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Kronos Festival 2025 at SFJAZZ Center
by Harry S. Pariser
Kronos Quartet Kronos Festival 2025 SFJAZZ Center San Francisco, CA April 25-27, 2025 In August of 1973, Seattle-based violinist David Harrington listened to composer George Crumb's Black Angels for the first time on a radio program, This initial encounter with an amplified string quartet inspired him to found Kronos Quartet. Following a move to San Francisco, Kronos struggled to gain traction before being offered a two-year residency at Mills College in Oakland. ...
Continue ReadingKronos Festival at SFJAZZ Center
by Harry S. Pariser
Kronos Quartet SFJAZZ Center Kronos Festival 2022 San Francisco, CA April 7-9, 2022 Founded in 1973, Kronos Quartet has long been one of San Francisco's musical treasures. Yet, because the quartet tours internationally, a performance in its home city is an event to take note of. The three-day Kronos Festival has been a local tradition since 2014. Over 900 compositions have been composed for the group, which is famous for its collaborations with musicians ...
Continue ReadingStephan Thelen: World Dialogue
by Mario Calvitti
Il chitarrista Stephan Thelen, californiano trapiantato in Svizzera dove risiede e lavora, è uno dei musicisti più interessanti tra quelli che nel corso del nuovo millennio si sono adoperati per rinnovare il linguaggio della chitarra, cercando nuove forme e tecniche espressive per esplorare le illimitate possibilità dello strumento. La sua discografia annovera diversi album da solista e con il gruppo SONAR (la cui musica è stata paragonata alle geometrie contorte e alle illusioni prospettiche delle incisioni di Mauritius Cornelius Escher ...
Continue ReadingStephan Thelen: World Dialogue
by Mark Sullivan
Stephan Thelen's compositions for his band Sonar have a minimalist groove that clearly relates to other groups in the experimental sphere like Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch's band Ronin. These works for string quartet are not stylistically far removed from Thelen's Sonar music, but the classical chamber music context establishes them in the world occupied by composers like Steve Reich. Thelen's desire to compose for the Kronos Quartet was the driver for this album. He composed the ...
Continue ReadingKronos Quartet/Terry Riley: Sun Rings
by Mark Sullivan
In addition to their performance of 20th century classics, modern music specialists The Kronos Quartet have a long history of commissioning new works from contemporary composers. But their relationship with minimalist pioneer Terry Riley is a special one. After composing the open-scored In C in 1964, Riley increasingly turned his attention towards improvised performances with tape-delay and organ—later adding voice (inspired by studying Indian raga singing with Pandit Pran Nath) and substituting synthesizer for organ. When Riley and ...
Continue ReadingIl Kronos Quartet all' Auditorium Arvedi di Cremona
by Vincenzo Roggero
Kronos Quartet Cremona Jazz 2017 Auditorium Giovanni Arvedi 21.05.2017 Doveva accadere prima o poi, quasi fosse scritto nelle stelle che si dovessero incontrare. E così è stato. L'Auditorium Arvedi, cuore pulsante e capolavoro architettonico/acustico del Museo del violino di Cremona ha ospitato il Kronos Quartet, quartetto d'archi di musica contemporanea a suo modo rivoluzionario per la trasversalità di approccio al materiale compositivo, per una storia di incontri sorprendenti documentata da dischi eccellenti, per la capacità ...
Continue ReadingKronos Festival 2017
by Harry S. Pariser
Kronos Quartet SFJAZZ Kronos Festival 2017 San Francisco, CA February 4-6, 2017 “I'd started playing string quartets when I was 12, and one day when I was 14, I was gazing at a map of the world and suddenly realized that all the quartet music I'd ever heard--Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert--came from a single city: Vienna. A simple question came to me: 'What did music from other cities and countries sound like?' A door ...
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