Kronos Performing Arts Association and SFJAZZ Present AT WAR WITH OURSELVES - 400 Years Of You

The San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) and SFJAZZ are pleased to present the Bay Area premiere of At War With Ourselves - 400 Years of You, an evening-length song cycle exploring race relations and movements for social justice, civil rights, and resistance. At War With Ourselves will have two San Francisco performances at SFJAZZ Center, May 7-8, 2022.

Created by composer Michael Abels and poet Nikky Finney, and brought to life by the Kronos Quartet and a choir directed by Valérie Sainte-Agathe, At War With Ourselves is described as a rhapsodic modern day song cycle spun from the skin of history.

The work was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, after Founder and Artistic Director David Harrington watched poet Nikky Finney receive the 2011 National Book Award. Harrington says, "They were honoring the winner of the poetry award, Nikky Finney. I was all by myself watching her acceptance speech, just weeping...[She paid homage to] 'the ones who longed to read and write, but were forbidden, who lost hands and feet, were killed, by laws written by men who believed they owned other men." When the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland invited Kronos to create a piece commemorating the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, Finney immediately came to Harrington's mind.

The evocative poetry Finney wrote for this project directly inspired Abels, best known for his award-winning scores for writer/director Jordan Peele's Oscar-winning 2017 horror film Get Out and its follow up, Us. Finney's intimate, emotionally-charged text - in turns both bold and seductive, and always deeply personal - flits throughout history with allusions to slave ships, Harriet Tubman, black astronomer Benjamin Banneker, and Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos. In Finney's words, the work is addressed to "both black and white, both enslaved and free, bystander and non-bystander. We were then and now, At War With Ourselves. All of us, one human battlefield." The chorus, led by Valérie Sainte-Agathe, includes a cast of singers from the Bay Area, the San Francisco Girls Chorus Premier Ensemble, and the University of South Carolina.

At War with Ourselves - 400 Years of You was commissioned by the Kronos Performing Arts Association, funded in part by a Hewlett Foundation 50 Arts Commission and the MAP Fund, in partnership with ASU Gammage at Arizona State University, Hancher Auditorium-The University of Iowa, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, SFJAZZ, Texas Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of South Carolina.

ABOUT KRONOS QUARTET

For 48 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 reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world's most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with many of the world's most accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning over 1,000 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos has received over 40 awards, including the prestigious Polar Music, Avery Fisher, and Edison Klassiek Oeuvre Prizes.

Integral to Kronos' work is a series of long-running associations with many of the world's foremost composers and musicians, including Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Philip Glass, Nicole Lizée, Vladimir Martynov, Steve Reich, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Wu Man. Kronos has shared the stage with numerous artists, including David Bowie, Asha Bhosle, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Green, Zakir Hussain, Trevor Paglen, Van Dyke Parks, Alim Qasimov, San Francisco Girls Chorus, Tanya Tagaq, Mahsa Vahdat, Tom Waits, and Howard Zinn.

Touring for five months each year, Kronos appears in the world's most prestigious concert halls, clubs, and festivals. Kronos has a prolific and wide-ranging discography on Nonesuch Records, including three Grammy-winning albums - Terry Riley's Sun Rings (2019), Landfall with Laurie Anderson (2018), and Alban Berg's Lyric Suite featuring Dawn Upshaw (2003). Among Kronos' recent releases are Ladilikan (World Circuit Records) with Malian musicians Trio Da Kali; Michael Gordon: Clouded Yellow (Cantaloupe), Placeless (Kirkelig Kulturverksted) with Iranian vocalists Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat, and Long Time Passing: Kronos & Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger (Smithsonian Folkways).

The nonprofit Kronos Performing Arts Association manages all aspects of Kronos' work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours and home season performances, education programs, and the annual Kronos Festival. In 2015, Kronos launched Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, an education and legacy project that is commissioning-and distributing online for free-50 new works for string quartet written by composers from around the world.

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