RECORDINGS, REVIEWS, AND REPERTOIRE

"How was Kronos back then? They were the same as they are now. But because they had a flair for presentation, they were misunderstood. They were just trying to wake up a world that was a little bit asleep." —Terry Riley

"They're up onstage and they're playing the right instruments, but these people do not look like the members of a string quartet. Instead of wearing tuxedos or evening gowns, they're dressed in black spandex. They're the Kronos Quartet—classical music's own Fab Four." —Rolling Stone

Kronos signed its first recording contract with Nonesuch in 1985, and the resulting collection of music from Peter Sculthorpe to Jimi Hendrix was voted Best of the Year by the New York Times. Harrington's book of composer names began to bulge, as word about Kronos spread. Among the composers they met next was South African Kevin Volans, whose White Man Sleeps became the title of Kronos' next recorded collection (nominated for a Grammy Award in 1988) and introduced the element of non-Western musics into the repertoire.

Newspapers and magazines across the country began to take note of an ensemble that seemed to be challenging the orthodoxies of a tradition-based form. "There was a time when I noticed that every single review had to do with clothes and haircuts," says Janet Cowperthwaite. "And the fact is that they were just being the young people that they were. At a certain point we started not to answer those 'image' questions anymore, and talked about the work itself."

In the meantime, concert bookings regularly numbered over 100 per year, and Kronos was reaching out to a public much like themselves and "playing composers who had never before dreamed of writing chamber music, and attracting audiences that were once listening to synthesizers and amplified guitars." (Washington Post)

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