KRONOS: NO CHALLENGE TOO GREAT
Even after 50 years, the unique Kronos Quartet is still plunging headlong into new music, with three world premieres June 20 to open its San Francisco weekend festival. After half a century, it’s safe to say no such ensemble has ever presented more contemporary pieces, with more than 1,000 (mostly living) composers featured. And so many of these are high-intensity virtuoso opuses, wherein the players threaten to saw right through their strings with the vigorous, eye-blurring bowings.
No place for stragglers!!
The four-day fest, with a new program each night (of course!), lead off with a broad range, from Glass and Sun Ra, to a tribute to Chinese-American music with pipa virtuoso Wu Man.
No, Toto, Kronos is no mere string quartet!
The unorthodox concert tribute entailed a talk on Chinese-American history leading into a rousing quintet of Kronos plus Wu Man—the East meeting West squarely and amicably, pentatonic and tonality blended—in Dai Wei’s “Through the Narrow Gate.” Wu Man’s accomplished play plucking the strings of a pipa is extraordinary, whether blending nimbly with the four Kronos string players or doing dulcet accompaniments to an interview of historian David Lei—-arguably the most heterogeneous interplay yet attempted at the SF Jazz Center’s Miner Auditorium. Wu Man’s play can make cherry trees bloom.
And, as background for “Through the Narrow Gate,” came snatches of an early-20th-century Edison-cylinder recording of Cantonese opera found in an archive, blended with composer Dai Wei’s own voice.
Another Kronos marker was most of the program featuring women composers, including Marvel Jem Roth, Haeon Lee, Dai Wei and Aleksandra Vrebalov, with the latter winning the sought-after Gravemeyer Prize this year. Here, in “Gold Came from Space,” Vrebalov has created a work destined to win wide acceptance, settling down after a whirlwind of tremolos to a fetching, song-like viola solo, beautifully rendered by Hank Dutt.
The fearless Kronos players bite off one challenge after another, even delving into the spikiest music of recent times. These entailed, in addition to the Sun Ra/Terry Riley adaptation, Sahba Aminikia’s “Four Seasons” excerpt, Zachary Watkins’ ”Black Body Radiance,” and an arrangement of a Philip Glass piano etude—the latter the only work all night written prior to last year.
Works were amplified, with several prerecorded segments, keeping sound engineer Scott Fraser on the move.
The fearless Kronos players, still in lightning-fast form, included, from the top, the oldest tenured player David Harrington, John Sherba, Hank Dutt and, at cello, newcomer Paul Wiancko. These concerts will entail a farewell to both Sherba and Dutt, two stalwarts with 45-plus years’ service here.
Under longtime Manager Janet Cowperthwaite, who is also moving on this year, Kronos is based in San Francisco. End of one era, start of another!
Kronos Festival, the quartet in the first of the June 20-23 concerts. Nightly new rep. Miner Auditorium, S.F. Jazz Center. For Kronos info: www.kronosquartet.org. Or call (415) 788-7353.
