History

The quartet was founded by violinist David Harrington in Seattle, Washington. Its first performance was in November 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers (from 1978 to 1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello. In 1999, Joan Jeanrenaud left Kronos because she was "eager for something new"; she was replaced by Jennifer Culp who, in turn, left in 2005 and was replaced by Jeffrey Zeigler. In June 2013, Zeigler was replaced by Sunny Yang. With almost forty studio albums to their credit and having performed worldwide, they were called "probably the most famous 'new music' group in the world" and were praised in philosophical studies of music for the inclusiveness of their repertoire.

By the time the quartet celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary, in 1999, they had a repertoire of over 600 works, which included 400 string quartets written for them, more than 3,000 performances, seven first-prize ASCAP awards, Edison Awards in classical and popular music, and had sold more than 1.5 million records.

30th anniversary

When Kronos turned 30, in 2003, they decided on a commissioning process for composers under the age of 30, in the hope of bringing some of the talented young composers to light. The program, called the Under 30 Project, is now run in cooperation with Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Montalvo Arts Center. The first recipient was Alexandra du Bois (at the time a student at Indiana University, later a Juilliard School graduate), followed by Felipe Perez Santiago (born in Mexico in 1973), and Dan Visconti (born in Illinois in 1982); in 2007, Israeli composer Aviya Kopelman became the fourth.

40th anniversary

To celebrate the fortieth year of the organization, the Kronos Quartet decided to return to Seattle, the city in which they first played, and work in collaboration with Seattle's Degenerate Art Ensemble to create a piece incorporating music, dance and video. They celebrated their 40th anniversary with a sold-out performance at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, in December 2013. The same year, Michael Giacchino, a soundtrack composer who often names his pieces with puns, published a piece named after them as a part of the soundtrack to Star Trek Into Darkness (the name of the piece is "The Kronos Wartet"), for a scene that takes place on the fictional planet "Kronos" (also spelled "Qo'noS").

New music/contemporary classical

Kronos specializes in new music/contemporary classical music and has a long history of commissioning new works. Over 750 works have been created for the Kronos Quartet. They have worked with many minimalist composers including John Adams, Arvo Pärt, George Crumb, Henryk Górecki, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Kevin Volans; collaborators hail from a diversity of countries - Kaija Saariaho from Finland, Pēteris Vasks from Latvia, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh from Azerbaijan, Homayun Sakhi from Afghanistan, Victoria Vita Polevá from Ukraine and Fernando Otero, Astor Piazzolla, and Osvaldo Golijov from Argentina. Some of Kronos' string-quartet arrangements were published in 2007.

Diverse genres

"I've always wanted the string quartet to be vital, and energetic, and alive, and cool, and not afraid to kick ass and be absolutely beautiful and ugly if it has to be. But it has to be expressive of life. To tell the story with grace and humor and depth. And to tell the whole story, if possible."
—David Harrington

Kronos covers a very broad range of musical genres: Mexican folk, experimental, pre-classical early music, movie soundtracks (Requiem for a Dream, Heat, The Fountain), jazz and tango. Kronos has also recorded adaptations of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze", Sigur Rós's "Flugufrelsarinn", Television's "Marquee Moon", Raymond Scott's "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals", and Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".

Kronos has also worked with a variety of global musicians, including Bollywood playback singer Asha Bhosle; Mexican-American painter Gronk; American soprano Dawn Upshaw; jazz composer/performer Pat Metheny; Mexican rockers Café Tacuba; Azerbaijani mugam singer Alim Qasimov; and the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks among others.

Kronos has performed live with the poet Allen Ginsberg, Ástor Piazzolla, The National, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, David Bowie, Paul McCartney and Björk, and has appeared on recordings with Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traore, Joan Armatrading, Brazilian electronica artist Amon Tobin, Texas yodeler Don Walser, Faith No More, Tiger Lillies and David Grisman.

On the 1998 Dave Matthews Band album Before These Crowded Streets, Kronos Quartet performed on the tracks "Halloween" and "The Stone". They also appeared on the 2007 Nine Inch Nails remix album, Year Zero Remixed doing a rendition of the track "Another Version of the Truth"". They also performed Lee Brooks' score for the short film 2081, based on the Kurt Vonnegut short story "Harrison Bergeron."

In 2009, the quartet contributed an acoustic version of Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night" for the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night produced by the Red Hot Organization.

Awards and recognition

Le Diapason d'Or de Mai

• 1997 Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind

Rolf Schock Prize

• 1999 Royal Swedish Academy of Music for Musical Arts in Music

Musical America

• 2003 Musicians of the Year

Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance

• 2004 Alban Berg: Lyric Suite

National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

• 2005 The Recording Academy President's Merit Award

Polar Music Prize

• 2011, the quartet was Laureates of The Polar Music Prize 2011 is being awarded to American string quartet Kronos Quartet. For almost 40 years, the Kronos Quartet has been revolutionizing the potential of the string quartet genre when it comes to both style and content. The same type of chamber music ensemble - two violins, a viola and a cello - for which Mozart and Beethoven wrote can also be used to comment on international politics, interpret avant-garde rock and incorporate music from every corner of the world

Recordings

Main article: Kronos Quartet discography

Published music

• Kronos Collection, Vol. 1. Boosey and Hawkes. 2007.

Films

• 1995 - Heat. - Written by Elliot Goldenthal featuring Kronos Quartet
• 1995 - Musical Outsiders: An American Legacy - Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and Terry Riley. Directed by Michael Blackwood.
• 2000 - Requiem for a Dream Soundtrack by Clint Mansell featuring Kronos Quartet.
• 2000 - The Man Who Cried. Directed by Sally Potter.
• 2006 - The Fountain Soundtrack by Clint Mansell featuring Kronos Quartet and Mogwai.
• 2009 - 2081. Directed by Chandler Tuttle.
• 2013 - Dirty Wars. Directed by Rick Rowley.
• 2014 - The Great Beauty. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]