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Home , David Byrne, Ealing Art College, Jherek Bischoff, Jimmy Heath, Kronos Quartet, Parenthetical Girls

Kronos Quartet with Wednesday, May 23, 2018 at 8pm Post-concert Talk This is the 836th concert in Koerner Hall

Kronos Quartet David Harrington, John Sherba, violin Hank Dutt, Sunny Yang,

Jherek Bischoff, bass guitar

PROGRAM

~ (arr. Jacob Garchik) زغلل ًة Islam Chipsy: Zaghlala

Nicole Lizée: Another Living * ~

Yevgeniy Sharlat: pencil sketch * ~

George Gershwin: “Summertime” (arr. Jacob Garchik) +

John Coltrane: “Alabama” (arr. Jacob Garchik) +

Sigur Rós: Flugufrelsarinn (The Fly Freer) (arr. Stephen Prutsman) +

Pete Townshend: “Baba O’Riley” (arr. Jacob Garchik) +

INTERMISSION

Konono No1: Kule Kule (arr. Jherek Bischoff) + (Canadian premiere)

Jherek Bischoff: A Semiperfect Number * (Canadian premiere)

Jherek Bischoff: Flying Rivers * (Canadian premiere)

Jherek Bischoff: Stranger (world premiere)

* Written for Kronos Quartet ~ Composed for Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire + Arranged for Kronos Stranger by Jherek Bischoff co-commissioned by The Royal Conservatory/Koerner Hall

Islam Chipsy (b. 1985) Zaghlala (2017) (arr. Jacob Garchik) Islam Chipsy and his band EEK are a three-way force of nature from Cairo, Egypt, described by those who have been caught in the eye of their storm as one of the most exciting live propositions on the planet. At the core of the group lies electro chaabi keyboard pioneer Islam Chipsy, whose joyous, freewheeling sonic blitz warps the standard oriental scale system into otherworldly shapes, as flanked by Mohamed Karam and Mahmoud Refat raining down a percussive maelstrom behind dual drum kits.

Nicole Lizée (b. 1973) Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation,” Montreal-based composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences, including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, glitch, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Lynch, 1960s psychedelia, and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well- worn technology and captures, notates, and integrates these glitches into live performance. Lizée’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring fully notated DJ techniques, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision. In 2001, Lizée received a Master of Music degree from McGill University. After a decade and a half of composition, her commission list of over 40 works is varied and distinguished and includes the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, the Symphony, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, ’s Kaufman Center, TorQ Percussion, Fondation Arte Musica/Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Calefax, ECM+, Continuum, and Soundstreams, among others. Her music has been performed worldwide in renowned venues, including (NYC), Royal Albert Hall (), and Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam), and in festivals such as the BBC Proms (UK), Huddersfield (UK), Bang On a Can (USA), Classical:NEXT (Rotterdam), Roskilde (Denmark), Melos- Ethos (Slovakia), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Canada), X Avant (Canada), Luminato (Canada), Switchboard (San Francisco), Casalmaggiore (Italy), and Dark Music Days (Iceland). Lizée was awarded the prestigious 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New . A Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow (New York City/Italy), Lizée was selected in 2015 by acclaimed composer and conductor to be his protégée as part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards. This Will Not Be Televised, her seminal piece for chamber ensemble and turntables, was chosen for the 2008 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers’ Top 10 Works. Hitchcock Études for piano and notated glitch was chosen by the International Society for Contemporary Music and featured at the 2014 Days in Poland. Additional awards and nominations include a Prix Opus (2013), Dora Mavor Moore Awards in Opera (2015), two Prix collégien de musique contemporaine (2012, 2013), and the 2002 Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize for achievements in composition. Another Living Soul (2016) Another Living Soul is stop motion animation for . Considered one of the most complex and idiosyncratic art forms, stop motion demands imagination, craft, isolation, an unwavering vision, fortitude, and copious amounts of time. The act of beginning the process invites both angst at the daunting task that has just begun and a kind of zen acceptance of the labyrinthine road ahead. The earliest stop motion – those beings and worlds created by Harryhausen, Starevich, Clokey, et al – still impresses and inspires. Oozing creativity, their work has a rough-hewn beauty and a timeless enchantment. Throughout its evolution, the end result has always been incrementally imbuing vitality and life to something devoid of any such spark on its own. The close quarters, intimacy, and camaraderie of the people who work in this art form are mirrored by the scrutiny and care they afford their tiny subjects and the attention to minutiae required to render a work that is lifelike. The impossible becomes possible—souls emerge from where once there were none. - Nicole Lizée

Yevgeniy Sharlat (b. 1977) Yevgeniy Sharlat has composed music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo, theater, ballet, mechanical sculptures, animations, and film. His commissions have come from such institutions as the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, the Caramoor Festival, The Curtis Institute of Music, Texas Performing Arts, Gilmore Keyboard Festival, Astral Artistic Services, and the Chamber Players. His music has been performed by ensembles such as Kremerata Baltica, the Seattle Symphony, Hartford Symphony, NCSA Symphony, Mikkeli City Orchestra (Finland), Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, the NOW Ensemble, and Le Train Bleu. Sharlat was the recipient of the 2006 Charles Ives Fellowship from American Academy of Arts and Letters; other honors include a Fromm Music Foundation Commission to write for the Viney-Grinberg Piano Duo, fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo, and ASCAP’s Morton Gould, Boosey & Hawkes, and Leiber & Stoller awards. Born in Moscow, Russia, Sharlat majored in violin, piano, and music theory at the Academy of Moscow Conservatory. After immigrating to the United States in 1994, he studied composition at Juilliard Pre-College, received his bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University. His teachers included Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Joseph Schwantner, Ned Rorem, and Richard Danielpour. Sharlat is associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches composition and music theory. pencil sketch (2017) My sincerest thanks to Kronos Quartet for making this piece happen. As David Harrington was explaining to me the purpose of the Fifty for the Future project, two things caught my attention. One was the notion of creating a body of new repertoire that would inspire young string players to discover the limitless expressive potential of string quartet. As a music student in the latter days of the Soviet Union, my training sadly consisted of being told what not to do – so the idea of unshackling students’ conception of sound really appealed to me. The other: David asked that whatever technological enhancement I chose to include, it would need to be easily obtainable and guaranteed to exist for at least another 50 years. Contrary to his wishes, I have chosen technology that is already deemed defunct: the #2 wood-cased pencil with eraser. I used it to sketch the piece, and so will Kronos, to play it. And why not? It was the most popular gadget at a recent SXSW tech conference in Austin, where I live. A sign there read: ‘Somewhere along the way, in the race to get ahead, we lost something important.’ And so I wanted to write a piece that has an intimate pencil-scraping-on-paper feel to it, that of trying to recapture a long-lost feeling with lines and dots and shading and hatching, before rendering it in full and vibrant colour. I hope for the sake of future generations that both pencils and string quartets will last an eternity. - Yevgeniy Sharlat

George Gershwin (1898–1937) “Summertime” (1935) (arr. Jacob Garchik, after Janis Joplin) In the cradling blues of “Summertime,” which opened George Gershwin’s “folk opera” Porgy and Bess in 1935, there is a majesty which has embraced all sorts of audiences, and artists from Billie Holiday (who placed her rendition on the pop charts a year later) to diva Leontyne Price (who recorded it in 1960 with Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic). In 1968, a year after the Summer of Love, rock dynamo Janis Joplin sang “Summertime” in a fearless fashion which has managed to transcend genre and time, just as Gershwin had. Joplin had in common with Gershwin a deep attraction to Black music, though she was raised in the 1940s and ’50s in the racially prejudiced community of Port Arthur, Texas, where her family attended the white Church of Christ. A few fellow teen outcasts helped turn her on to recordings of such seminal blues singers as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, whom she sought to channel. Chet Helms, a fellow dropout from the University of Texas, heard Joplin sing on campus and convinced her to hitchhike with him in 1963 to San Francisco, in search of a supportive folk and pop music scene. By the middle of the decade, Joplin had emerged from coffeehouse gigs to the attention of a few record companies. But masking her insecurities with alcohol, and later methamphetamines, hobbled her career. “She had the unique ability to really tap into her pain and to project it,” Helms said about her performing style. In 1966, Helms found Joplin a place with the rock band he managed, Big Brother and the Holding Company. Her raw demeanor and vocals were an uncaring departure from female singer stereotypes, but served to complement the band’s mind-bending electrified instrumentation. The combination was showcased at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and on the Columbia album Cheap Thrills the following year. “Summertime” shines among several standout tracks. In place of the maternal lullaby in swung time of Porgy and Bess, Joplin delivers the insistent primal outcry of a wronged child desperately seeking a woman’s satisfaction, of a talented, tortured soul striving to “rise singing” and “take to the sky,” as the lyrics promise. Sam Andrew’s and James Gurley’s guitars provide a moody intro to the lyric (not unlike Gershwin’s), and go on to entwine each other’s extended lines in what Guitar Player would later dub one of music history’s top ten psychedelic solos. Singer and players provide an updated homage to Gershwin’s exotic harmonic language and bluesy pentatonic feel, with Memphis-style rhythm playing and fuzz and other electronic effects, as well as Joplin’s interpolated repetitions and exclamations. It was these qualities which turned the heads of Kronos founder David Harrington and so many others when Cheap Thrills reached radios in 1968 and Joplin went on to sing “Summertime” at Woodstock in 1969. Recalling that thrill, Harrington deploys scortadura violin in Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of the song, channeling the incredible tension and stretched pitch in Joplin’s voice. The other players in the quartet innovate their use of bow and fingers and some electronic effects to take listeners inside both Gershwin’s composition and Big Brother’s emblematic, sometimes almost Baroque-like approach to it. In the process, Kronos itself is taken to new sonic territory. Gershwin and Joplin both died young, two years after the debuts of Porgy and Cheap Thrills, respectively. If only Janis were still around today, Kronos and she would probably be moving towards a collaboration. - Jeff Kaliss Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of “Summertime” by George Gershwin was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.

John Coltrane (b. 1926) “Alabama” (1963) (arr. Jacob Garchik) John Coltrane is not usually the first artist that comes to mind when thinking about the politically outspoken improvisers who changed the course of in the 1950s and early ‘60s. While vanguard bandleaders and composers such as Charles Mingus, , and coupled their creative breakthroughs with powerful statements denouncing white supremacy and supporting the struggle for civil rights, Coltrane channeled his energy into spiritual masterpieces like A Love Supreme and Meditations. But no musician ever responded to an atrocity with more soulful, anguished humanity than Coltrane’s “Alabama,” a piece the saxophonist wrote in the aftermath of the infamous 1963 KKK bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls. Released on the 1964 album Live at Birdland (Impulse!), but actually recorded in the studio just weeks after the bombing, the elegy features Coltrane’s classic combo with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones. Coltrane structured “Alabama” around the speech that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave in the church’s sanctuary three days after the bombing, moving from unfathomable sorrow to steely determination. Kronos commissioned Jacob Garchik to create an arrangement as part of Carnegie Hall’s winter 2018 festival “The ’60s: The Years that Changed America,” with the intention of premiering “Alabama” as an encore for that concert, “but we ran out of time,” David Harrington says. “Now we have this beautiful version, where each one of us gets to pay homage to the sound of John Coltrane.” “Alabama” is not Kronos’s first Trane ride. Working with tenor sax great Joe Henderson, the quartet performed a Jimmy Heath arrangement of Coltrane’s sublime ballad “Naima” back in the 1980s, a collaboration that went undocumented. But Harrington only discovered “Alabama” recently after Songlines editor Jo Frost wrote about listening to the piece on the same day that white supremacists marched in Charlottesville. Coltrane’s music is timeless, but “Alabama” is infuriatingly timely once again. Harrington quickly sought out the recording and was struck again by Coltrane’s elemental power, “one of the most central sounds in American music,” Harrington says. “Minutes later I was in touch with Jacob.” For Garchik, the assignment came as something of a surprise. Though the jazz trombonist is widely respected on the New York scene, his work for Kronos usually involves arranging “all kinds of music I am not familiar with from far away places,” he says. “This was close to home. I tried to capture the subtlety and simplicity of ‘Alabama’ with an arrangement that lets the quartet concentrate on the beautiful lines that Coltrane created. I kept the melody intact, but focused on the recitation part at the beginning, and accentuated its intensity. It is a very striking and mysterious piece, unlike anything else that Coltrane wrote.” - Andrew Gilbert

Sigur Rós (formed 1994) Flugufrelsarinn (The Fly Freer) (1999/arr. 2002) (arr. Stephen Prutsman) The Icelandic group Sigur Rós is at the forefront of invention in today’s international rock scene. Led by the ethereal vocals and hauntingly bowed guitar of Jón Thor (“Jónsi”) Birgisson, the group leaves traditional song forms on some lower, less magical plane, slipping instead into ever-shifting environments of sound. It also does not get much more enigmatic. Beyond the difficulties for non-Icelandic speakers in understanding some of Jónsi’s lyrics, there is the fact that Jónsi sings the remainder of his songs in a self-invented language he calls Hopelandish. In its original, sung version, Flugufrelsarinn relates a parable of salvation and sacrifice, in which an unnamed narrator tries to rescue helpless flies in a lake from the of the approaching salmon. Fortunately the critical and popular response to Sigur Rós has been anything but enigmatic: in addition to its early fans around the world – including fellow musicians like , Beck, the band , and, of course, Kronos – the group reached new audiences through the inclusion of one of its songs, “Svefn-g-englar” (Dreams of Angels), on the soundtrack for the film Vanilla Sky. In 2001, Sigur Rós earned still more recognition in this country as the winner of the prestigious Shortlist Prize for new music. In light of Sigur Rós’s own wide-ranging music, it is no surprise to discover that the group’s members are enthusiastic fans of the Kronos Quartet. After hearing Sigur Rós’s 1999 breakthrough album, Ágætis Byrjun, and seeing the group in concert, David Harrington of Kronos and arranger Stephen Prutsman met the members of Sigur Rós and were invited to visit their studio outside of Reykjavík. The two ensembles later rehearsed together in Iceland. Born in in 1960, Stephen Prutsman began playing the piano by ear before moving on to more formal music studies. In his early teens he was the keyboard player for several rock groups, including Cerberus and Vysion. In the early 1990s he was a medal winner at the Tchaikovsky and Queen Elisabeth piano competitions, which led to performances in various prestigious music centers and with leading orchestras in the US and Europe. In 2004, Prutsman was appointed to a three-year term to the position of Artistic Partner with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, where he acts as composer, arranger, conductor, program host, and pianist. Prutsman’s long collaboration with Kronos has resulted in over 40 arrangements of distinctive and varying musical languages. Stephen Prutsman’s arrangement of Flugufrelsarinn was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Reykjavik Arts Festival. Kronos’s recording of Flugufrelsarinn is available as a download through the iTunes Store. - Matthew Campbell

Pete Townshend (b. 1945) “Baba O’Riley” (1971) (arr. Jacob Garchik) Pete Townshend, ’s guitarist and principal songwriter, was born into a musical family in Chiswick, West London. He attended Ealing Art College, where he broadened his mind on a diet of radical performance art and American blues music, both of which would eventually inform the Detours as they worked their passage through the West London club and pub circuit. With the arrival in 1964 of drummer Keith Moon and managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, The Who were on their way, with Townshend increasingly cast in the role of leader and spokesman. Townshend soon found himself at the forefront of the British musical boom of the 1960s. As guitarist and composer of the band, he became the driving force behind one of the most powerful, inventive, and articulate bodies of work in rock. From early classic three-minute singles like “My Generation,” “Substitute,” and “I Can See For Miles,” to complete song cycles in the shape of Tommy, Lifehouse, and Quadrophenia, Townshend established himself as one of the most gifted and imaginative musicians working in the rock field. He has run his own book publishing company and worked as an editor at the literary house of Faber & Faber, which, in 1985, published Horse’s Neck, a collection of his short stories. Townshend has published his memoir Who I Am and is currently working on Floss, an ambitious new music project. “Baba O’Riley” (also known as “Teenage Wasteland”) was recorded by The Who for the 1971 album Who’s Next. The title is inspired by Meher Baba, the Indian spiritual master, and , whose A Rainbow in Curved Air was a great influence on Townshend. Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of “Baba O’Riley” was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.

Jherek Bischoff (b. 1979) Jherek Bischoff is equal parts songwriter, producer, performer, and composer. He has also been called a “pop polymath” (The New York Times), a “Seattle phenom” (The New Yorker), and “the missing link between the sombre undertones of and the unpredictability of ” (NME). In his 30 odd years, Bischoff has played in numerous bands and musical configurations, including , , The Degenerate Art Ensemble, The Dead Science, , the Wordless Music Orchestra, and a various and sundry mix of musicians around the world. Bischoff is an instinctive collaborator and has been one since his formative days spent sailing the world with his family, hopping ashore at various ports to serve as an impromptu Bischoff family backing band to locals. About working with Kronos, Bischoff writes: “Writing for Kronos Quartet has been a dream come true. I have been a fan of their work for longer than I can remember. I could pretend that it is not super exciting, but I genuinely feel like a kid in a candy store knowing they can pull off anything I write for them and it will be played brilliantly and with love. “When I was first commissioned to write a piece for Kronos Quartet’s 40th anniversary, my first impulse was to write something complicated and challenging. But then I thought I should write something simply beautiful. In the end, I sought to silence the thoughts of what I should write and truly write from the heart. “Stranger is my third piece for Kronos Quartet, along with A Semiperfect Number and Flying Rivers. These songs are ecstatic and more uplifting than anything I have written before. I think that owes to the fact that it is a joyful exercise to write for Kronos Quartet, the ensemble that introduced me to the world of classical music. “I hope that you will hear joy in this music, and I want to thank Kronos Quartet and their whole team for inviting me to create with them.”

Kronos Quartet For more than 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning over 950 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos has received over 40 awards, including the Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prizes, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. On tour for five months per year, Kronos appears in the world’s most prestigious concert halls, clubs, and festivals. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on recordings, including the Grammy and Latin Grammy nominated Nuevo (2002) and the 2004 Grammy Award-winner ’s . Kronos’s most recent releases include the One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley box set; Folk Songs, featuring Sam Amidon, , , and Natalie Merchant singing traditional songs; the collaborative album Ladilikan with Trio Da Kali, an ensemble of Malian griot musicians assembled by Aga Khan Music Initiative; and the collaborative album Landfall with . The nonprofit Kronos Performing Arts Association manages all aspects of Kronos’s work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home season performances, education programs, and a self- produced Kronos Festival. In 2015, Kronos launched Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, an education and legacy project that is commissioning – and distributing for free – the first learning library of contemporary repertoire for string quartet.

Jherek Bischoff Bass guitar Jherek Bischoff is a Los Angeles-based composer, arranger, producer and multi-instrumental performer. He has collaborated with the likes of Kronos Quartet, , Neil Gaiman, and , and has performed in venues and festivals around the globe, including Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, , , and Tasmania’s MONA FOMA. His work as a composer has garnered commissions from Kronos Quartet, Lincoln Center, and St. Ann’s Warehouse, and has been performed by Seattle Symphony, Adelaide Art Orchestra, Wordless Music, Stargaze, and yMusic. His critically acclaimed releases include Cistern, Composed, and a co-release with Amanda Palmer – Strung Out In Heaven: A Bowie String Quartet Tribute. After the release of Cistern, Bischoff was awarded the artist in residence for Times Square’s Midnight Moment, where his video for “Cistern” was broadcast every night on Times Square’s electronic billboards, culminating in two live performances in the middle of Times Square. Bischoff’s work for film and television includes the documentary Thank You For Coming, Starz’ Blunt Talk, and Netflix’s A Futile and Stupid Gesture and : First Day of Camp. Bischoff’s theatre work includes Robert Wilson’s Der Sandmann for Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer for Theater Basel, and Johnny Breitwieser for Vienna’s Schauspielhaus. Currently, Bischoff is developing two new theatre productions, scoring for film and television, and releasing new music with direct fan support via Patreon.

Kronos Quartet and Jherek Bischoff made their Royal Conservatory debuts during the 2016 edition of 21C Music Festival on May 25 and May 28, respectively.