­ century music. Its recording, which recently have topped the Billboard classical charts, have explored contemporary music from the former Soviet Union and Africa as well as the United States and Europe, mixing the works of such blues and jazz figures as Willie Dixon, Omette Coleman and John Zorn with post-minimalists Steve Reich, Terry Riley and new transcendentalists Henryk Gorecki and Arvo Part . In 1986, the Kronos Quartet performed three different programs during the NEXT WA VE Festival which was the quartet's first major New York showcase . The concerts included the world premiere of Terry Riley's Salome Dances for Peace, Parts I and II and New York premieres of the Kronos Quartet's version of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, Philip Glass' Mishima Quartet, Thelonius Monk's composition Monk Suite and LaMonte Young's Five Small Pieces and other works . The quartet began its two-season exclusive New York residency at BAM in the spring of 1995, with concerts featuring works by George Crumb, Henryk Gorecki, Elliot Carter, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, Brent Michael Davids, John Adams, Tan Dun, Don Byron and others. Composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot's The Cave (which received its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 1993 NEXT WA VE Festival), is a visionary work combining opera, theater and video . The piece, whose title refers to the cave ofMachpela in the West Bank town of Hebron, which is reputed to be the burial place of Abraham and his wife -- and one of the few places where Jews and Muslims can pray together -- is based on a set of videotaped interviews with prominent citizens in West and East Jerusalem and America. As in earlier works of Reich, much of the piece's material comes from recorded interviews -- from fragments of speech, rarely exceeding a short sentence -- which are repeated in musical form by instruments and voices. Translating language into music, Reich takes dictation from the speakers, imitating their reflections, repeating rhythms, motifs and harmonies which are revealed in individual voices . By doubling the speech fragments, he creates an almost ceremonial style of biblical chanting, presenting the spoken word in its various melodies. Mr . Reich's music draws on different techniques he has developed throughout his career, manipulating fragments of speech as in It' Gonna Rain ( 1965), punctuating sung sacred texts with sharp rhythmic thrusts and emphases, as in Tehillim (1981 ), and using speech as a musical source of rhythm and gesture as in Different Trains (1988) , which was composed for the Kronos Quartet. Dig Deep, Julia Wolfe's latest work, is a manifestation of the urban spirituality of her compositions, influenced by speed metal, Appalachian folk music, and city noise and was written for the Kronos Quartet . Wolfe's work has sprung into the consciousness of the musical cognoscenti through a few startling individual compositions for the orchestra, string quartet, chorus and chamber ensemble, and she is more. .. 3 now rightfully regarded as one of the key musical voices of her generation. Her appetite for music is wide­ ranging and voracious, including the late works of Beethoven, her passion for the rock band Led Zeppelin and her love for traditional American folk music, influences which can be heard in her work. Yet, her music is a pastiche of styles; disparate sounds and structures are put to new, unexpected uses. Wolfe has recently received commissions from the Mary Flager Cary Charitable Trust (for the Bang on a Can All-Stars), the Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Orkest de Volharding, the Koussevitzky Foundation (for the Cassatt Quartet), Meet The Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program (for the Lark Quartet), the Rotterdam Arts Council, The Huddersfield Festival (for Piano Circus), and the Panamerican Chamber Players (Mexico City) . Her works have been performed at numerous concerts and festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad including the Holland Festival, the San Francisco Symphony Wet Ink Series, Tanglewood, Other Minds Festival (S.F.), and the South Bank's Meltdown Festival (U.K.) and will be toured in Europe this spring by Ensemble Modem . Wolfe is currently recording a compact disc of recent works for Point Records . Other recordings of her work can be heard on Sony Classical, Argo/Decca, CRl and Newport Classics . In 1987, with composers Michael Gordon and David Lang, she founded New York City's Bang on a Can Festival where she is currently Co-Artistic Director. She is also co-founder of the Wild Swan Theatre in Ann Arbor . Dig Deep was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by Nora Norden . Mario Lavista was born in Mexico City in 1943. After studying with Carlos Chavez and Rodolffo Halffi:er, he was invited by the French government to continue his training at the Schola Cantorum with Jean Etienne Marie. This European influence was a major turning point for Lavista . In 1970, he formed the improvisation group Quanta, which explored simultaneous creation and interpretation and the relation of live music to the electro-acoustic . In addition to his numerous works for orchestra and chamber ensembles, Lavista has written operas, musicals and film scores . Of Musica para mi Vecino, Lavista writes : "I wanted to define the limits within which I could compose the studies of the string quartet. This limit was defined in the initial phase of the creat ive process, when I composed one of the studies and saw that the procedure I employed for that particular segment could be extended to the entire piece .... each piece operates from these technical limits. Musica para mi Vecino was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato , Mexico . Composer P.Q. Phan was born in Vietnam in 1962. He became interested in music while studying architecture in the late 1970's, and taught himself to play the piano, compose and orchestrate. In 1982 Phan immigrated to the United States and began formal musical training . He graduated from the University of Southern California and received a Master's degree in Composition from the University of Michigan . Phan is currently an Assistant Professor in Composition at Cleveland State University . Phan's music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Japan . His honors include several ASCAP awards and Meet the Composer Grants, residencies at the MacDowell Colony, and commissions from ensembles including the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and the Pittsburgh New Music more. .. 4 Ensemble. Phan was guest composer at the '94 New Music Festival at University of California-Santa Barbara and the '95 Asian Composers' Forum in Sendai, Japan. Phan's current focus in composing involves the integration of Southeast Asian and Western musical aesthetics. Tragedy at the Opera and Children Games are two solo string quartet movements from a four-piece work entitled Memoirs of a Lost Soul. The other two movements in the work include traditional Vietnamese instruments including the monochord zither, dan bau, and a three-string lute-like instrument, dan day.
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