12-HOUR DAYS AND THE WORLD OF COLLABORATION

"We were always short on time, learning as much as we could right up to curtain. And we often became publishers—helping each other with parts and where page turns should be." —HD

"We used to rehearse eight or nine hours before a concert. When we premiered Feldman's Second Quartet we rehearsed the whole day. A lot of what Kronos does now is the result of having built up concentration and endurance over all these years." —DH

"It was great being involved with every aspect. Driving to the concert, meeting the presenters for the first time, and then establishing an ongoing rapport. Often they would hear how the group was evolving better than we did." —JS

By the mid-1980s, Kronos had begun a regular commissioning structure that opened the group to a world of relationships that has grown and expanded with each passing year. They established a residency at the Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles, where they not only premiered numerous works, but also worked with composers ranging from Elliott Carter to Morton Feldman to Witold Lutoslawski. This close contact with composers became something Kronos would seek out in their travels throughout the world.

"One of the great things about having a composer there is to get a sense of their music through their physical character," says Harrington. "When Lutoslawski sang the opening of his quartet, which is a solo for me, he gestured with each note. With some notes he wilted in sadness, and with others there was a great deal of energy and dance. This is valuable performance information you can't get any other way."

Sherba agrees: "Just talking to Morton Feldman helped me know what pizzicato was."

Fanning out from their base in California, Kronos began receiving invitations to perform in Europe, and in 1985 they gave their first major New York concert, a Composer's Forum event at Carnegie Recital Hall, with music by African-American composers including Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, and Leroy Jenkins. The headline of John Rockwell's enthusiastic review in the New York Times read: "Unconventional is the Word for This Quartet."

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