PIECES OF AFRICA DAVID HARRINGTON VIOLIN (1992)

JOHN SHERBA NIGHT PRAYERS VIOLIN (1994) HANK DUTT

CARAVAN VIOLIN

(2000) JOAN JEANRENAUD

CELLO (1978–1999) NUEVO JENNIFER CULP (2002) CELLO (1999–2005)

FLOODPLAIN JEFFREY ZEIGLER

(2009) CELLO (2005–2013) “Stay close to any sounds When I was seventeen or eighteen, I basi- That make you glad cally knew almost every recording of string You are alive.” quartet music that was then available, and (Hafiz) I began to realize how much was missing. When Kronos first started, I made a great big list of things that I wanted to hear and In 1973 when you were twenty-three and play, and it had to do with bringing many living in Seattle, Washington, you decided different composers and musicians into the to form a string quartet and name it after medium. And what I found then, and am A CONVERSATION the Greek god of time. Time has certainly still finding, is that there’s no end to that. been on your side because during the Every composer we’ve ever worked with past forty years the Kronos Quartet has has said the same thing, which is that the WITH released more than fifty albums, commis- string quartet is infinitely moldable and sioned more than eight hundred musical malleable because in each person’s hands compositions and arrangements, given it sounds different. George Crumb does not more than three thousand performances, sound like Dumisani Maraire, who does DAVID HARRINGTON and sold more than 2.5 million records. not sound like Franghiz Ali-Zadeh or Astor To mark Kronos’ fortieth anniversary, Piazzolla, who do not sound like John Zorn Nonesuch Records is releasing a box or Laurie Anderson. And you therefore set of five CDs devoted to the quartet’s begin to realize that we’re all a part of an many extraordinary collaborations with astonishing and ongoing musical, social, performers and composers from all over and spiritual experiment. the world. The poet Rumi said: “The human I think that what Kronos has done in JONATHAN COTT being is a guest house. Every morning a the last forty years is to try to ask some new arrival,” and on these five recordings questions, such as: What is a musical expe- Kronos has welcomed into its musical rience? What is a concert? What is a string guest house some of the most inspired and quartet? And we’re still asking those same inspiring musicians of our time. When you questions. At this point I don’t think of first conceived of the Kronos Quartet could myself as a violinist – my instrument is the you ever have imagined that you would still string quartet, and I play the violin in order be keeping open house after forty years? to be in Kronos. Our music has been found in lots of places – the search has become when we’re on tour, it’s like, we do our listening to our music on records, and when could be said with regard to the American worldwide – and we love to play with differ- thing at night, we get up really early the I met her parents, they told me that they composers of string quartets. ent musicians and learn from them because next morning before everybody else, and had heard Kronos when we played in Korea by doing so we all become larger people, then we’re on to the next town [laughing]. for the first time. So it’s like a family. And I have to confess that when I formed Kronos more empathetic, more understanding, Janet Cowperthwaite has been our manager forty years ago it took several years for me to just…better. The craft of being a musician Kronos has had several lineups over for thirty-two years; our tour manager and even know a female composer. After the first every day is a source of growth, and I believe the past forty years. Since 1978, when lighting designer, Larry Neff, has been with concert Kronos played in November 1973, that musicians are in the position to create Kronos made its first recordings, you and us for twenty-seven years; and our sound my wife, Regan – and it was probably the first models of how things could and should John Sherba have been the quartet’s two designer, Scott Fraser, for twenty-two years, string quartet concert she’d ever attended – work in the world. violinists, Hank Dutt has been the violist, so we’ve all grown together. took a look at the program and said to me, and there are have been four cellists: Joan The music on these five CDs – as with so “Where are the women composers?” It On the first page of the manuscript of his Jeanrenaud, Jennifer Culp, Jeffrey Zeigler, much of our music in general – didn’t just didn’t make any sense to her, and of course visionary second string quartet, Charles and Sunny Yang. As the Roman poet Ovid fall out of the sky. Most of it was commis- she was right. Things have changed so much Ives described the piece as follows: “String wrote, “Everything changes, but nothing sioned through the Kronos Performing since then, and trying to create a balance has Quartet for 4 Men – who converse, discuss, perishes.” Arts Association, which is the not-for-profit taken a long time. argue (in re politics), fight, shake hands, shut umbrella organization of the Kronos The first female composer who wrote for up – then walk up the mountainside to view That’s right. Kronos has been totally Quartet, and it’s because of this association Kronos was Ann Silsbee. Since then we’ve the firmament.” invigorated by the immense talents of Joan, that we’ve been able to commission more commissioned quartets by, among many Jennifer, Jeff, and Sunny, and when I’m than eight hundred works with grants and others, Kaija Saariaho, Sofia Gubaidulina, Well, as far as Kronos is concerned, we try thinking about music it’s totally through funds provided by private persons, festivals, and Aleksandra Vrebalov. And it’s gotten not to fight because there’s actually not the lens of the possibilities suggested by the and concert halls around the world. to the point where there are now almost as a whole lot to fight about: The notes are members of our quartet. Very often today many women composers writing for Kronos either together or they’re not together, when we’re performing a concert, I some- In the Charles Ives comment about his as there are men, though it’s taken forty they’re either in tune or not in tune, they’re times look over at John, who’s been with the second string quartet that I quoted before, years for that to happen. But the important either too loud or too soft. So it’s like quartet for thirty-five years, and at Hank, he describes the piece as a “string quartet point is that if you cast your glance wide being in a laboratory, you’ve got to figure who’s been with us for thirty-six years, and for 4 Men.” And until quite recently in this enough, there are amazing people creating it out. There is a lot of experimenting and I realize that all of the commitment, energy, country, the makeup of the string quartet amazing music in many different places, and trial and error. Kronos is a little bit like a and expertise that they contribute to the has pretty much been the exclusive preserve I want the world to be represented in our guerrilla band. At various times I’ve said music in order to try to make it sound like of male musicians. And with the few notable music as it truly is, so I think there should be to the other members of the group, “It’s nothing else is truly unequalled. And now exceptions of persons such as Amy Beach music for Kronos from every country, every us against the universe” [laughing]. And we have Sunny, who actually grew up and Ruth Crawford Seeger, the same thing culture, all the religions… And all the genders… Who was the guiding force behind that music room? Right, and all the genders. I think that the music we play needs to reflect an aware- His name was Ronald Z. Taylor, and he was ness of the things that are going on in the the school’s orchestra conductor and band world, not only explorations of positive leader. I’ve said it before but it bears repeat- things but also of the tragedies as well. And ing: Every kid in the world needs to have I believe that women are perhaps even a Ronald Taylor in his or her life. He was more capable than men of intuiting lots of such a great force, he loved music, and he things that should and need to be part of loved the process of young people learning music. about music and being there for them. And when I first heard that African music, I just This fortieth anniversary, five-CD box set thought, Wow, I want my violin to have that is specifically devoted to Kronos’ collab- kind of a sound someday. orations with musicians and composers, When I was twelve I began playing both male and female, from all over the Beethoven and Haydn string quartets, world, and also presents arrangements and and that became my obsession. Later at transcriptions of many different kinds of fourteen, I remember looking at a globe world and realizing that all of the string quartet music. When did you yourself first discover music I’d ever heard was actually written by world music? just four guys who lived in Vienna – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. I’ve When I really think about it, I realize that been thinking about that ever since, and it actually goes back to when I was in the have always been amazed how solid the tenth grade at Roosevelt High School foundation was that those four composers in Seattle. In that school’s music room laid down in just seventy-five years. It’s there was a great record collection that incredible what they accomplished. But I included, among other things, a number of remember that when I looked at the rest of recordings from various places in Africa. In the globe, I saw that there were lots of other particular, some music from Ghana really cities and cultures out there, and I knew touched me. that there were other sounds and other Kronos Quartet, 1992: Hank Dutt, David Harrington, John Sherba, Joan Jeanrenaud musical possibilities out there as well. the “late string quartets.” I didn’t know record, it was established what I wanted to Quartet began. And I sometimes think that Along with the records in my high school what a “late quartet” was, but one of the do for the rest of my life. what Kronos has actually done over these music room, I was also fortunate that the selections offered by the Columbia Record past forty years is simply to have created University of Washington, which was right Club was the Budapest String Quartet’s new What was the catalyst that led to your variations on Black Angels, because music near where my family lived, had one of recordings of the late Beethoven quartets, starting the Kronos Quartet? is ultimately all about variations, and it’s all the best ethnomusicology departments so I chose the first of those quartets, Opus related to the universal sound that we hear in the country. And in fact many years 127. A couple of weeks later the records In August of 1973 I first heard George inside of ourselves. later when Kronos was recording Pieces arrived in the mail, and I placed it on the Crumb’s Black Angels late one night on the of Africa, we figured out that the Nubian turntable, put the needle on, and heard radio. And when first I heard it I didn’t know Black Angels is a work that’s written for composer and oud player Hamza El Din and that opening E-flat major chord, and it just it was string quartet music. electric string quartet, and the galvanizing the Zimbabwean mbira player Dumisani totaled me out. I loved that sound – the effect it always has on me seems to confirm Maraire, who both wrote pieces for us, had spacing of that chord, everything about it – George Crumb wrote this piece in 1970 when something that Beethoven once said about actually been associated with the university and I immediately knew that I had to learn the Vietnam War was raging and subtitled himself: “I am electrical by nature. Music at that time. I used to hang around there how to make that sound myself. I was then it “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land.” is the electric soil in which the spirit lives, and attended some of the classes, and I playing in the Seattle Youth Symphony, so I And its piercing sonics always remind me thinks, and invents.” recall hearing the great Indian violinist went to the Seattle Public Library, checked of William Burroughs’s phrase “screaming L. Shankar playing in one of the practice out the music score, and then called up glass blizzards of enemy flak.” When I think about the magnetism that rooms on the ground floor of the music three friends from the symphony – another draws me to a musical experience such that building. I remember looking in the window violinist, a violist and a cellist – and we got Yes, it’s amazing, and the piece brought it remains in my heart forever, I definitely and thinking, What the hell is that? I’d never together and played that piece. everything together – a quote from feel that electrical thing that Beethoven is heard anything like it before. So all of that Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, a Danse talking about, and he’s right. What happens music just seemed to seep into my life. Were you all technically able to do that? Macabre, Jimi Hendrix, gongs, maracas, when you electrify acoustical instruments But my interest in expanding the realm paper clips on the strings, bowed crystal is that it picks up the sound of the bow, that of the string quartet goes even further Well, we were able to play the first note glasses, shouting and whistling – and what white noise of the bow hair, that crunch – back. I don’t know if you remember the anyway [laughing]. And you know what? happened to me was that suddenly it all it’s where all the action is. And one of the Columbia Record Club. For a penny you Once you get a chill in your back from some- seemed to make sense, and I no longer reasons I play the violin is exactly to hear got to join the club, so I sent in my penny thing you’re able to do, even if it’s for only had any choice: I had to try to play that that activity, it’s so visceral and alive, with and then got to choose five or six records. I a tenth of a second, from then on you don’t piece – just as I had known years earlier sparks flying, sonic sparks. was twelve years old then and was reading have any choice. I mean, I can hear that that I had to play Beethoven’s E-flat major a biography of Beethoven, and in the book chord right now as I’m talking to you, and in chord – and in order to do that I had to get a I’ve noticed that you often talk about music the author mentioned something about that split second when we sounded like the group together, and that’s how the Kronos in terms of magnetic attraction. I do. It’s the way I feel that music works. I Icelandic group Sigur Rós, and you remarked cian, there’s kind of a moment when you She decided that for her husband’s memorial mean, we never know when we’re going to that in thinking about them you began to sense things becoming whole.” What does she wanted her children to experience be magnetized by something. Like you’re reflect on “the idea of quartetness in the wholeness mean to you? something that had a traditional connection at a concert, and there it is. And years later universe.” In many traditions, the number to her husband’s family even though he had you remember that you turned on the radio, four is the symbol of the world, and it’s been What I was referring to at that moment been non-observant. So she invited a cantor and there it was. I believe that all of the said that, taken together, the four directions had to do with Terry Riley asking us not to sing at the memorial that took place in their experiences that Kronos has been a part of and the four winds provide coordinates for to use any vibrato when we were playing home. And I was sitting in the front row. have come about because of this magnetic all of earthly life. And of course there are also one of his pieces – he wanted us to only use Now, for me, a great performer is someone feeling. This past year, for example, we’ve four elements, four seasons, four quarters of our bows for expression, and at that time who gives me something that no one else has begun to play the Prelude from Tristan und the moon…and, last but not least, there are it was really hard for us to drop all of the yet given me. The cantor wasn’t a singer like, Isolde, after I’d gotten addicted to it. Within also four strings on the violin, viola, and cello! ideas we’d previously had about how to say, Mahalia Jackson or Marika Papagika [an a couple of months I probably listened to create the best and sweetest sound. And I early twentieth-century Greek singer whose seventy or eighty performances of that piece, That’s certainly a large part of it. But I have to recently was listening to an Indian violinist, song “Smyrneiko Minore” is a favorite of and I realized that I had to find a way to play speak about this on a personal level because Dr. N. Rajam, and she was using ornaments Kronos’], but it was as though she was singing it, because life is not going to be right for me for sixteen years I had four living members but not vibrato. In Swedish fiddling music right into my being. And after experiencing if we don’t do so. in my immediate family, and then when my and country music and many traditions, that, I realized that every member of Kronos son died in April 1995 on Easter Sunday, we vibrato isn’t used very much. But I can very had to be a cantor! So I went out and bought In a certain sense you seem to respond to became a trio. And that’s a huge difference– distinctly recall the moment when each many recordings of early twentieth-century music very much like iron filings that are there’s no way I can talk about fourness member of Kronos came to believe totally cantors, and as I listened to them I suddenly being inexorably pulled by a magnet. without thinking about that. in this new sound, and it was as if we had all had this moment when I thought, You know suddenly infinitely expanded our palette and what? Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein Right, the magnet just pulls you. There really is something complete about had learned something that we would never and David Oistrakh probably all heard this the number four, don’t you think? forget and that would be useful every day for kind of music. And if you start looking at the And this magnet is what? the rest of our lives. And that felt like one of formation of that particular tradition of violin That’s exactly what I’m saying. If you play those moments of wholeness. playing, it may well have been influenced That’s a good question: The magnet is what? in a trio, which I did as a teenager, there’s a There’s another musical experience of by cantorial performance. Just listen to Is it the emptiness that needs to be filled? Is huge difference with regard to the sound and wholeness I’d like to tell you about. This Heifetz’s recording of the slow movement of it curiosity? I don’t know. the feel when you compare it to a quartet. happened after the husband of my wife’s Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto. There’s closest friend died. His family was Brooklyn a note that he reaches up for that sounds like You once said something that I found truly You once said: “Every time that Kronos Jewish but they had originally come from the highest note that’s ever been played by a fascinating. You were referring to the enters into a new relationship with a musi Poland, and his wife is Japanese-American. human being. That note’s not as high as you think, but it’s what Heifetz does with it. gently lifts his arm]…and that particular wanted the best for her. There’s a universal what musicians ought to do, and it’s not And I felt the deeply cantorial nature of his sound can actually carry even more than a quality to that sound that really conveys the only our responsibility, it’s really what performance and the feeling of wholeness louder one can. feeling of wholeness. our instruments are for. I don’t think that that it imparts. the best note has yet been written or that And speaking of sounds of wholeness, That flautando image reminds me of the line It’s interesting that one definition of the the best note has yet been played, and we I want to tell you a lighter story about Kronos “To dance beneath the diamond sky with one phrase “to be whole” is “to be restored or to haven’t yet accomplished what needs to be and Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein had hand waving free.” be healed.” And I find that some of the most accomplished, but the more I try to do this, invited us to attend a New York Philharmonic beautiful and deepest music that Kronos the more I think that that’s really our job…. performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony, What song is that from? plays is both consoling and healing – I’m But to sound a lighter note for a moment, and after the concert he asked us over thinking, for example, of the Lebanese as far as I’m concerned, the entire string to his apartment. It was the night before Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” lament “Wa Habibi” on the Floodplain quartet art form has also needed a great big Thanksgiving and none of us had had dinner album, or Tigran Tahmizyan’s “A Cool Wind kick in the ass [laughing], and I hope that because we were sure we were going to have God, I missed that. It’s a great line. And in Is Blowing” on the Night Prayers album, or Kronos has done something to contribute something at his place. Well, the big meal fact it was sort of like that. And Bernstein Carlos Paredes’s “Canção Verdes Anos” on to that as well. was the next day, and all he had was alcohol then said, “I want to teach the Vienna the Caravan album. As the poet Novalis once [laughing]. What a nightmare! But what Philharmonic how to play that sound.” said: “Every disease is a musical problem, William Blake beautifully wrote: “Under he did was pull out one of our albums and and every cure a musical solution.” And it every grief & pine/Runs a joy with silken put it on the turntable, and then he placed He wanted to teach that sound to the Vienna sometimes seems to me as if Kronos is in its twine.” Someone once said that “healing the needle somewhere in the middle of Philharmonic string section? own way doing a kind of music therapy. begins with brokenness,” and what always the record – how he knew where the exact astonishes me about some of the heartbreak- spot was, I don’t know – and he asked us, Yeah, it was like, You gotta be kidding me! About thirty years ago I said that what I ing music that Kronos plays is the way it is “How did you get that sound?” The piece really wanted to do was to create musical always able to convey that intertwining sense he was playing was Kevin Volans’s White There’s obviously something special about experiences that are so powerful and so of sorrow and joy. Man Sleeps, which we included on Pieces of that sound. strong that they can protect people from Africa. And I told him that that sound came harm. In one way or another a lot of things in from an exercise that my violin teacher Veda I think so. You need it in Schubert, but I I would love music to wrap its arms Kronos’ work since 1995 refer back to my Reynolds had suggested to me, where you think that the best we’ve ever recorded around every child – around every one of family tragedy. There’s no escaping that. draw the bow very lightly over the finger- that sound is in our performance of the us, of course, but especially children – and Things took a much more personal turn board – the technique is called flautando – so second movement of Vladimir Martynov’s protect them. And when people now ask that year, and in our album Early Music that the arm weight’s transferred to the back Schubert-Quintet [Unfinished], which I me if we’ve succeeded in doing that, the (Lachrymæ Antiquæ), which we were then of your arm and you just let it float up [David played at my mom’s memorial because I answer is no, we haven’t. But I think that’s working on, I was trying to convey a sense of the sound inside of me, though I really to that CD there were certain notes that could only talk about this years later. And sounded so ecstatically happy, and then I’d that album concluded with the sound of go back and listen to them again, and those bells recorded at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre very same notes now sounded incredibly de Solesmes in France. At some point in my sad. And I thought, I need to explore that. life I’d heard a certain bell that had always And in my opinion the source of the idea stayed with me, so when our friend John for our Caravan album actually came from Kilgore put together a selection of some that experience. Because I’d realized that three hundred different kinds of bells, I whatever you bring to the way that you knew that the bells from the Abbaye were listen to something can have immeasurably exactly the ones I wanted. different emotional consequences, since what you’re feeling at a particular moment You can almost feel the afterlife of their can amplify something in the music that’s reverberation. already going on inside of you. And I think that Caravan, although it contains music You can. And although I didn’t know it from many different places, is an explora- at the time, I later learned that those tion of that realization. particular bells are the ones played after Let me tell you another little Prague someone dies. story: The first time I went there I wanted Then in September of 1996, Kronos was to pay a tribute to Franz Kafka. So I took the giving a concert in Prague, and I went into tram out to the cemetery where he’s buried, a CD shop – it was actually a Sunday and it and this elderly man let me in – he didn’t was my son’s birthday – and on the speaker speak a word of English and I didn’t speak I heard Billie Holiday singing “Gloomy a word of Czech – so I just said “Kafka” Sunday.” So I took note of that. And as I and he pointed me in the direction of his was looking around I came across this CD tombstone. And right next to it was a small called Czech Gypsy String Orchestra Music, tablet for Kafka’s sister Ottla, who, as the so I bought it and went back to the hotel tablet indicated, had died in Auschwitz. Kronos Quartet, 2002: and started to listen to it. Now, to refer back So fast-forward many years: The David Harrington, to what you were saying before about the composer Henryk Górecki had offered to John Sherba, Jennifer intertwining of sorrow and joy, as I listened take Kronos to Auschwitz, but at the last Culp, Hank Dutt minute he wasn’t able go, but several of us You once mentioned that you thought of the somehow also take another step. And that and all of a sudden at midnight we heard felt that we needed to go anyway. So here I Kronos albums Early Music (Lachrymæ was a seemingly impossible step to take. the ecstatic, noisy, clanging sounds of the am, it’s in November, very chilly, and I had Antiquæ), Caravan, and Nuevo – your What happened was that in 1995, for cathedral’s bells. tennis shoes on, and my feet are getting musical homage to Mexico – as a kind of the first Christmas after my son’s death, really cold. And we entered what felt like a triptych. I decided that my wife, daughter, and I Ezra Pound’s battle cry was “Make It New,” huge warehouse that contained some of the Those first two albums are in many ways needed to be somewhere different at that and Leo Tolstoy declared that we should suitcases that had belonged to the camp’s works of lament and consolation, but Nuevo, time, and I thought that Mexico would be “Make It Strange.” And it seems to me that inmates, and I noticed that their names and on the other hand, seems to me to be a work the best place for us because of the way Nuevo succeeds in doing both of those things. addresses were written in white ink on them. of – to borrow two of John Keats’s images – death is absorbed and reflected there, and In fact, I think it’s one of the most astonish- And out of the corner of my eye I spotted a “sunburnt mirth” and “a beaker full of the because the meaning of it is so clearly a ingly inventive albums I’ve ever heard. It’s an name, and I literally jumped because what warm South.” Someone who reviewed Nuevo part of everyday life. Just think of the Day inspired pandemonium and a continuously was written there was Ottla Kafka, Prague, suggested that the album was like “taking a of the Dead celebrations that take place surprising and shape-shifting dream and Czechoslovakia. tour of Mexico with David Lynch and Quentin on November 1, which is when infants and soundscape, a dazzling mash-up of surf, Now there’s a little bit more to this story Tarantino as your guides.” But I thought that children are remembered, and on November cartoon, dance, and homemade electronic because I have to tell you that there was a was way off the mark. To me, it sounds as if 2, which is when the adults are remembered. music, as well as of romantic ballads, little room in there where you could watch Nuevo could be the joyous soundtrack for a And I’ve always felt that Mexico is this transcendent holy Guadalupe festival music, a short film before you left. So I decided to movie version of a magical realism novel like amazing neighbor that we have – it’s so close and, of course, raucous street sounds. go in to see it, and it was very warm in that One Hundred Years of Solitude as filmed by to us but so different. And almost every room– and you know how it is that when Fellini, Chuck Jones, and Vincente Minnelli. sound on Nuevo is something that we heard We spent ten days walking around Mexico your feet are really cold and they start to on that trip. City, and that became the guiding image warm up they begin to tingle. And the film I know what you mean, but I don’t think that’s So for example, the bells at the conclu- for the whole album because you never was about one young boy who was probably it’s a matter of seeing the world in either/or sion of 12/12, which we recorded with the knew what you were going to see or hear nine or ten, and because he had shared a terms because if you’re going to represent band Café Tacuba, are the ones that ring next, everything was incredibly beautiful crust of bread with someone else he had been the world in your work, you have to expand out from the Metropolitan Cathedral in and colorful and unexpected. And it was forced to stand up in the snow, barefoot, all yourself. There’s nothing I’ve ever worked Zócalo, the main plaza in Mexico City, twice wonderful the way all of the musicians we day. So I’m experiencing that in the film while harder on in my entire life than the Nuevo a year – on New Year’s Eve and on Mexican met embraced and welcomed us. my own feet are warming up, and all I can album. And the reason was that I wanted to Independence Day, which is celebrated on say is that I’ll never forget this, that image see if it was possible to take our loss and turn September 16, which also happens to be my In Nuevo you hear unusual instruments like is so strong in me that I know that one day it into something beyond that, something that son’s birthday. We were there on New Year’s an organillo, a plasmaphone, and, strangest it will somehow and in some way turn into a included the knowledge and the experience of Eve. Our hotel was right on the Zócalo, and of all, a musical leaf! I’d never heard of a musical piece or some kind of recording. the pain of the loss of my son, but that would outside there were around a million people, musical leaf before. This is what happened: Here I am walking Each Indian raga suggests a mood that in This World I knew that we had to find have by now also planted about a thousand down the street with Regan and my daughter, summons up a particular hour of the day and out how to get in touch with him. I didn’t trees, as well as innumerable seeds of sound? Bonnie, and I think I hear a violin. So we head season of the year, and in a way, one might have a choice. And when I first met him he in that direction, right? And the closer we get think of Nuevo as a kind of morning raga brought over two suitcases filled with what What you say reminds me that when I was to the “violin,” the stranger it sounds, and I and of your album Night Prayers as a kind must have been two hundred handmade very young I’d go to my grandmother’s finally got close enough to see the musician, of evening raga. And the covers of those two duduks, and I’m not exaggerating. [A duduk home. She had a beautiful garden, and her and he was holding this object in his hand albums suggest that distinction. Nuevo’s is a double-reed instrument usually made passion was growing lilies from seeds. and he was playing a song that I later found cover displays blazing yellow sun rays against from aged apricot wood.] He played a lot She collected lily seeds from all over the out was called “Perfidia.” Furthermore, he’d a vibrant background, while the album cover of them for me, and each had a slightly world, and eventually I inherited her stamp lost one of his arms, so he only had one hand, for Night Prayers depicts a black sky with different sound.Night Prayers is filled with collection because the seeds had been sent and in it he was holding an ivy leaf, and when stars and clouds and a ghostly, wraith-like all kinds of shimmering, shivering sounds, from various countries, and she saved all of he would put it in his mouth it became like female figure cloaked in burnished gold. And and the pieces on the album are in a way like the stamps that were pasted on those enve- a reed. And he had Fritz Kreisler’s vibrato! the pieces on this album, with their often constellations that attract each other – the lopes. I remember her going to the mailbox So that just blew my mind – I’d never heard keening, lamenting, and heartrending melodic pieces pull themselves together to form a and being very happy that she’d received anything like it in my life. lines hovering or floating over dissonances, kind of fresco. some seeds from South Africa or Indonesia. Now, a couple of days later I’m in an cluster chords, glissandi, ostinati, drones, And many years later I thought about this amazing bookstore called Bellas Artes, and spectral harmonies, seem to embody the The Azerbaijani singer Alim Qasimov, and realized that that’s pretty much what and they also had some CDs there, and uncanny mood of the album’s cover. who performs with Kronos on the album Kronos has been doing in music, because I’m looking at this one CD and I see that Floodplain, once reflected on his collab- incredibly beautiful musical experiences on it there’s a recording by Carlos Garcia: The feeling of the pieces on Night Prayers, oration with the quartet and said: “This are created in many, many different places, a one-armed leaf-player playing that song taken all together, come from a very mys- work has already produced results. We and I want to bring them all into my garden. [laughing]. And I thought, Holy shit! I didn’t terious, almost unknowable place. Mugam have planted a tree, and now we have to know what to say, so I bought all of the copies Sayagi, by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz work to make it grow and bear fruit.” Which And you don’t seem to think that we should of that CD that they had there just to prove Ali-Zadeh, for example, is based on a musical reminded me of some lines that John Lennon exploit our gardens, but rather, as Voltaire to myself that I hadn’t been hallucinating. tradition that is about hidden or secret love, sang in his song “Mind Games”: “We’re said, “cultivate” them. And when I was thinking about this album and this particular mugam is a way for lovers playing those mind games together/Pushing I started to have this fantasy: playing to secretly communicate with each other. the barriers, planting seeds…/Projecting You know, my grandmother always used to “Perfidia” at Carnegie Hall. Imagine Carlos And also mysterious is “A Cool Wind Is our images in space and in time.” Don’t you talk about “cultivating,” and I’d forgotten Garcia on that stage with 101 Strings to Blowing,” performed by the great Armenian think that those lines could serve as Kronos’ that until right now when you said that accompany him! What would that sound like? duduk player Djivan Gasparian. When I first motto since the quartet has been continually word. I’m a collector of musical experi- And I’d want to be one of those 101 strings. heard his album I Will Not Be Sad pushing barriers for forty years and must ences, and when I find one that has to be a part of my collection I don’t give up, no one of the youngest composers ever to have matter how difficult it might be to obtain it. written a piece for Kronos. I’m not good at And if you find something that you can’t live giving advice because I myself don’t take it without, then you’ve got to figure out a way very well, but I think we have responsibilities, to cultivate it. I try to keep it really simple, and if we hear about something like what so for me it’s just a direct response to any happened to Yuri we can’t allow that kind of kind of music that grabs you and holds on. thing to continue. The world’s never going to And I don’t care if the music’s by someone improve if we don’t change. who’s famous or not famous, it doesn’t matter to me. Speaking of being a young composer Kronos is in fact going to be playing a who’s just beginning his career, I wanted piece by a young man who’s now twenty two. to mention to you something that the Zen His mother brought him and his brother to teacher Shunryu Suzuki once said: “If this country from Russia when he was eleven, your mind is empty, it is always ready for and he’s been studying at Juilliard. And he anything; it is open to everything. In the wrote an unbelievably passionate letter to beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, me about the effect that Kronos has had on in the expert’s mind there are few. This is the his career and life. So I called him and we had real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.” coffee in New York, and he was so nervous And I mention this to you because with that he was shaking throughout our entire every new album, even after forty years, conversation. And one of the things he said you and Kronos always seem to be starting to me made me literally see red: He told me afresh. How have you managed to keep your that one of his teachers had said to him that a beginner’s mind? string quartet he’d written was “trash.” Well, I’d already heard the piece and it’s not trash. Believe it or not, this is the first time that And I thought that it’s not right for an elder someone’s ever asked me about this. And to be saying that kind of thing to a younger speaking personally, I have to tell you that person. I detest that. So I asked him to write I was extremely lucky because when I was Kronos Quartet, 2005: something for Kronos’ fortieth anniversary, twenty-one I finally found the person who Jeffrey Zeigler, John so we’re going to give the premiere of On the would really be my teacher, and that’s pretty Sherba, Hank Dutt, Wings of Pegasus by Yuri Boguinia, who’s late for a violinist. Luckily I found Veda David Harrington Reynolds, and she remained my teacher for pieces of music – to me the best composers take my soul away.”] And when I first heard And I’ve heard that at one Kronos concert in the next thirty years until her death. Right are always reinventing and always have a her sing that first note I said to myself, What Vienna, you started a piece by playing a peyote after Kronos started, she left Seattle and sense of humility. One of the last things that have I been doing all these years? That’s got rattle and a bass drum, and, at another concert moved to Paris, but we stayed in contact. And Henryk Górecki, who was one of the greatest everything in it that I want, and I knew that you played a Mexican toy guitar. when Kronos started performing in Paris, I’d composers, ever, said to me was, “I hope one Kronos had to play that. have lessons with her. So when I think about day I will understand how music works.” And And at one of our concerts there I felt myself why I still feel like a beginner, it all comes I loved that. At the risk of sounding flippant, I have to getting stoned just because of all the pot that around to the very last thing that Veda ever say that you do seem to have a thing about was being smoked by the audience, and then said to me. We didn’t of course know that it We’ve been talking about last notes, but I first notes! someone threw a bra at us! But just think of was going to be our last lesson – she died of also wanted to ask you about first notes. Haydn’s scherzos. The word scherzo after all the flu shortly thereafter – but what she said You previously told me after hearing that Well, you’ve got to start somewhere means “joke.” The only problem is that many to me was, “The great thing about music is opening E-flat major chord of Beethoven’s [laughing]. Do you remember that dandruff people have forgotten the punch lines to that it always can be better.” As a violinist you Op. 127 quartet when you were twelve years shampoo commercial from the 1960s? It Haydn’s jokes. make a note, and then that note vanishes. And old you immediately knew the musical path shows this guy who’s trying to make a big And by the way, speaking of “playful,” if it’s kind of like baseball – as a hitter you’re only that you’d be taking for the rest of your life. impression on his mother-in-law or girlfriend you check on YouTube you can see Leonard as good as your last at bat, and as a violinist Have there been other first notes that have or somebody, and he’s got dandruff all over Bernstein conducting the last movement of you’re only as good as the last note you play. also changed your life? his back, and the commercial says, “You Haydn’s 88th Symphony with the Vienna So to me, it’s always a matter of starting over never get a second chance to make a first Philharmonic. And he does so using only his and using whatever you’ve learned in order to There’s the early twentieth-century Greek impression” [laughing]. I love that! facial gestures and he never once lifts his make the next note. singer named Marika Papagika whom I hands. I frequently mentor young musicians, mentioned to you before, and the first Over the past forty years Kronos has traveled and I’m always mentioning Bernstein And your last note leads to a new beginning. note that she sings in the song “Smyrneiko a long way from Vienna, where the idea of the because in a string quartet you have to learn Minore” has so much human information string quartet had its origins. But I think that how to cue. And if you ever watch Bernstein That’s right. And to know that with immense in it that I will probably spend the rest of my “Papa Haydn,” who was after all the father of conduct, you’ll find out that a cue is an work you can always get better, and then to life trying to get to that level. I get a chill in the string quartet, might very well have been opportunity to impart incredible musical believe that you can really make a new note my back just thinking about that note. She pleased by what his great-great-great-great- information. I mean, when he cues the violin that contains in it all of your knowledge and recorded that song when she was in her late great-grandchildren have done. He had a great section, you know exactly what the sound all of the information that you have about the twenties, and it has so much sadness, so much sense of humor – just think of his “Surprise” and should be – he pulls the sound out of the universe and about people and about the way pain, and also something illumining as well. “Farewell” and “Toy” symphonies – but a lot of players. And everyone in a string quartet has things are. You can’t go into automatic pilot [“If you love me and it’s a dream/May I never his other music, especially his piano sonatas, to be able to do that for each other too. We and access that, and to me it’s the same with wake up/In the sweet dawn/God lets me also displays a wonderfully playful sensibility. work on that every day. Kronos is celebrating its fortieth anniversary. heart of our work and which will still serve We talked before about the significance of the as the framework for everything that we’ll be number four, but the number forty also has its doing in the future. own fascination. It’s sometimes said that forty For instance, we’re going to conclude years is a time of waiting and preparation – one of our next concerts with a piece where think of the Israelites wandering the desert the audience will download an app that will for forty years, or Jesus lying in his tomb for generate synchronized light and sound, and forty hours. And forty is also said to demarcate then everyone will use their cell phones and the completion of a stage of life. There’s a join us in the performance, so it will almost wonderful Turkish expression that goes: “To feel like we’re launching ourselves into the play the lute after you’re forty means starting future! But ultimately, of course, starting something new and difficult when you’re something new and difficult is always a good older.” thing to do whether you’re young or old. And don’t forget: The violin is ultimately pretty That’s really interesting. You know, we talked humiliating. I mean, trying to play in tune on a before about the late Beethoven quartets, violin and make a good sound will always keep and all musicians know about the triptych of you on your toes, now and in the future. Beethoven’s early, middle, and late quartets. So I’m not trying to equate us with anybody, Picasso once said, “I don’t seek, I find.” And but just in terms of that triptych image, I this seems to be your modus operandi as well. guess my hope would be that we’re right at the Your life is filled with lucky finds, and things beginning of the late period – but that’s not to just seem to fall off of trucks when you and say that we can’t jump into earlier periods as the quartet are on the road. You turn on the well if we want to. radio late one night and George Crumb’s Black Regarding the idea that you mentioned of Angels is on the air. You’re walking down forty years being a time of waiting and prepa- a street in Mexico City and suddenly come ration, I do feel that we have spent all those across a one-armed man playing a musical years getting ready to do the work that we’re leaf. You discover the musical collective Kronos Quartet, 2013: John Sherba, Sunny Yang, Hank Dutt, David Harrington doing right now, and of course to continue to Ramallah Underground through their have the kinds of conversations we’ve always MySpace site. had with composers, which is really at the Yes, it’s the way I run into a lot of things. to discover Pompeii? Like you’re digging I just pick up recordings – right now, for down and all of a sudden, Whoa! Just to instance, I have about fifty or sixty CDs in hear that music sung in that way and have my suitcase in the hotel – and when I’m the cultural essence of it seem like such a on tour I carry around my little CD player complete amalgamation of things that have and just listen to things at random. When I been splintered over the years – it was like first heard Sigur Rós I was listening to their all of a sudden there was this wholeness, song “Flugufrelsarinn” on my headphones just as we talked about earlier in our in a hotel outside of Washington, D.C., and conversation. basically the same thing happened then as What Alfred Schnittke said about it did when I first heardBlack Angels, and his compositions is similar to what just like it did when I heard that first note Michelangelo said about his sculptures– sung by Marika Papagika. There’s a story that they already existed and he just behind these songs and about how they chiseled away until he found them. And became part of our music. Schnittke, too, said that he just discovered I had a meeting the other day with something that was already there. And Aleksandra Vrebalov who wrote the piece in a certain way I can understand that. …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… that’s There are these kinds of nerve centers of on our Floodplain album, and she was just experience, and it’s up to musicians to find in Serbia and told me that she had become those musical nerve centers. I can’t find ____ friends with some monks from an Orthodox explanations for why something resonates Serbian monastery who normally don’t in a certain way or causes me to think in a Jonathan Cott is the author of chant for outsiders, but in this case they new way or makes me feel renewed. There Stockhausen: Conversations with the made this incredible recording. And this are certain moments in music that seem Composer, Conversations with Glenn music predates Hildegard von Bingen; you holy to me, but I don’t think that I know Gould, Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long can’t tell whether it’s Western or Arabic, anything more about music than the next Interview with Leonard Bernstein, and it’s so perfectly both at the same time. person, and I literally don’t understand Days That I’ll Remember: Spending Time She had this recording on her computer, how it works, and I’m in awe of the mystery with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. A con- and I had my headphones on and I was of it, and I love being able to share some tributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine overcome in the restaurant. It’s like…well, of my discoveries about it. And beyond since its inception, he has also written for can you imagine what it must have been like that…it’s fun! —July 2013 The New York Times and The New Yorker. Design by Evan Gaffney Design Cover: Illustration from Color Sphere by Philipp Otto Runge; bpk, Berlin/Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany/Elke Walford/Art Resource, NY Photograph of the Kronos Quartet with Joan Jeanrenaud by Michael Lavine All other photographs of the Kronos Quartet by Jay Blakesberg

For Nonesuch Records: Production Coordinator: Arthur Moorhead Editorial Coordinator: Robert Edridge-Waks Production Supervisor: Karina Beznicki

Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

For the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association: Janet Cowperthwaite, Managing Director; Laird Rodet, Associate Director; Sidney Chen, Artistic Administrator; with Matthew Campbell, Scott Fraser, Christina Johnson, Nikolás McConnie-Saad, Hannah Neff, Laurence Neff, and Lucinda Toy.

Project Supervisor for Kronos: Sidney Chen

We would like to thank all of the members of our extended Kronos family: composers, performers, artistic collaborators, everyone at Nonesuch, staff and board members (past and present), technical staff, donors, funders, presenters, and the adventurous listeners and audience members who have supported Kronos throughout the past four decades.

www.kronosquartet.org www.nonesuch.com

Nonesuch Records Inc., a Warner Music Group Company, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104. This compilation π & © 2014 Nonesuch Records Inc. for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States. Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by federal law and subject to criminal prosecution.