Hagia Sophia Sanctum of Kronos

Kronos Quartet's groundbreaking 2002 collaboration with composer Terry Riley, Sun Rings, is available as a recording for the first time via Nonesuch Records on August 30, 2019.

Kronos is very excited to announce that the Norwegian record label Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV), in association with New York-based Valley Entertainment, will release Placeless on March 1, 2019. ” Placeless is the first collaboration between Kronos and Iranian singers Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat. Recorded in Oslo’s Kulturkirken Jakob in November 2018, the album features 14 songs composed by Mahsa Vahdat to classical poems by Hafez and Rumi and the works of contemporary Iranian poets Forough Farrokhzad, Mohammad Ibrahim Jafari and Vahdat’s husband Atabak Elyasi. Composers Sahba Aminikia, Aftab Darvishi, Jacob Garchik and Elyasi arranged the songs for string quartet.

Kronos is a musical institution over 40 years in existence, championing and commissioning contemporary, even avant-garde and multimedia, classical compositions but the quartet started slow, in a period of experimentation when classical, rock, and jazz began to explore each other's domain. The Turtle Island Quartet, founded in 1985, shares similar roots, and the chamber jazz group Oregon, founded in 1971, also skirts Third Steam with their bass, guitar, oboe, and percussion.

The first centuries of the Christian Era were ones of extraordinary upheaval: the great traditions of the classical world were transformed by dramatic changes in the political and social structure, by continual warfare against invaders, and by the growing influence of the nascent religion Christianity. The trend of this period has been interpreted by some historians as the decline of civilization, but it is represented by its art as a time of cultural experimentation. …

This may be the single most powerful piece of music that the Kronos Quartet has ever recorded, and perhaps that Terry Riley has ever written. This is because Requiem for Adam is so personal, so direct, and experiential. Requiem for Adam was written after the death of Kronos violinist David Harrignton's son. He died, in 1995, at the age of 16, from an aneurysm in his coronary artery. Riley, who is very close to the Harringtons and has a son the same age, has delved deep into the experience of death and resurrection, or, at the very least, transmutation. Requiem for Adam is written in three parts, or movements. The first, "Ascending the Heaven Ladder," is based on a four-note pattern that re-harmonizes itself as it moves up the scale. There are many variations and series based on each of these notes and their changing harmonics, and finally a 5/4 dance as it moves to the highest point on the strings. The drone-like effect is stunning when the listener realizes that the drone is changing shape too, ascending the scale, moving ever upward and taking part in the transmutation of harmony.