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Kronos Quartet is a string quartet
String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments — usually two violins, a viola and cello — or a piece written to be performed by such a group....
 founded by violin
Violin

The violin is a Bow string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello....
ist David Harrington in 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California

The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States, with a 2007 estimated population of 799,183....
. The longest-running combination of performers (from 1978 to 1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola
Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.The casual observer may mistake the viola for the violin because of their similarity in size, closeness in pitch range , and nearly identical playing position....
 and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello
Cello

The violoncello is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra....
. Jennifer Culp replaced Jeanrenaud in 1999, and Jeffrey Zeigler in turn replaced Culp in 2005.

os specializes in new music and has a long history of commissioning
Commission (art)

In art, a commission is the hiring and payment for the creation of a piece, often on behalf of another.In classical music, Musical ensembles are often said to commission pieces from composers, wherein the ensemble secures the composer's payment from private or public organizations or donors....
 new works.






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Kronos Quartet is a string quartet
String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments — usually two violins, a viola and cello — or a piece written to be performed by such a group....
 founded by violin
Violin

The violin is a Bow string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello....
ist David Harrington in 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California

The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States, with a 2007 estimated population of 799,183....
. The longest-running combination of performers (from 1978 to 1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola
Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.The casual observer may mistake the viola for the violin because of their similarity in size, closeness in pitch range , and nearly identical playing position....
 and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello
Cello

The violoncello is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra....
. Jennifer Culp replaced Jeanrenaud in 1999, and Jeffrey Zeigler in turn replaced Culp in 2005.

New music

Kronos specializes in new music and has a long history of commissioning
Commission (art)

In art, a commission is the hiring and payment for the creation of a piece, often on behalf of another.In classical music, Musical ensembles are often said to commission pieces from composers, wherein the ensemble secures the composer's payment from private or public organizations or donors....
 new works. In fact, over 600 works have been created for the Kronos Quartet. They have worked with many minimalist
Minimalist music

Minimalist music is an originally American genre of experimental music or Downtown music named in the 1960s based mostly in consonance and dissonance, steady pulse , stasis and slow transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrase or smaller units such as Figure , Motif , and Cell ....
 composers including Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt

Arvo P?rt , is an Estonian classical composer. P?rt works in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabulation and hypnotic repetitions influenced by the intellectual counterpoint elements of European jazz, but fitting into European-American classical post-modernism rather than so-called world music....
, Henryk Górecki
Henryk Górecki

Henryk Mikolaj G?recki is a composer of contemporary classical music. G?recki studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955?60....
, Steve Reich
Steve Reich

File:Steve Reich2.jpgStephen Michael Reich is an United States composer who pioneered the style of minimalist music. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns , and the use of simple, audible processes to explore musical concepts ....
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public ....
, Roberto Carnevale
Roberto Carnevale

Roberto Carnevale is an Italy composer, pianist and Conductor .Born in Catania, he started studying piano at the age of seven. He took a degree in Arts at the University of Catania and he attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena....
, Terry Riley
Terry Riley

Terry Riley is an American composer associated with the minimalism school....
 and Kevin Volans
Kevin Volans

Kevin Volans is a composer associated with the minimalism movement in contemporary composition. He was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa on July 6, 1949, and even though he has spent most of his life outside his native country, is the best known South African composer active today....
.

Kronos has collaborated with composers from a diversity of countries such as Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho

Kaija Saariaho is a Finland composer.Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by combining live music and electronics....
 from Finland, Peteris Vasks
Peteris Vasks

Peteris Vasks is a Latvia composer.Vasks was born in Aizpute, Latvia, into the family of a Baptist pastor. He trained as a double-bass player, and played in several Latvian orchestras before entering the State Conservatory in Vilnius in the neighboring Lithuania to study composition, as he was prevented from doing this in Latvia due to S...
 from Latvia, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh is an Azerbaijani composer and pianist, currently living in Germany. She is best known for her works which combine the musical tradition of the Azerbaijani mugam and 20th century Western compositional techniques, especially those of Arnold Sch?nberg and Gara Garayev....
 from Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan , is the largest and most populous country in the South Caucasus, located partially in Eastern Europe and partially in Western Asia....
, Roberto Paci Dalň
Roberto Paci Dalň

Roberto Paci Dal? is an Italy composer and musician, film and theatre director, visual artist.After musical, visual, and architectural studies in Fiesole, Faenza and Ravenna, in 1993 he has been recipient of the ?Berliner K?nstlerprogramm des DAAD? Fellowship....
 from Italy, and Osvaldo Golijov
Osvaldo Golijov

Osvaldo No? Golijov is a Grammy award winning composer of european classical music....
 from Argentina
Argentina

Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is a country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city....
. Golijov is a MacArthur Fellow who has done compositions and arrangements for Kronos CDs such as Caravan and Nuevo.

Recently, the Kronos Quartet began a commission process for composers under the age of 30, in the hope of bringing some of the talented young composers to light. Two early recipients were Perez Santiago, born in Mexico in 1973, and Alexandra du Bois, a student at Indiana University; in 2007, Israeli composer Aviya Kopelman became the fourth such composer.

Diverse genres

Kronos covers a very broad range of musical genres: Mexican folk
Music of Mexico

The music of Mexico is diverse and features a wide range of different musical styles influenced by a variety of cultures, most notably Amerindian and European....
, experimental
Experimental music

Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in North America, and whose most famous and influential exponent was John Cage ....
, pre-classical early music
Early music

Early music is commonly defined as European classical music from the Medieval music and the Renaissance music.The Early Music Movement as a trend in history is the study and performance of music from composers before our own era and began in 1829 when Felix Mendelssohn conducted Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion ....
, movie soundtracks (Requiem for a Dream
Requiem for a Dream (soundtrack)

Requiem for a Dream is the title of a film score album released in 2000 in film to accompany the Darren Aronofsky film Requiem for a Dream....
, Heat, The Fountain), jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
  and tango
Tango music

Tango is a style of music that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay. It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta t?pica, which includes two violins, piano, doublebass, and two bandoneons....
. Kronos has even recorded adaptations of Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall Hendrix was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter whose guitar playing continues to be a considerable influence on rock music....
's "Purple Haze
Purple Haze

"Purple Haze" is a song written in 1966 in music and recorded in 1967 in music by The Jimi Hendrix Experience and released as a single in both the United Kingdom and the United States....
", Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós

Sigur R?s are an Icelandic post-rock band with melodic, Classical music and minimalist music elements. The band is known for its ethereal sound and lead singer J?n ??r Birgisson falsetto voice....
's "Flugufrelsarinn", Television
Television (band)

Television, formed in New York City in 1973, is an United States rock music band. Although Television never had more than a cult audience in their American homeland, they achieved significant commercial success in Europe and today are widely regarded as one of the key founders of punk rock....
's "Marquee Moon
Marquee Moon

Marquee Moon is Television 's 1977 debut album . It was re-released September 23, 2003....
", and Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott

Raymond Scott , was an American composer, band leader, pianist, engineer, recording studio maverick, and electronic instrument inventor. He was born in Brooklyn, New York to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants....
's "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals".

Composers aside, Kronos has teamed up with artists from around the world, including Bollywood
Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry in India. The term is often used to refer to the whole of Cinema of India....
 playback singer
Playback singer

A playback singer is a singer whose singing is prerecorded for use in movies. Playback singers record songs on Soundtrack, and actors or actresses lip-sync the songs for cameras....
 Asha Bhosle
Asha Bhosle

Asha Bhosle is an Indian singer. She is best known as a Bollywood playback singer, although she has a much wider repertoire. Her career started in 1943 and has spanned over six decades....
; Mexican-American painter Gronk
Gronk

For the British Rail locomotive also known as "Gronk", see British Rail Class 08.Gronk is the artistic name of Chicano painter, printmaker, and performance artist Glugio Nicondra....
; the American soprano
Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four part chorale style harmony the soprano takes the highest part which usually encompasses the melody....
 Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw

Dawn Upshaw is a world-renowned United States soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times....
; jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
 composer/performer Pat Metheny
Pat Metheny

Patrick Bruce Metheny is an United States jazz guitarist and composer.One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects....
; Mexican rockers
Rock music

Rock music is a loosely defined genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the mid 1950's. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rhythm and blues, country music and other influences....
 Café Tacuba
Café Tacuba

Caf? Tacuba is a Grammy Award and Latin Grammy Award-winning musical group from Naucalpan, Mexico . They were founded in 1989, and since then have had the same musical lineup:...
; and the Romanian gypsy
Roma people

The Romani are an ethnic group of Europe tracing their Origins of the Romani people to middle kingdoms of India.The Romani are Romani diaspora with their largest concentrated populations in Europe, especially the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe, with more recent diaspora populations in the Americas and, to a lesser extent, in other par...
 band Taraf de Haidouks.

Kronos has performed live with the likes of the late poet Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an United States poet. Ginsberg is best known for the poem "Howl" , celebrating his friends who were members of the Beat Generation and attacking what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States....
, Astor Piazzolla
Ástor Piazzolla

?stor Pantale?n Piazzolla was an Argentina tango music composer and bandone?n player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and European classical music....
, the Modern Jazz Quartet
Modern Jazz Quartet

The Modern Jazz Quartet was established in 1952 by Milt Jackson , John Lewis , Percy Heath , and Kenny Clarke . Connie Kay replaced Clarke in 1955....
, Tom Waits
Tom Waits

Thomas Alan Waits is an United Statesn singer-songwriter, composer and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of Bourbon whiskey, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." With this trademark growl, his incorpo...
, David Bowie
David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and Arrangement. Active in five decades of rock music and frequently reinventing his music and image, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s....
, and Björk
Björk

Bj?rk Gu?mundsd?ttir is an Icelandic singer-songwriter, composer, actor and record producer, whose work includes seven solo albums and two film soundtracks....
, and has appeared on recordings with such diverse artists as singer-songwriters Dave Matthews
Dave Matthews

David John Matthews is a South African-United States Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band, but he has also worked as a solo artist, and with other musicians such as Tim Reynolds and Trey Anastasio....
, Nelly Furtado
Nelly Furtado

Nelly Kim Furtado is a Grammy Award-winning Canada singer of Portuguese people ancestry. She is a singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress....
, Rokia Traore
Rokia Traoré

Rokia Traor? is an award-winning Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist. Rokia was born in Mali as a member of the Bambara ethnic group. As her father was a diplomat, she travelled widely in her youth including to Algeria, Saudi Arabia, France and Belgium....
, Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading

Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, Order of the British Empire, is a United Kingdom singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Armatrading is a three-time Grammy Award-nominee ....
, Brazilian electronica
Electronica

Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing....
 artist Amon Tobin
Amon Tobin

Amon Adonai Santos de Ara?jo Tobin , better known as Amon Tobin, is a Brazilian people electronic musician, and Disc jockey. He is best known for his use of sampling ....
, Texas yodeler Don Walser
Don Walser

Donald Ray Walser was an United States country music singer. He was known as a unique, award-winning yodeling "Texas country music legend." ...
, Faith No More
Faith No More

Faith No More is an American alternative metal band who formed in San Francisco, California, and were active between 1984 and 1998. Faith No More combined elements of heavy metal music, funk music, progressive rock, hip hop music, hardcore punk, thrash metal, and jazz, among many others, and have been hailed as an influential rock band....
, Tiger Lillies
Tiger Lillies

The Tiger Lillies are a three-piece band, formed in 1989 and based in London. They have toured worldwide and won acclaim with their opera Struwwelpeter....
 and David Grisman
David Grisman

David Grisman is a Bluegrass music/Progressive bluegrass mandolinist and composer of acoustic music. In the early 1990s, he started the Acoustic Disc record label in an effort to preserve and spread acoustic or instrumental music....
.

Most recently, Kronos appears on Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock music group, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio, Ohio. As its main Producer , singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction....
' latest remix album, Year Zero Remixed
Year Zero Remixed

Year Zero Remixed is the Anglicization title of a Nine Inch Nails remix album, published in a leetspeak rendering as Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D and was released on November 20, 2007....
, released November 20, 2007. They also performed Lee Brooks
Lee Brooks

Lee Raymond Brooks is a composer and sound designer for film....
' score for the short film 2081, based on the Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a prolific and genre-bending American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five , Cat's Cradle , and Breakfast of Champions .He was also known for his Humanism beliefs and being honorary president of the American Humanist Association....
 short story, Harrison Bergeron
Harrison Bergeron

"Harrison Bergeron" is a dystopian science fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and first published in October, 1961. Throughout the story Vonnegut uses satire, and the story itself could be classified as a satire....
.

Kronos
Cronus

Cronus or Kronos, , was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titan , divine descendants of Gaia , the earth, and Uranus , the sky....
' compact disc of the The Cusp of Magic, released in 2008, is a work composed by Terry Riley
Terry Riley

Terry Riley is an American composer associated with the minimalism school....
 (b.1935) in 2004, to mark the rite of passage
Rite of passage

A rite of passage is a ritual that marks a change in a person's social status. It is a universal phenomenon which can show anthropologists what social hierarchies, values and beliefs are important in specific cultures....
 of his seventieth birthday, shared with the Northern Hemisphere's Summer Solstice and more loosely, with the rite of Midsummer
Midsummer

Many people say that the fairies dance on midsummer's eve, and those in Ireland may even stay up all night watching for them. They re said to dance after huge feasts, then sing and play music and tell stories....
 Eve, that for pagan traditions is the demarcation of the ending/beginning of the Wheel of the Year.

Awards and recognition

Le Diapason d'Or de Mai
  • 1997 Osvaldo Golijov
    Osvaldo Golijov

    Osvaldo No? Golijov is a Grammy award winning composer of european classical music....
    '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
Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance

The Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance has been awarded since 1959. The award has had several minor name changes:*From 1959 to 1960 the award was known as Best Classical Performance - Chamber Music ...
  • 2004
    Grammy Awards of 2004

    The 46th Grammy Awards were held on the February 8, 2004. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Beyonc? Knowles was the night's biggest winner by taking home 5 Grammys....
      Alban Berg
    Alban Berg

    Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Gustav Mahler Romantic music with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique....
    : Lyric Suite
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc. is known variously as The Recording Academy or NARAS. Established in 1957, it is a U.S....
  • 2005 The Recording Academy President's Merit Award


Quotation

"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 whole story with grace and humor and depth. And to tell the whole story, if possible."
– David Harrington

Recordings


Films

  • 1995 - Musical Outsiders: An American Legacy - Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and Terry Riley. Directed by Michael Blackwood.


External links

  • Kronos Quartet *Interview with