Kronos Quartet

For more than 45 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet 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.  Caramoor is a one of the commissioning partners of Fifty for the Future. 

To learn more about the Kronos Quartet, please visit their website. 

Maduswara (2020) 

Peni Candra Rini is the daughter of a master puppeteer from East Java Indonesia, and one of few female contemporary composers, songwriters, poets, and vocalists who performs sinden, a soloist-female style of gamelan singing. Strongly committed to preserving and sharing the musical traditions of her country, Candra Rini has created many musical compositions for vocals, gamelan, and karawitan, and has collaborated with various artists and at major festivals worldwide. Her recorded albums include Ayom (2019), Timur (2018), Agni (2017), Mahabharata – Kurusetra War (2016), Daughter of the Ocean (2016), Bhumi (2015), Sekar (2012), and Bramara (2010).  

In 2012, Rini completed an artist residency at the California Art Institute with funding from the Asian Cultural Council. During that time, she appeared as a guest artist at eight American universities and participated in master classes with vocal master Meredith Monk. Rini is also a lecturer in the Karawitan Department, and a Doctoral Candidate for Musical Arts, at the Indonesian Art Institute (ISI) in Surakarta. 

Little Black Book (2018) 

Jlin, one of the most prominent electronic producers of the current generation, first appeared on Planet Mu’s second Bangs & Works compilation, which had a huge impact on electronic / club music. Though she is known for bringing footwork to a wider audience, Jlin doesn’t consider herself a footwork artist. Hailing from Gary, Indiana, a place close yet distant enough from Chicago to allow her to develop a different perspective on the genre, she has morphed its sounds into something entirely new. Released in 2015, her debut album, Dark Energy, reached the top of many of the year’s Best Of lists. Jlin’s sophomore album, Black Origami, was recently released to even greater critical acclaim and attention. In 2017, Jlin also composed the music for a major new dance work by Wayne McGregor, one of the United Kingdom’s best-known choreographers. 

Jlin, one of the most prominent electronic producers of the current generation, first appeared on Planet Mu’s second Bangs & Works compilation, which had a huge impact on electronic / club music. Though she is known for bringing footwork to a wider audience, Jlin doesn’t consider herself a footwork artist. Hailing from Gary, Indiana, a place close yet distant enough from Chicago to allow her to develop a different perspective on the genre, she has morphed its sounds into something entirely new. Released in 2015, her debut album, Dark Energy, reached the top of many of the year’s Best Of lists. Jlin’s sophomore album, Black Origami, was recently released to even greater critical acclaim and attention. In 2017, Jlin also composed the music for a major new dance work by Wayne McGregor, one of the United Kingdom’s best-known choreographers. 

Funtukuru from Tegere Tulon (2018) 

Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté possesses one of the most beautiful, versatile, and expressive voices of West Africa. A jelimuso (female jeli or ‘griot’) from Mali, she has acquired a cult following as the charismatic singer of Trio Da Kali, an acoustic trio which was formed specially to collaborate with the Kronos Quartet, receiving rapturous reviews for her work on their collaborative award-winning album Ladilikan and for her moving performances with Trio Da Kali, who have toured widely in Europe and the USA to critical acclaim.  

Diabaté’s charismatic voice is emphatically 21st century, but it is also steeped in the rich heritage of Mali’s griots, the hereditary musicians that date back to founding of the Mali Empire in the 13th century. She was born into a celebrated griot family, the Diabatés of Kela, a village in southwest Mali famous for its music. The Kela Diabatés have a formidable reputation as singers, instrumentalists, and reciters of oral epic histories, with many legendary names from the pre-colonial era to-date, and today Hawa is the torch bearer of that great tradition.  

Diabaté’s latest musical project, Tegere Tulon, takes her back to her roots and forwards into the realm of composition. Commissioned to compose a piece for Kronos’ Fifty for the Future project, she decided to revisit the handclapping songs of her childhood, which were such formative experiences for her, and which are gradually dying out except in remote villages. 

branching patterns (2021) 

Originally from Washington D.C. and now residing in New York City, inti figgis-vizueta focuses on close collaborative relationships with a wide range of ensembles and soloists. Her musical practice is physical and visceral, attempting to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & indigenous futures. The New York Times speaks of her music as “alternatively smooth & serrated,” The Washington Post as “raw, scraping yet soaring,” and the National Sawdust Log as “all turbulence” and “quietly focused.” She is the 2020 recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Fred Ho Award for “work that defies boundary and genre.” 

Recent commissions include works for the L.A. Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Attacca Quartet, JACK Quartet, and Crash Ensemble, as well as Jennifer Koh, Matt Haimovitz, & Andrew Yee. Her music has been presented at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Chicago Symphony Center, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Louise M. Davis Symphony Hall, and the Music Center at Strathmore. She is currently in residency at So Percussion’s Brooklyn studio for the 2021 – 22 season. 

This Assortment of Atoms – One Time Only! (2020)
3. This Assortment of Atoms – One Time Only!  

Terry Riley first came to prominence in 1964 when he subverted the world of tightly organized atonal composition then in fashion. With the groundbreaking In C — a work built upon steady pulse throughout; short, simple repeated melodic motives; and static harmonies  —Riley achieved an elegant and non-nostalgic return to tonality. In demonstrating the hypnotic allure of complex musical patterns made of basic means, he produced the seminal work of Minimalism. 
 
Riley’s facility for complex pattern-making is the product of his virtuosity as a keyboard improviser. He quit formal composition following In C in order to concentrate on improvisation, and in the late 1960s and early ‘70s he became known for weaving dazzlingly intricate skeins of music from improvisations on organ and synthesizer. At this time, Riley also devoted himself to studying North Indian vocal techniques under the legendary Pandit Pran Nath, and a new element entered his music: long-limbed melody. From his work in Indian music, moreover, he became interested in the subtle distinctions of tuning that would be hard to achieve with a traditional classical ensemble. 
 
Riley began notating music again in 1979 when both he and the Kronos Quartet were on the faculty at Mills College in Oakland. By collaborating with Kronos, he discovered that his various musical passions could be integrated, not as pastiche, but as different sides of similar musical impulses that still maintained something of the oral performing traditions of India and jazz. Riley’s first quartets were inspired by his keyboard improvisations, but his knowledge of string quartets became more sophisticated through his work with Kronos, combining rigorous compositional ideas with a more performance-oriented approach. 
 
This three-decade-long relationship has yielded 27 works for string quartet, including a concerto for string quartet, The Sands, which was the Salzburg Festival’s first-ever new music commission; Sun Rings, a multimedia piece for choir, visuals, and space sounds, commissioned by NASA; and The Cusp of Magic, for string quartet and pipa. Kronos’ album, Cadenza on the Night Plain, a collection of music by Riley, was selected by both Time and Newsweek as one of the 10 Best Classical Albums of the Year in 1988. The epic five-quartet cycle, Salome Dances for Peace, was selected as the #1 Classical Album of the Year by USA Today and was nominated for a Grammy in 1989. 

Sivunittinni (2015) 

Tanya Tagaq’s unique vocal expression is rooted in Inuit throat singing, but her music has as much to do with electronica, industrial, and metal influences as it does with traditional culture. She is known for her artistic collaborations that defy genre boundaries. Her contribution to Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future project marks another chapter in a longstanding creative association with the group. Appearances with Kronos have included a performance at the Big Ears Festival (Knoxville, Tennessee) in 2015 and work on the album Tundra Songs. 

Her albums make for complex listening, but a string of international awards and accolades attest to her ability to make music that speaks a universal tongue. Tagaq’s album, Animism, won the Polaris Music Prize in 2014 and a Juno Award in 2015. 

In addition to her internationally renowned status as a performer and recording artist, Tagaq also does regular speaking engagements at educational and cultural institutions, including delivering the Pecha Kucha at APAP in 2014. In these lectures, Tagaq discusses her personal experience and creative process, and how her origin in Canada’s arctic shapes her art. Tagaq is the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from her alma mater, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in Halifax.  

YanYanKliYan Senamido (2020) 

As a performer, Angélique Kidjo’s striking voice, stage presence, and fluency in multiple cultures and languages have won respect from her peers and expanded her following across national borders. Kidjo has cross-pollinated the West African traditions of her childhood in Benin with elements of American R&B, funk, and jazz, as well as influences from Europe and Latin America. 
 
After exploring the roads of Africa’s diaspora — through Brazil, Cuba, and the United States — and offering a refreshing and electrifying take on the Talking Heads album Remain In Light (called “Transformative” by the New York Times, “Visionary” by NPR Music, “Stunning” by Rolling Stone, and “one of the year’s most vibrant albums” by the Washington Post), the French-Beninese singer is now reflecting on an icon of the Americas, celebrated salsa singer Celia Cruz. Kidjo’s album Celia (Verve/Universal Music France) divests itself of the glamour to investigate the African roots of the Cuban-born woman who became the “Queen” of salsa. 

 Kidjo’s star-studded album DJIN DJIN won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Album in 2008, and her album OYO was nominated for the same award in 2011. In January 2014 Kidjo’s first book, a memoir titled Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music (Harper Collins) and her twelfth album, EVE (Savoy/429 Records), were released to critical acclaim. EVE later went on to win the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 2015, and her historic, orchestral album Sings with the Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg (Savoy/429 Records) won a Grammy for Best World Music Album in 2016. Kidjo has gone on to perform this genre-bending work with several international orchestras and symphonies including the Bruckner Orchestra, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Philharmonie de Paris. Her collaboration with Philip Glass, IFÉ: Three Yorùbá Songs, made its US debut to a sold-out concert with the San Francisco Symphony in June 2015. In 2019, Kidjo helped Philip Glass premiere his latest work, Symphony #12 “Lodger,” a symphonic re-imagining of the David Bowie album of the same name, at a sold-out performance at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition to performing this new orchestral concert, Kidjo continues to tour globally performing the high-energy concert she’s become famous for with her four-piece band. 
 
Kidjo also travels the world advocating on behalf of children in her capacity as a UNICEF and OXFAM goodwill Ambassador. At the G7 Summit in 2019, President Macron of France named Kidjo as the spokesperson for the AFAWA initiative (Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa) to help close the financing gap for women entrepreneurs in Africa. She has also created her own charitable foundation, Batonga, dedicated to support the education of young girls in Africa. 

Enthusiasm Strategies (2019)  

Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times) and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York), Missy Mazzoli has had her music performed globally by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, violinist Jennifer Koh, Los Angeles Opera, New York City Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, Cincinnati Opera and many others. From 2012 — 15, she was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre-Group, and in 2011 — 12 was composer-in-residence with the Albany Symphony.  

Mazzoli’s 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, based on the film by Lars von Trier and created in collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek, was commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects. It premiered in September of 2016 and was called “one of the best 21st-century American operas yet” by Opera News, “powerful… dark and daring” by the New York Times, and “savage, heartbreaking and thoroughly original” by the Wall Street Journal. In February 2012 Beth Morrison Projects presented Song from the Uproar, Mazzoli’s first multimedia chamber opera, which had a sold-out run at venerable New York venue The Kitchen. The Wall Street Journal called this work “both powerful and new”, and the New York Times claimed that “in the electric surge of Mazzoli’s score you felt the joy, risk and limitless potential of free spirits unbound.”  

Recent months included the premiere of Missy’s third opera, Proving Up, at Washington National Opera; the premiere of Vespers for a New Dark Age, an extended work for her ensemble Victoire and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, commissioned by Carnegie Hall; and new works performed by pianist Emanuel Ax, the BBC Symphony, the LA Philharmonic and the Detroit Symphony. Upcoming commissions include new works for Opera Philadelphia, the National Ballet of Canada, Opera Omaha, and New York’s Miller Theatre.  

Mazzoli is the recipient of a Fulbright Grant, a 2015 Music grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and four ASCAP young composer awards. Along with composer Ellen Reid, she recently founded Luna Lab, a mentorship program for young female composers in collaboration with the Kaufman Music Center in New York. Mazzoli teaches composition at the Mannes School of Music (The New School), and her works are published by G. Schirmer. 

Another Living Soul (2016) 

Called “a brilliant musical scientist” (CBC), “breathtakingly inventive” (Sydney Times Herald, Australia), and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation” (Winnipeg Free Press), award-winning composer and video artist composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences, including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Alexander McQueen, thrash metal, early video game culture, 1960s psychedelia, and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performance. 

Lizée’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, vintage board games, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre, she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision. 

In 2001 Lizée received a Master of Music degree from McGill University. After a decade and a half of composition, her commission list of over 50 works is varied and distinguished and includes the Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Proms, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Banff Centre, Bang On A Can, So Percussion, and numerous others. 

Lizée was recently awarded the prestigious 2019 Prix Opus for Composer of the Year. In 2017 she received the SOCAN Jan. V. Matejcek Award. In 2013 she received the Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. She is a two-time JUNO nominee for composition of the year. She is a Lucas Artists Fellow (California) and a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow (Italy). In 2015 she was selected by acclaimed composer and conductor Howard Shore to be his protégée as part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards. This Will Not Be Televised, her seminal piece for chamber ensemble and turntables, placed in the 2008 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers’ Top 10 Works.  

Lizée was the Composer in Residence at Vancouver’s Music on Main from 2016 – 18. She is a Korg Canada and Arturia artist. 

Mishra Pilu (2020) 

Born in Mumbai, India, Aruna Narayan Kalle plays the Sarangi, an ancient North Indian bowed instrument considered one of the most difficult to master, and one of the more undeveloped instruments in both its physical and musical aspects. Its traditional role as an accompaniment instrument for vocal music kept it from being well-known. Narayan’s father, renowned Sarangi maestro Pandit Ram Narayan, emerged as its messiah, and due to his efforts, the Sarangi is now well ensconced in the mainstream of the Indian performing arts. 
 
Although Narayan began her music training at the rather late age of 18, she made fast progress studying with her father. Her playing is impressive in its subtlety, precision, and grace, as well as in its powerful and weighty bowing. As a recipient of Pandit Ram Narayan’s musical legacy, she has consistently worked towards maintaining a highly respectable profile for her instrument. 
 
Narayan was recently a featured soloist in a unique presentation of the music of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, performed by Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. An hour-long documentary film about this project, with an exclusive profile of her, has been aired by the CBC and the Bravo channels. Her music has been featured in several international and Hollywood films, and she regularly teaches in the school system introducing young people to Indian music and the Sarangi. Her recordings are available on the Nimbus (UK) and Zig-Zag (France) labels. In addition to her international performances, she frequently appears in the National Programme of Music on Doordarshan (TV) and other networks in India. Presently, she resides in Toronto, Canada where she teaches and performs.