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tracks recorded with Sunny, several tracks with Joan, several tracks with Jennifer and several tracks with Jeff. There are three or four different producers and arrangers. And lots of relation- ships that we’ve had with guest performers.”
A
Talking about string-quartet longevity in the scheme of things, there could be any number of models or inspirations. Take the Budapest String Quartet (1917-1967) and the Janác
(1947 to date). Speaking in February 2014, Harrington gives a holding reply concerning inspirations for longevity: “I’m sure every quartet has its own dynamic and internal energy…”
Thoughts gathered, he hits his stride: “I would look at some- body like Pete Seeger for inspiration probably more than I would a lot of other people. I heard he was out chopping wood ten days before he died [in January 2014]. And I’m sure he was singing, too. For me, I feel like the string quartet is my instrument, more than the violin is my instrument. I’m sure I play the violin and deal with all the things you have to deal with to play the violin in order to have the quartet as my instrument.”
He pauses. “I don’t know if it belongs in this article. I was hop-
ing, really, really hoping that I’d be able to call Pete Seeger about right now and see if he would appear with us on March 28th at Carnegie Hall for part of our 40th year concert and do We Shall Overcome with the whole audience at Carnegie Hall. I had it all planned but it wasn’t to work out that way.”
From early on, their dedication to waiving or bending rules shone bright. Kronos first came to wider, international attention on the mighty mandolin master David Grisman’s Mondo Mando (1981). It was a session so pungent with sensimilla that, while Gris- man’s playing grew ever stronger, they were glad to get out of the studio alive. (An aside: Silvestre Revueltas’ Sensemayá on their 2002 Nuevo album bottles dope paranoia, creating new realms of string-quartet sinisterness.) The cassette-only Kronos Quartet album on the Sounds Wonderful label gave a portent of what might be coming down the future world music pipeline with Peter Sculthorpe’s Quartet No 8, partially inspired by Indonesian rice- pounding work-song rhythmicality “We were learning how to record. It’s been a long, long time since I heard that,” Harrington laughs. “You’ve got to start somewhere and that’s where we start- ed.” (The Australian composer’s quartet was reprised on their simi- larly titled Nonesuch album Kronos Quartet (1996).)
Pieces Of Africa (1992) proved a gear-change example of their mélange approach to programming music beyond the usual frames of reference for string quartet repertoire. It eventually included compositions by Hamza El Din, Hassan Hakmoun, Foday Musa Suso and Kevin Volans. “For me, Pieces Of Africa goes way back,” he avers. “I can trace it to when I was in high school and began to hear African music; and there being a feeling or a sound that I hoped one day might be a part of our music before I knew what our music was. I just wanted to make that kind of sound some day. It wasn’t until 1984 that the first composer from Africa wrote a piece for Kronos. That was Kevin Volans [with White Man Sleeps]. It wasn’t until 1992 that that album came out. So, it took eight years to assemble that body of music.”
In April 1995 Harrington’s sixteen-year-old son, Adam (memo-
rialised in Cortejo Fúnebre En El Monte Diablo on Kronos Caravan in 2000 and expanded on 2001’s Requiem For Adam), died on Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County, north of San Francisco. Early Music (Lachrymæ Antiquæ) (1997) gave the first public display of emotional release, with music from Dowland, Louis Hardin (better known as Moondog), Purcell and Hildegard von Bingen. In Octo- ber 1997, also in a state of personal bereavement (and with no UK premiere scheduled), I drove from London to see the Kronos per- form Early Music at Berlin-Kreuzberg’s Kirche zum Heiligen Kreuz. At several junctures tears flowed.
“There was this sense at a certain point,” Harrington admits, “where it seemed like I had a certain image – and that image was being surrounded by music of the past and the pre- sent and the future; and whichever way I turned I couldn’t tell whether it was the past or the present or the future. I don’t know whether that was a dream or a daydream or a thought or what it was. But it became something that I felt we should try to express in music.” He inhales. “We had started working on this album and that’s when Adam died. We even had to go back and re-record a few things because the performance didn’t seem right any longer after that and I needed to do it. I don’t know how to explain this. At a certain point that became the only thing I could possibly hear. It became for me personally almost like a lifeline.”
ˇek Quartet
ll four cellists appear on 2014’s A Thousand Thoughts, a title directly translated from the Swedish folk group Triakel’s Tusen Tankar from the Swedish traditional singer, Thyra Karlsson of Östersund, Jämtland. “A Thousand Thoughts,” Harrington explains, “has four
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