Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
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I can’t believe how many times I have seen the Kronos Quartet in the past 5 years: indoors, outdoors, in workshops, amidst ruins, with a gamelan, etc. Even more surprising is the fact that it is always a different experience. The last time that I got to see them was at Carnegie Hall in an evening of commissioned pieces from 4 different composers, tied together by the idea of persistence of memory, as expressed by Salvador Dalí in his eponymous painting. As David Harrington explained in the program notes, he even envisionned a way to get the audience through the canvas but you will have to read further to know what he meant…
Salvado Dalí – Persistence of Memory (1913)
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Posted by Kelsey Walsh »
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The Kronos Quartet’s recent concert at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Novellus Theater was unquestionably the highlight of my week. The program included a wide variety of works, and Kronos and friends performed at a very high standard. Each of the works presented was written or arranged for Kronos, including the world premieres of Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ’s All Clear (in which the composer performed on đàn Tranh, đàn Bầu, k’ni, artillery gongs and vocals) and Danny Clay’s arrangement of music by Delia Derbyshire Mosaic (from music of Delia Derbyshire): in memory of Connie Sterne.
Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ
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Posted by Paul Kilbey »
3 Comments »In Death to Kosmische you have the string quartet use a stylophone and an omnichord. In the past you’ve used an Atari 2600 games console. Is your fascination with the sound of these old electronic instruments, or with the technology, or both?
Both. My fascination with old electronics stems from my childhood. My father is an electronics collector/retailer/repairman and our house was always filled with various incarnations of electronic devices, many of them not working properly. By the time I came around the house was already full of vintage machines and this collection continued to grow throughout the 70s and 80s as we’d receive the latest device to test drive (Betamax machines, video disc players, video game consoles, etc.). I was always surrounded by these sounds so they became part of my subconscious. For me the sonorities generated by these machines feel very natural placed within an otherwise ‘traditional’ acoustic ensemble. Certain sounds have become iconic to me and I want to capture and manipulate these “icons” within a new environment. For example, the sounds from the first video games from the late 70s/early 80s: 8-bit, unrefined, gritty. When these are fused with orchestra they take on a new dimension. Or the voice: Slim Whitman sounds like Slim Whitman, Rob Halford’s falsetto scream is one of a kind – he’s done this for a long time and it’s been in my brain for 25 years. The only way to capture this very particular sound is to go straight to the source: on vinyl. I want to use these colours.
Nicole Lizée
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Posted by Paul Kilbey »
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The Kronos Quartet completed their week-long residence with the Barbican Centre in London with a typically audacious and varied programme in Wilton’s Music Hall, a kitchy and historic venue in East London which says it is “the oldest surviving Grand Music Hall in the world”. Kronos were in a more light-hearted mood than they had been at Awakenings the previous night, playing a set which they called “Early Music”.
Kronos Quartet – Photograph by Michael Wilson
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