Just ten days until Kronos Festival 2018 kicks off at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco on Thursday, April 26. We are already in rehearsals with festival artist-in-residence David Coulter and guests San Francisco Girls Chorus, Vân-Ánh Võ, CocoRosie, Zakir Hussain, Mahsa Vahdat, Trio Da Kali, and Jolie Holland. Tickets are going fast (opening night has already sold out!), so don’t wait to get your tickets. Learn more and reserve your seats >

“I first met Tim Kilian in 1964 when we both attended Roosevelt High School in Seattle. Tim was a fabulous violinist, and he led the Kilian Quartet, which also included his sisters Mary (violin), Judy (viola), and Terri (cello).

“He was a little older than me and, from the first time we met, I instantly admired his energetic and beautiful playing. We were in the Seattle Youth Symphony together, and I remember that Tim was concertmaster and he played the Scheherazade solo perfectly. Tim eventually studied with the Fine Arts Quartet in Milwaukee and I lost track of him.

“The next thing I knew it was late summer of 1973. Cellist Walter Gray and I were looking for a violist and another violinist in order to start a group. I believe it was Walter who alerted me that Tim was now a violist. And what a wonderful violist he was. Along with Jim Shallenberger, the four of us started rehearsing daily (beginning with Webern’s Six Bagatelles, Bartok’s Third Quartet and Ken Benshoof’s ‘Odds and Ends’) and, within a few weeks, we had a name: Kronos Quartet.