Kronos Quartet Kicks Off 'FIFTY FOR THE FUTURE' Events at Carnegie Hall This Spring

This April, Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association celebrates spring with events tied to Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, an exciting partnership with Carnegie Hall and others to create 50 new works - by 25 women and 25 men - expressly for the training of students and emerging professionals.

Concerts at Zankel Hall highlight the first crop of Kronos' Fifty for the Future pieces, performed by Kronos (April 2) and a trio of emerging quartets (April 15). Five of the works will be issued online for free onApril 15. With a clutch of additional tour performances in the mix, it's an exceptionally fertile season for the iconic ensemble.

On Saturday, April 2 (7:30 pm) Kronos Quartet brings a program consisting entirely of world and New York premieres to Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Four of the pieces, including the world premieres by Aleksandra Vrebalov and Yotam Haber, are part of Kronos' Fifty for the Future. The evening also includes music by Wu Man, Pete Townshend, Nicole Lizée, and others; guest artists include kantele (Finnish zither) player Ritva Koistinen and electronic artist Philip White.

The program in full:

Aleksandra Vrebalov: My Desert, My Rose (world premiere, Fifty for the Future commission)

Nicole Lizée: The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop [Fiber-Optic Flowers] (NY Premiere)

N. Rajam: Dadra in Raga Bhairavi (arr. Reena Esmail) (NY Premiere)

Wu Man: "Ancient Echo" from Four Chinese Paintings (arr. Danny Clay) (NY Premiere, Fifty for the Future commission)

Karin Rehnqvist: All Those Strings! with Ritva Koistinen, kantele (NY Premiere)

Yotam Haber: break_break_break with Philip White, electronics (world premiere, Fifty for the Future commission)

Fodé Lassana Diabaté: "Bara kala ta" from Sunjata's Time (arr. Jacob Garchik) (NY Premiere, Fifty for the Future commission)

Pete Townshend: Baba O'Riley (arr. Jacob Garchik) (NY Premiere)

Albert Behar: Lost Wax (NY Premiere)

The evening forms a colorful snapshot of Kronos' omnivorous sensibility, with works inspired by Hindustani raga (Rajam), Chinese folk music (Wu Man), string theory (Rehnqvist), and South African rap-rave sounds (Haber). There are tributes to pioneering electronic composer Delia Derbyshire (Lizée), frequent Kronos collaborator Terry Riley (Townshend), Malian warrior-prince Sunjata (Diabaté), and the ethnographic field recordings of Béla Bartók (Behar).

Following the April 2 performance, Kronos will be in residence at Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute to lead a weeklong workshop for young professional string quartets. The residency culminates in a recital by a trio of emerging ensembles on Friday, April 15 (9 pm) at Zankel Hall. Under the rubric "Kronos: Creating a New Repertoire," the Argus Quartet (Los Angeles), Friction Quartet (San Francisco), and Ligeti Quartet (London) will perform Fifty for the Future works by Fodé Lassana Diabaté, Garth Knox, and Wu Man, plus selections from Terry Riley's Salome Dances for Peace. Each quartet will play a different movement of each piece, enabling listeners to hear different interpretations in the same evening.

Altogether, the program offers a compelling look at Kronos's Fifty for the Futureproject in action:

Fodé Lassana Diabaté: Selections from Sunjata's Time (arr. Jacob Garchik) (NY Premiere, Fifty for the Future commission)

Garth Knox: Satellites (NY Premiere, Fifty for the Future commission)

Wu Man: Selections from Four Chinese Paintings (arr. Danny Clay) (NY Premiere, Fifty for the Future commission)

Terry Riley: Selections from Salome Dances for Peace
- The Gift
- The Ecstasy
- Good Medicine

Note: Kronos Quartet will not perform on the April 15 program. Tickets for both concerts are available at carnegiehall.org.

Also on April 15, Kronos will make the first five Fifty for the Future pieces available online free of charge at kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future. In addition to the Diabaté, Knox, Vrebalov, and Wu Man works mentioned above, the initial set of five includes Franghiz Ali-Zadeh's R?qs (Dance). Each piece will be offered in an online module containing the score and parts, a recording, program notes, a videotaped interview with the composer, performance notes/instructions, and other relevant materials about the composition. Over the next five years, the project will result in 50 compositions, all distributed for free in this way.

The works are graded in difficulty, from beginner through professional level, enabling young quartets to develop as players by working their way up through the ascending levels of complexity and technical challenge. Each composition represents a fully realized musical work, to be programmed amid the other repertoire in Kronos' own touring season. The next five works in the online series will be posted this fall; watch this space for details.

Meanwhile, the second group of Fifty for the Future composers has been announced, comprising five women and five men: Laurie Anderson (USA), Raven Chacon (Navajo Nation/USA), Guillermo Galindo (Mexico/USA), Philip Glass (USA), Aleksander Ko?ciów (Poland), Nicole Lizée (Canada), Anna Meredith(UK), Kala Ramnath (India/USA), Karin Rehnqvist (Sweden), and Trey Spruance (USA). For further details on Kronos' Fifty for the Future initiative, visitkronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future.

An adventurous list of partners - including presenters, academic institutions, foundations, and individuals - join forces to support this unprecedented project. For more information on Kronos' Fifty for the Future partners, visit kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future/partners.

Other major performances this spring include a March 11 show featuring indie rocker Jherek Bischoff at the Strand Theater in San Francisco; concerto appearances on March 18 + 19 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as part of Bryce Dessner's MusicNOW festival; and a Cal Performances concert in Berkeley on May 1, playing Terry Riley's evening-length Sun Rings. For information on these shows and many others, visit kronosquartet.org.

For more than 40 years, San Francisco's Kronos Quartet-David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)-has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. As one of the world's most celebrated and influential ensembles, Kronos has performed thousands of concerts, released more than 50 recordings, collaborated with many of the world's most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioned more than 850 works and arrangements for string quartet. A Grammy winner, Kronos is also the only recipient of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize.

Integral to Kronos' work is a series of long-running collaborations with many of the world's foremost composers, including Americans Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich; Azerbaijan's Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; Poland's Henryk Górecki; and Serbia's Aleksandra Vrebalov. Additional collaborators have included Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man, performance artist Laurie Anderson, Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov, Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, Beatles legend Paul McCartney, and rockers Tom Waits, Amon Tobin, and The National.

On tour for five months per year, Kronos appears in the world's most prestigious concert halls, clubs, and festivals. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on recordings, including Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy-nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2004 Grammy winner, Alban Berg's Lyric Suite. Kronos' most recent releases (2014) are Kronos Explorer Series, a five-CD retrospective boxed set; and the single-disc A Thousand Thoughts, featuring mostly unreleased recordings from throughout Kronos' career.

With a staff of eleven based in San Francisco, the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos' work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home-season performances, education programs, and its new presenting program, KRONOS PRESENTS.

In 2015 KPAA launched 5-year commissioning and education initiative, Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, and in collaboration with Carnegie Hall as lead partner, will commission 50 new works-5 by women and 5 by men for five years-designed for training students and emerging professionals, and distributed online for free.