Musical boundaries beware when Kronos comes to town
Unusual string quartet redefines 'classical' in Schoenberg show
By John Mangum
Daily Bruin Staff
The Kronos Quartet is determined to make listeners think about music in a way that would never occur to most people.
It's a string quartet, so audiences would expect to hear them play a healthy amount of Haydn or Beethoven. But they don't.
While the members of Kronos play instruments traditionally created for classical music, and most of the music they play is tenuously linked to the European musical tradition, their approach is decidedly original. They bring their own unique style to Schoenberg Hall tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m., playing music that defies categorization.
"Well, I think that a lot of times some of the boundaries that you might find if you went into a record store or a library might be missing in some of our concerts," explains Kronos founder and violinist David Harrington. "The assumption that if you go to a string quartet concert it's going to sound like X, Y or Z European composer from the 18th or 19th century is something that we have taken a lot of delight in changing."
For Harrington, this quest to change listeners' expectations resulted from his own discovery of new music when he was 16. As Kronos' founder, his goals have helped to define those of the quartet.
"It was a direct result of being in a group that was playing music by a composer, Ken Benshoof, that had written a piece especially for my group," Harrington says. "Benshoof was writing a piece, and a couple of times a week we'd go over to his house and play through what he'd written up to that point.
"At that age, I began to see how a new piece of music changes and how, if you're involved with it long enough, it becomes your music. Ever since that time that's what I've wanted to do every day."
And Harrington and Kronos pretty much have. Not only do they play only 20th century works, they also explore music from outside the European tradition.
During their appearances here, Kronos plays works from all over the world which were specifically composed for them. The music ranges from American composer Philip Glass' Quartet No. 5 to "Kafu Julo" by West African musician Foday Musa Suso.
"Foday Musa Suso is a musician and composer from Gambia in West Africa, and his family has played the African harp, which is called a kora, for the last 500 years," Harrington says.
"In Gambia, there's a tradition of oral historians. They're called griots, and they're the keepers of the history of the people, and so rather than having textbooks, microfilms or computers they have griots. The griots are singing historians, and Foday Musa Suso can tell you stories about relatives that go back 500 years in his family."
This international approach to music helps bring Harrington and the quartet closer to different cultures and their ways of life. They can tap in to something that only music can communicate, and they hope to convey this "inner life" of people to their audiences.
"I think that we're able to get to know different aspects of life through music, things that are probably impossible to communicate in any other way or to really even verbalize, things about culture and life that belong specifically to music," Harrington says.
"When you hear music from a composer from Azerbaijan, the scales that are used are very different from what you've grown up with or what you normally hear in your everyday life in California. Then you meet that composer and work with her and ask questions and try out things.
"Later, we had the good fortune to meet her in Turkey and she took me to a mosque and it was fantastic. I've never been to a mosque in my life and here I was being introduced to a whole aspect of life that's very, very important to millions and millions of people that I had never even had any involvement with, and all of this is happening because we were playing a piece of her music. To me music can become kind of a window into the inner life of people."
CONCERT: Kronos Quartet at Schoenberg Hall Friday, May 12, and Saturday, May 13, at 8 p.m. TIX: $28, $13 for students. For more info call (310) 825-2101.