Kronos Quartet with special guests Soo Yeon Lyuh, Mahsa Vahdat, Wu Man, and Anouk Yeh

Soo Yeon Lyuh / Tattoo (Extended Version) * world premiere

with Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum, and Alvin Kim and Youngju Park, speakers

inti figgis-vizueta / music by yourself * world premiere

Brian Foo & Anouk Yeh / American Longing * world premiere

with Wu Man, pipa, and Anouk Yeh, poet

Sofia Gubaidulina / Quartet No. 4 *

INTERMISSION

Mahsa Vahdat (arr. Atabak Elyasi) / Vaya, Vaya *

with Mahsa Vahdat, vocals

Mahsa Vahdat (arr. Aftab Darvishi) / Where Is Your Voice? * world premiere

with Mahsa Vahdat, vocals

Jacob Garchik / Storyteller *

Philip Glass (arr. Michael Riesman) / Orion: China +

with Wu Man, pipa

* Written for Kronos
+ Arranged for Kronos

Program subject to change.

Soo Yeon Lyuh (b. 1980)
Tattoo (Extended Version) (2022) world premiere

Soo Yeon Lyuh is a master of the haegeum, a two-stringed Korean bowed instrument. She possesses not only flawless technique and a full command of the haegeum’s traditional repertoire, but is also widely recognized for promoting the creation of new pieces for haegeum. For 12 years, Lyuh was a member of South Korea’s National Gugak Center, the foremost institution for the preservation of Korean traditional music. Since then, Lyuh has endeavored to weave authentic styles into new musical domains, relocating to the Bay Area and drawing inspiration from its dynamic improvised music scene. Her contributions have sparked the creation of new repertoire for haegeum—the lifeblood of any instrument.

In 2021, Lyuh began doctoral studies in composition at Princeton University. Previously, Lyuh earned her D.M.A. in Korean Traditional Music from Seoul National University. As a lecturer, she is sought after for her ability to impart valuable insight and intercultural understanding to those unfamiliar with Korean traditional music; her dissertation researched the changing role of haegeum in Korean orchestras beginning with early court traditions. As a visiting scholar at Mills College (2017-2018) and UC Berkeley (2015-2016), Lyuh taught established and emerging composers in the Bay Area about haegeum composition and techniques in order to create new repertoire for the instrument. Lyuh has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (2011-2012).

​Born and raised in Daegu, South Korea, Lyuh’s early musical studies were typical for those in her country. She took piano lessons from the age of three, a way to “acquire Western music’s grammar,” and was performing as a soloist with the Daegu Philharmonic Orchestra by the time she was twelve. Still, Lyuh was unsatisfied with the piano and switched to the violin—only to quit music completely three years later. When she missed playing, her mother suggested taking up a traditional instrument as a hobby, an alternative to the pressurized and competitive culture of classical music. She had no idea that it would become the pursuit that would define her future.

“I think that it will be impossible to conquer the haegeum in my lifetime,” says Lyuh. “That is because it becomes harder the more I play it. The instrument continues to reveal itself. It is full of untapped possibilities.”

About Tattoo, Soo Yeon Lyuh writes:

“Tattoo emerges from an incident in Berkeley, California in which someone fired a gun at my car out of the blue. I was with my son and mother. Luckily, the bullet missed us by an inch. Ever since, we have been left with a harrowing memory, a tattoo on our minds, that doesn’t seem to fade away except when retouching it by way of music. We survivors just never really talked about it for years until my son Alvin got brave enough to write about it in a short essay, on which this piece is based. My heartfelt thanks go to Alvin for initiating this, and to Kronos, for trusting that I’ll be okay no matter what, and for being a shelter where I can really face myself. The first half of today’s performance is a film screening, and the latter follows on stage through real-time performance. The piece-as-is reveals the first two segments of a trilogy (work-in-progress).”

Film Credits 

Text by Alvin Kim
With Soo Yeon Lyuh, haegeum, and the voices of Soo Jin Lyuh, Youngju Park, Alvin Kim, Soo Yeon Lyuh

Directed by Danny Kim
Cinematography & Art Design by Danny Kim
Edited by Mitch Stahlmann and Danny Kim
Camera Operation by Colin Giles
Audio mixed and produced by Mitch Stahlmann

Bells performed and recorded by Mitch Stahlmann

Soo Yeon Lyuh’s Tattoo was commissioned by the Kronos Festival with support from the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles.

inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993)
music by yourself (2022)  world premiere

Originally from Washington D.C. and now residing in New York City, inti figgis-vizueta focuses on close collaborative relationships with a wide range of ensembles and soloists. Her musical practice is physical and visceral, attempting to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & indigenous futures. The New York Times speaks of her music as “alternatively smooth & serrated,” The Washington Post as “raw, scraping yet soaring,” and the National Sawdust Log as “all turbulence” and “quietly focused.” inti is the 2020 recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Fred Ho Award for “work that defies boundary and genre.” 

Recent commissions include works for the LA Phil, Kronos Quartet, Attacca Quartet, JACK Quartet, and Crash Ensemble, as well as Jennifer Koh, Matt Haimovitz, & Andrew Yee. Her music has been presented in spaces such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Chicago Symphony Center, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Louise M. Davis Symphony Hall, and the Music Center at Strathmore. She is currently in residency at So Percussion’s Brooklyn studio for the ‘21-22 season. 

About music by yourself, inti figgis-vizueta writes:

“I love listening to music alone, especially late at night – details feel different, somehow heavier and closer to skin. I love the focus of a dark space, with sounds emerging almost alive (even in earbuds). Memory springs forth too, I have found – In live performance, this dark feels like another material to play through & around. Its presence asks for a trust that there are other people really out there, while giving the intimate gift of music alone; closeness in distance – In forms unfolding from memory and shared motion, music by yourself is about connecting to people who are and aren’t still here.”

inti figgis-vizueta’s music by yourself was commissioned for Kronos Quartet by the Howard Gilman Foundation and the Kronos Festival

American Longing (2022)  world premiere
Music by Brian Foo (b. 1986)
Text by Anouk Yeh (b. 2003)

Brian Foo is an artist and computer scientist living and working in Washington, DC and New York City. His work focuses on making public resources such as audiovisual collections, scientific datasets, and cultural objects more accessible and remixable for the general public through visualization, sonification, immersion, and play. He takes a very public approach to his work, where he openly documents his creative and technical decisions and shares his tools, software, and assets for others to copy, extend, and adapt. 

Foo was a data visualization artist at the American Museum of Natural History, where he communicated scientific data and research through interactive digital and physical exhibits including the Museum’s first permanent exhibit on climate change. He was a 2020 Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress, making it easier to make hip hop music using free-to-use audio from the Library. He combines music, data, and algorithms as the Data-Driven DJ. Previously, he used code, design, and data to make library materials more available to the public at The New York Public Library.

Anouk Yeh is a spoken word poet, journalist and organizer from Saratoga, California. She is Santa Clara County’s 2021 Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate, a 2020 National Student Poet Program semifinalist and a U.S. delegate to the International Congress of Youth Voices. 

She is a firm believer in Toni Cade Cambarayou’s words: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible” and is always looking to d​​ocument social and political issues — especially those that affect immigrants & teenage girls  — through her poetry. 

Her poetry has been featured by Stanford University and Planned Parenthood. Her journalism pieces have been published in Refinery29, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Education Post, among others. 

About American Longing, Brian Foo writes:

“The underlying audio and visuals weave together some of the oldest sounds of Chinese and Chinese American performers recorded on wax cylinders as well as some of the earliest filmed scenes of daily life in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Fragments of these 120+ year old recordings are looped and layered in a way that invites listeners to meditate on these fading voices of the past. This provides the foundation for contemporary artists to open a dialogue with those voices and draw through-lines between the Asian American experience of today and that of many generations ago.”

Anouk Yeh writes:

“In 1834, 14-year-old Afong Moy was taken from China to be exhibited at Peale’s Museum in New York City as ‘The Chinese Lady.’ The first recorded Chinese woman to enter America, Afong would spend the rest of her life being carted across the U.S. as part of a museum exhibit. The poem contemplates Afong’s existence as a spectacle and explores the different liminal spaces Asian Americans are trapped in.”

Text

american longing

there are only so many
versions of fourteen.
but all stories, when
condensed, coalesce into the shape of longing 

in the first version
of the story, the year is 1834 

14 year old Afong Moy
is purchased from GuangZhou and shipped to New York City
where she is put on
exhibition at the Peale’s Museum

early 1800’s America
was a swell of blind curiosity and pulsing whiteness
no one has seen a
chinese woman before and afong’s existence becomes spectacle 

in the first version
of the story, afong is the protagonist
here, she bends light
with her hands, melting space time cultural continuum

in this version of the
story, afong perches in her exhibit, smiles graciously
when she is supposed
to, and lets an endless stream of white women pet her hair

in this version of the
story, the people marvel at how good she is
and the whole city
loves her

in the second,
abridged version
afong is still
bending. but this time, it is not light 

but her own flesh
being twisted between her palms. in this version,
afong is good but
new york city does not love her back

in this version of the
story, afong’s goodness is a pitiful thing

in this version of the
story, afong is not a saint or history book romantic
in this version, afong
is just a fourteen year old girl who desperately wants to be loved,

so in this version,
afong claws her accent out of her throat
in this version, afong
learn to gut herself of impurities, of traces of other

in her exhibition room
lies an array of scalpels, knives and tweezers,
used to siphon flesh
for when wishing is no longer good wager
and i watch

i watch as afong
cleaves her right rib from out under her skin, watch her
platter it for a
museum audience, a peanut gallery, a glowing city that will not open its arms

while 1800’s america
bleaches its chinatowns, afong sits in her cage
sits alone in the
museum after hours, whispering her tattered ribs together

cradling the jagged
edges in her arms, croaking: tomorrow
will be more beautiful
in this version, her
goodness is pitiful because it is not reciprocated

and most days, i look
at her bones, lonely and unloved, and i want to scream
most days, i want to
snake my hands through time and shake afong awake

tell her that there is
no use is starving for a love
a country that isn’t
yours to keep

but most days, i
forget that i am only her daughter
most days, i forget
that once, i too fell in love with a country that didn’t love me back

like my mother and her
mother before her, i whittled a flute for america out of my wrist bones
like afong, i loved
america hard, cracked the cartilage in my knees when she demanded applause

played blinds
she swallowed boatloads of women who look like my mother
whispering their
bodies into morgues and rallies and new york city forget me nots

prayed that the rain
would wash us holy
that faithfulness
would tumble us through the sky and into heaven

but praying into the
void is a dangerous act, waiting with our bodies
as wager is a most
intimate form of violence

because history has
proven that waiting is nothing
if not glorified
resignation

so tonight, under the
sobbing moon
i pen a third version
of the story

one where the land
loves its people back without penance
one where severed
flesh isn’t transaction for salvation

one where nobody’s
grandmother has to duck into the shadow of a sidewalk
and no one is scared
of empty train tracks

here, the sky is no
longer waiting room for heaven, just a dance floor

here, any scrap back
alleyway can become a ballroom,
as long as everyone is
swaying to the same heartbeat

and here, in this
ballroom, none of us are liminal space
none of us are
transitional, none of us have to hurt ourselves to be loved

and in this ballroom,
afong is whole and tender and content
she’s beckoning to us,
i can hear her whisper

come, won’t you dance
with me?

—

Archival Audio: Unidentified performers. “Mu Yang Juan” (“The Sheep Fence”) (ca. 1901 – 1902). Indiana University, Archives of Traditional Music and the American Museum of Natural History. Used with permission. 

Archival Audio: “A Wise Man in the Snow” (“Chinese song”) from “Edison Gold Moulded Records catalog, Asiatic selections.” Sourced from the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive (Allen G. Debus collection, Lynn Andersen collection).  

Archival footage by Captain H. J. Lewis, “Seeing America’s Greatest Chinatown: San Francisco” (1912), supplied by Internet Archive (at archive.org) in association with Prelinger Archives.

Brian Foo and Anouk Yeh’s American Longing was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet, Wu Man, and Anouk Yeh by the Kronos Festival.

Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931)
String Quartet No. 4 (1993)

Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of the Soviet Union in 1931. Until 1992, she lived in Moscow. Since then, she has made her primary residence in Germany, outside Hamburg. Gubaidulina’s compositional interests have been stimulated by the tactile exploration and improvisation with rare Russian, Caucasian, and Asian folk and ritual instruments collected by the “Astreia” ensemble, of which she was a co-founder, by the rapid absorption and personalization of contemporary Western musical techniques (a characteristic, too, of other Soviet composers of the post-Stalin generation that includes Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke), and by a deep-rooted belief in the mystical properties of music.

Her uncompromising dedication did not endear her to the Soviet musical establishment, but her music was championed in Russia by a number of devoted performers including Vladimir Tonkha, Friedrich Lips, Mark Pekarsky, and Valery Popov. Since 1985, when she was first allowed to travel to the West, Gubaidulina’s stature in the world of contemporary music has skyrocketed. She has been the recipient of prestigious commissions from the Berlin, Helsinki, and Holland Festivals, the Library of Congress, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and many other organizations and ensembles.

Gubaidulina is a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and the Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg, the Royal Music Academy in Stockholm, and the German order “Pour le mérite.” Her awards include the prestigious Praemium Imperiale in Japan, the Sonning Prize in Denmark, the Polar Music Prize in Sweden, the Great Distinguished Service Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Living Composer Prize of the Cannes Classical Awards. In 2004, she was elected as a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Of String Quartet No. 4, Sofia Gubaidulina writes:

“What interested me especially with this piece was how the ‘real’ arises from the ‘unreal’: the ‘real’ normal play of arco or pizzicato arising from the ‘unreal’ transparent sounds of rubber balls on the strings; the ‘real’ on-stage playing of the quartet arising from the ‘unreal’ playing by the same musicians on a pre-recorded tape; the ‘real’ colored lights arising from the ‘unreal’ white and black (white and black, after all, represent the absence of light; color becomes ‘unreal’ within them).

“As such, three trinities unfold: the sound of the quartet and its two recorded hypostases; the real form and its two recorded satellites; and the creative reality of the play of light and its two unreal protagonists of complete light and complete darkness.

“All the details of the piece—both its material essence and its compositional design—are derived from the basic idea that ‘real genuine’ is born of the ‘unreal artificial’ (and not the reverse). For me, this idea was best expressed in T. S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets.’ I would be pleased if my composition were to be heard and perceived as a musical response to the creative world of that great poet.”

Sofia Gubaidulina’s String Quartet No. 4 was commissioned for Kronos by Mrs. Ralph I. Dorfman, the Barbican (London), and Théâtre de la Ville (Paris). Kronos’ recording of String Quartet No. 4 can be found on the Nonesuch recordings Night Prayers and Kronos Quartet: 25 Years. Gubaidulina’s String Quartet No. 2 appears on Kronos’ Nonesuch recording Short Stories. 

Mahsa Vahdat (b. 1973)
Where Is Your Voice? (2022)  world premiere
Arranged by Aftab Darvishi (b. 1987)

Mahsa Vahdat is an award-winning Iranian singer, composer and cultural activist dedicated to both her personal lifelong musical and artistic path and the greater cause of freedom of expression. Her artistic work has offered audiences around the globe a deeper appreciation of Iranian poetry and music.

Born in 1973 in Tehran, she received her B.A. in Music from the Tehran University of Arts and learned Persian traditional music with different masters. Since 1995, she has performed as an independent singer and musician in many concerts and festivals in the world. She has also appeared on stage with her sister Marjan Vahdat in many concerts.

Mahsa Vahdat has developed a highly personal style of performance, rooted in Persian classical and regional vocal music traditions and infused with contemporary and innovative expressions and influences. Her many performance and recording projects include collaborations with many of the world’s most acclaimed musicians including Mighty Sam McClain, Kronos Quartet, Tord Gustavson, Teatr Zar, SKRUK Choir, Kitka, and countless others. Through creative dialogues with her collaborators, and explorations as an unaccompanied soloist, she has developed a diverse, unique, and wide-ranging repertoire.

Following her participation in the album Lullabies from the Axis of Evil (2004), Vahdat started a long lasting collaboration with the Norwegian record label Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV). This collaboration led to a worldwide release of a series of award wining and critically acclaimed records.

Without being visible in her own society because of restrictions of female solo voice after Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Iran, she and her sister Marjan Vahdat have had continuous contact with a large audience who appreciates their art, both in Iran and abroad. 

For Vahdat, artistic practice, creative freedom, and humanitarian principles are closely intertwined. She is an extremely effective cultural worker who utilizes the emotive power of her voice to raise awareness of suffering and injustice in the world, while simultaneously delivering messages of  hope, and positive change.

About Where Is Your Voice?, Mahsa Vahdat writes:

“Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, solo women’s voice has been restricted in Iran. Women singers can only perform in a choir, or sing solo in the presence of female-only audiences.

“It’s a tremendous sadness that women have been forbidden to freely sing in Iran, and for many talented artists at some point the path became so challenging they had to give it up entirely. To prevent a people from participating in one of their great cultural and human treasures is extremely sorrowful and tragic and act of injustice. However, the fact that this woman vocal tradition has still been preserved in spite of these restrictions is incredibly inspiring; this proves that it’s impossible to keep some artists from pursuing their art, regardless of the consequences. In fact, many have chosen to walk their paths with even stronger conviction and dedication.

“I made this text and melody and I would like to dedicate this song to Women’s voices in Iran. The music has been arranged by Aftab Darvishi for Kronos Quartet & Mahsa Vahdat”

Text

Where is your voice?
Where is your voice?
Where is your voice?
In the throat of the Moon?
In the red breaths of the thirsty lips of a lover?
In a free song?

With thirst for hope a bird is flying
In the blue tears a song constantly is born
with a ruby throat she sings till eternity
with her young lips.

Where is your voice?
Where is your voice?
In the voiceless lament of the mother who shed her tears over nameless graves
in the sparks of the love of your glance that illuminated the core of my heart and made the voice fertile with red flames
Where is your voice?
Where is your voice?

—

Mahsa Vahdat’s Where Is Your Voice?, arranged by Aftab Darvishi, was commissioned for Kronos Quartet and Mahsa Vahdat by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University.

Mahsa Vahdat (b. 1973)
Vaya, Vaya (2020)
Arranged by Atabak Elyasi (b. 1964)

Mahsa Vahdat is an award-winning Iranian singer, composer and cultural activist dedicated to both her personal lifelong musical and artistic path and the greater cause of freedom of expression. Her artistic work has offered audiences around the globe a deeper appreciation of Iranian poetry and music.

Born in 1973 in Tehran, she received her B.A. in Music from the Tehran University of Arts and learned Persian traditional music with different masters. Since 1995, she has performed as an independent singer and musician in many concerts and festivals in the world. She has also appeared on stage with her sister Marjan Vahdat in many concerts.

Mahsa Vahdat has developed a highly personal style of performance, rooted in Persian classical and regional vocal music traditions and infused with contemporary and innovative expressions and influences. Her many performance and recording projects include collaborations with many of the world’s most acclaimed musicians including Mighty Sam McClain, Kronos Quartet, Tord Gustavson, Teatr Zar, SKRUK Choir, Kitka, and countless others. Through creative dialogues with her collaborators, and explorations as an unaccompanied soloist, she has developed a diverse, unique, and wide-ranging repertoire.

Following her participation in the album Lullabies from the Axis of Evil (2004), Vahdat started a long lasting collaboration with the Norwegian record label Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV). This collaboration led to a worldwide release of a series of award wining and critically acclaimed records.

Without being visible in her own society because of restrictions of female solo voice after Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Iran, she and her sister Marjan Vahdat have had continuous contact with a large audience who appreciates their art, both in Iran and abroad. 

For Vahdat, artistic practice, creative freedom, and humanitarian principles are closely intertwined. She is an extremely effective cultural worker who utilizes the emotive power of her voice to raise awareness of suffering and injustice in the world, while simultaneously delivering messages of  hope, and positive change.

About Vaya, Vaya, Mahsa Vahdat writes:

“Vaya, vaya is a deep expression of Love to a beloved, constantly transforming into a homeland. Since the pandemic arrived in California in March 2020, for more than one year, the most visited place for me has been a place in Berkeley where the Rose garden is situated. I walked there almost every day at the time of Sunset, the moment when the Sun turns its glow to my motherland where my breath is interwoven with its soil, the moment when darkness and light embrace each other and when the intense red, dark blue, and golden rays in the clouds create a unique image, while passion, rebellion, glow, hope, and sorrow entwine.

“With my deep longing and desire for my motherland these words and music came to me like a wonder. This zone in Berkeley is one of my dear zones in life. Wherever I roam in the world, this place will always remain in my heart.”

Texts

Persian Text:

وايا وايا
بال گيرم در هوايت
اوج گيرم در صدايت
شعله شوم در هرم واياوايت
تلخ وار پيچم در رگ تاك هايت
ابر سركش شوم در آبى هاى خيالت
وايا وايا وايا وايا
سبز شوم در اندوه ساليانت
عاشق مانم بر آفتاب كوهسارانت
اشك شوم در زلال جويبارانت
همنفس با بيكران اميد هايت
وايا وايا وايا وايا

English Translation:
Vaya, Vaya
I’ll have wings in your air
I’ll be a wave in your voice
I’ll be a flame in your flickering heat, in my cries of wanting you
Bitterly I’ll twist in the veins of your vines
I’ll be a stubborn cloud in the tears of my grief for you
Vaya, Vaya
I’ll grow green in my sorrow for your passing years
I’ll stay in love in the sun above your mountain tops
I’ll be tears in the purity of your streams
at one with my limitless hope for you
Vaya, Vaya

Translator’s note: The title, “Vaya, Vaya,” is the same word twice: it is a lamentation, an expression of grief—while it is similar to “Alas!” in English, the Persian word here is more colloquial, so as to mean “O God!” or “God help me!”

—

Vaya, Vaya, music by Mahsa Vahdat and Atabak Elyasi, and visuals by Laurie Olinder, was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University, with additional support from the Kronos Performing Arts Association.

Jacob Garchik (b. 1976)
Storyteller (2019)

A giant of the folk music world, musician and social activist Pete Seeger was and remains one of the most significant figures in American music history. Throughout his lifetime, he worked to expand the role of music in daily life, putting on vibrant and courageous performances that were encyclopedic in their exploration of the world. Harnessing his vast knowledge of the origins of songs, Seeger was able to find teachable moments at every turn, empowering his audiences to build active communities and forge paths to a better future in the midst of a troubled, angry world. A century after his birth, our present time is as troubled as ever, but if Seeger has taught us one thing, it’s the ability to remain optimistic in unsettling times. Kronos Quartet channels this optimism in Jacob Garchik’s Storyteller, a work written for Music for Change: Seeger @ 100, its 2019 program celebrating the folk legend’s immense contribution to American culture.

Pete Seeger was born in Manhattan in 1919 to ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger and concert violinist Constance de Clyver Edson Seeger, a pair who would provide an enduring musical backdrop throughout his childhood. When they decided to embark on a cross-country expedition to bring classical music to rural areas, they built their own trailer and brought the whole family with them, stopping along the way to perform for local farmers. To their surprise, the local farmers would always reciprocate by sharing their own musical traditions, planting in young Pete the seeds of a passion that would go on to fuel his entire career. Galvanized by these early experiences, and later, by stepmother and folk music composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, Pete began singing and learning to play the ukulele, eventually moving on to the five-string banjo for which he is best known today. 

The early 1940s found Seeger performing with The Almanac Singers, a group that came on the scene as pro-labor, anti-war activists. After service in World War II, Seeger rose to fame with his Almanac-inspired quartet The Weavers, performing in major venues and landing hit records on the charts by the group’s second year. Their success was abruptly interrupted, however, when in the hysteria of postwar McCarthyism, Seeger’s prior affiliation with the Communist Party landed him on the blacklist, the effects of which he would continue to feel for the next 17 years.

Subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee—the investigative council charged with sniffing out Communist threats—in 1955, Seeger refused to discuss his political beliefs, not by pleading the fifth, but by invoking the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and association: “I am not going to answer any questions as to […] my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.” This bold move would result in his 1961 conviction and yearlong prison sentence for contempt of Congress. “I am proud,” Seeger said at the ruling, “that I never refused to sing to any group of people because I might disagree with some of the ideas of some of the people listening to me. I have sung for rich and poor, for Americans of every possible political and religious opinion and persuasion, of every race, color, and creed. The House committee wished to pillory me because it didn’t like some few of the many thousands of places I have sung for.” The indictment was dismissed on appeal the following year.

Despite being shut out of national exposure, Seeger remained as active as ever in the following decades. He churned out political numbers such as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”; he participated in reworking the hymn “I Will Overcome” into the iconic Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome”; and he contributed a strong voice against the American war in Vietnam, penning great anti-war songs like “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” and “If You Love Your Uncle Sam (Bring ’Em Home).” Taking a page from his parents, Seeger took his family on a nine-month expedition across two dozen countries abroad, performing for hundreds of thousands of listeners and collecting rural traditions from around the world. From Ghanaian fishermen rowing songs to Indonesian court dances, Irish fiddle tunes to Indian classical sitar music, the Seegers were able to document the globalization and creolization of folk and popular music, modeling how the act of learning about others is effectively indistinguishable from learning about ourselves.

“My job,” Seeger said in 2009, “is to show folks there’s a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help to save the planet.” Considering Kronos’ own 45-plus-year history of global exploration and musical activism, it is only natural for the group to take on Seeger’s commitment as an extension of its own work. In the process of celebrating Pete Seeger, Kronos founder and artistic director David Harrington hopes to extend the spirit and inspiration inherent in Seeger’s life work. “He celebrated beauty and the pleasure of singing together, while also alerting his listeners to issues that needed to be worked on,” Harrington says. “He explored the wide world through music; he questioned wars and injustice; he taught us about responsibilities we have as citizens; and he had immense courage. When the work of Pete Seeger is examined in its entirety, we find that he has pointed a way forward for musicians and the community around us since the beginning.”

Program note by Reshena Liao

Jacob Garchik’s Storyteller was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the FreshGrass Foundation, the David Harrington Research & Development Fund, and the Stoyanof Commission Fund for the 2019 FreshGrass Festival at MASS MoCA.

Philip Glass (b. 1937)
Orion: China (2004)
Arranged by Michael Riesman (b. 1943)

Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.

The operas – “Einstein on the Beach,” “Satyagraha,” “Akhnaten,” and “The Voyage,” among many others – play throughout the world’s leading houses, and rarely to an empty seat. Glass has written music for experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures such as “The Hours” and Martin Scorsese’s “Kundun,” while “Koyaanisqatsi,” his initial filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio and the Philip Glass Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since “Fantasia.” His associations, personal and professional, with leading rock, pop and world music artists date back to the 1960s, including the beginning of his collaborative relationship with artist Robert Wilson. Indeed, Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music – simultaneously.

He was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland , Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble – seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer.

The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.

There has been nothing “minimalist” about his output. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than twenty five operas, large and small; twelve symphonies, thirteen concertos; soundtracks to films ranging from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris’s documentary about former defense secretary Robert McNamara; nine string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.

About the original version of Orion, Philip Glass writes:

“Orion was commissioned by the 2004 Cultural Olympiad and premiered in Athens in June 2004 preceding the Olympic Games. For this special event I assembled a group of renowned composer/performers to collaborate with me on an evening length work that, in its multinational format, is intended to reflect the international character of the Olympiad itself. I collaborated with Mark Atkins (didjeridoo) from Australia, Wu Man (pipa) from China, Foday Musa Suso (kora) from Gambia, UAKTI (multi-instrumentalists) from Brazil, Ravi Shankar (sitar) from India, Ashley MacIsaac (violin) from Nova Scotia, Canada, and Eleftheria Arvanitaki (vocalist) from Greece. 

“Since 1964 I have been actively engaged in musical encounters with composers from musical traditions different than my own. I began working with Ravi Shankar in 1964 as his music assistant on the film Chappaqua. Our friendship flourished and led to a musical recording Passages in 1989. … I completed an opera Sound of a Voice featuring Wu Man, which premiered at American Repertory Theater in Boston. Though we have known each other for years and often talked about working together, this was our first opportunity to do so.

“In the same way that civilizations are united by common themes, history and customs, we singularly and together are united by the commonality of the natural world – rivers, oceans, the organic environment of forests and mountains. And the stars. Stargazing must be one of the oldest pastimes of humanity. It led to astrology, astronomy, measurement of the seasons and the very beginnings of science. I think no single experience of the world speaks to us so directly as when we contemplate the infinity of space, its vastness and countless heavenly bodies. In this way the stars unite us, regardless of country, ethnicity and even time.

“Orion, the largest constellation in the night sky, can be seen in all seasons from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It seems that almost every civilization has created myths and taken inspiration from Orion. As the work progressed, each of the composer/performers, including myself, drew from that inspiration in creating their work. In this way the starry heavens, seen from all over our planet, inspired us in making and presenting a multicultural, international musical work.”

Soo Yeon Lyuh is a master of the haegeum, a two-stringed Korean bowed instrument. She possesses not only flawless technique and a full command of the haegeum’s traditional repertoire, but is also widely recognized for promoting the creation of new pieces for haegeum. For 12 years, Lyuh was a member of South Korea’s National Gugak Center, the foremost institution for the preservation of Korean traditional music. Since then, Lyuh has endeavored to weave authentic styles into new musical domains, relocating to the Bay Area and drawing inspiration from its dynamic improvised music scene. Her contributions have sparked the creation of new repertoire for haegeum—the lifeblood of any instrument.

In 2021, Lyuh began doctoral studies in composition at Princeton University. Previously, Lyuh earned her D.M.A. in Korean Traditional Music from Seoul National University. As a lecturer, she is sought after for her ability to impart valuable insight and intercultural understanding to those unfamiliar with Korean traditional music; her dissertation researched the changing role of haegeum in Korean orchestras beginning with early court traditions. As a visiting scholar at Mills College (2017-2018) and UC Berkeley (2015-2016), Lyuh taught established and emerging composers in the Bay Area about haegeum composition and techniques in order to create new repertoire for the instrument. Lyuh has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (2011-2012).

​Born and raised in Daegu, South Korea, Lyuh’s early musical studies were typical for those in her country. She took piano lessons from the age of three, a way to “acquire Western music’s grammar,” and was performing as a soloist with the Daegu Philharmonic Orchestra by the time she was twelve. Still, Lyuh was unsatisfied with the piano and switched to the violin—only to quit music completely three years later. When she missed playing, her mother suggested taking up a traditional instrument as a hobby, an alternative to the pressurized and competitive culture of classical music. She had no idea that it would become the pursuit that would define her future.

“I think that it will be impossible to conquer the haegeum in my lifetime,” says Lyuh. “That is because it becomes harder the more I play it. The instrument continues to reveal itself. It is full of untapped possibilities.”

sooyeonlyuh.com

Mahsa Vahdat is an award-winning Iranian singer, composer and cultural activist dedicated to both her personal lifelong musical and artistic path and the greater cause of freedom of expression. Her artistic work has offered audiences around the globe a deeper appreciation of Iranian poetry and music.

Born in 1973 in Tehran, she received her B.A. in Music from the Tehran University of Arts and learned Persian traditional music with different masters. Since 1995, she has performed as an independent singer and musician in many concerts and festivals in the world. She has also appeared on stage with her sister Marjan Vahdat in many concerts.

Mahsa Vahdat has developed a highly personal style of performance, rooted in Persian classical and regional vocal music traditions and infused with contemporary and innovative expressions and influences. Her many performance and recording projects include collaborations with many of the world’s most acclaimed musicians including Mighty Sam McClain, Kronos Quartet, Tord Gustavson, Teatr Zar, SKRUK Choir, Kitka, and countless others. Through creative dialogues with her collaborators, and explorations as an unaccompanied soloist, she has developed a diverse, unique, and wide-ranging repertoire.

Following her participation in the album Lullabies from the Axis of Evil (2004), Vahdat started a long lasting collaboration with the Norwegian record label Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV). This collaboration led to a worldwide release of a series of award wining and critically acclaimed records.

Without being visible in her own society because of restrictions of female solo voice after Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Iran, she and her sister Marjan Vahdat have had continuous contact with a large audience who appreciates their art, both in Iran and abroad. 

For Vahdat, artistic practice, creative freedom, and humanitarian principles are closely intertwined. She is an extremely effective cultural worker who utilizes the emotive power of her voice to raise awareness of suffering and injustice in the world, while simultaneously delivering messages of  hope, and positive change.

mahsavahdat.net

Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous concert tours she has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. Her adventurous spirit and virtuosity have led to collaborations across artistic disciplines, allowing her to reach wider audiences as she works to cross cultural and musical borders. Her efforts were recognized when she was named Musical America’s 2013 “Instrumentalist of the Year,” marking the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument, and in 2021 when she received an honorary Doctorate of Music from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Ms. Wu is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by today’s most prominent composers such as Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and many others. She was the recipient of The Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998, and was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive The United States Artist Fellowship in 2008. She is also the first artist from China to perform at the White House. Wu Man is a Visiting Professor at her alma mater the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a Distinguished Professor at the Zhejiang and the Xi’an Conservatories. She has also served as Artistic Director of the Xi’an Silk Road Music Festival at the Xi’an Conservatory.

Ms. Wu has performed as a soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras, including the Austrian ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Moscow Soloists, Nashville Symphony, German NDR and RSO Radio Symphony Orchestras, New Music Group, New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Her touring has taken her to the major music halls of the world including Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Great Hall in Moscow, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Opera Bastille, Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls in London, and the Theatre de la Ville in Paris. She has performed at many international festivals including the Auckland Arts Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, BBC Proms, Festival d’Automne in Paris, Festival de Radio France et Montpellier, Hong Kong Arts Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Lincoln Center Festival, Luminato, Mozart Festival in Vienna, NextWave! / BAM, Ravinia Festival, Silk Road Festival, Sydney Festival, Tanglewood, Wien Modern, WOMAD Festival, and the Yatsugatake Kogen Festival in Japan. She continually collaborates with some of the most distinguished musicians and conductors performing today, such as Yuri Bashmet, Dennis Russell Davies, Christoph Eschenbach, Gunther Herbig, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and David Zinman.

Among Ms. Wu’s most fruitful collaborations is with Kronos Quartet, with whom she began collaborating in the early 1990s. They premiered their first project together, Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1995. The work was recorded and released on Nonesuch in 1997. Additional Kronos Quartet recordings featuring Wu Man for Nonesuch include Early Music, on which she plays the zhong ruan and da ruan (string instruments related to the pipa) in John Dowland’s Lachrymæ Antiquæ and the Grammy-nominated You’ve Stolen My Heart, an homage to the composer of classic Bollywood songs Rahul Dev Burman, featuring Ms. Wu alongside the Quartet, singer Asha Bhosle, and tabla player Zakir Hussain. She participated in the Quartet’s 40th Anniversary celebration concerts at Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA and at Carnegie Hall; was Artist-in-Residence with the Quartet in February 2016; became the second inductee into the “Kronos Hall of Fame” (joining Terry Riley); and created her first piece for western instruments, Two Chinese Paintings, for the Quartet’s “50 for the Future” project. Last season in Washington, D.C., she and the Quartet reprised their multimedia work A Chinese Home, conceived in collaboration with theater director Chen Shi-Zheng and premiered at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in 2009.

As a principal, founding musician in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad project, Ms. Wu has performed throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia with the Silkroad Ensemble. She is a featured artist in the documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble, as well as on the film’s 2017 Grammy Award-winning companion recording, Sing Me Home (“Best World Music Album”), which includes her original composition Green (Vincent’s Tune) performed with the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. She has recorded six albums with the group: Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet (2002), Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon (2005), New Impossibilities (2007), the CD/DVD A Playlist Without Borders / Live from Tanglewood (2013), and Sing Me Home (2016) on Sony Classical, as well as Off the Map (2009) on World Village. Her Silkroad Ensemble performances in recent years have included tours of the U.S. during the season and to summer festivals such as Tanglewood, Wolf Trap, Blossom, Ravinia, and Hollywood Bowl; a tour of Asia; and performances with Mark Morris Dance in Berkeley and Seattle. During the 2019-20 season, she and the ensemble toured the eastern U.S. for the world-premiere performances of resident composer Osvaldo Golijov’s song cycle Falling Out of Time.

Adamant that the pipa does not become marginalized as only appropriate for Chinese music, Ms. Wu strives to develop a place for the pipa in all art forms. Projects she has initiated have resulted in the pipa finding a place in new solo and quartet works, concertos, opera, chamber, electronic, and jazz music as well as in theater productions, film, dance, and collaborations with visual artists including calligraphers and painters. Her role has developed beyond pipa performance to encompass singing, dancing, composing, and curating new works. She has premiered works by Chinese composers including Zhao Jiping, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, and Chen Yi. Other notable projects include Orion: China, co-written with Philip Glass for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and recorded the following year; and Blue and Green, an original composition that she premiered with The Knights. In March 2019 Ms. Man and Yo-Yo Ma performed the American premiere of Zhao Lin’s A Happy Excursion with the New York Philharmonic. Recent projects have seen her rediscover, embrace, and showcase the musical traditions of her homeland, projects she has dubbed “Wu Man’s Return to the East.” In 2009, she was asked to curate two concerts at Carnegie Hall as part of the “Ancient Paths, Modern Voices” festival celebrating Chinese culture. Ms. Wu and the artists she brought to New York from rural China for the festival also took part in two free neighborhood concerts and a concert presented by the Orange County Performing Arts Society in Costa Mesa. In August 2012, she released a documentary DVD titled Discovering a Musical Heartland: Wu Man’s Return to China as part of her ongoing “Return to the East” project. In the film, she travels to little-explored regions of China to uncover ancient musical traditions that have rarely been documented before. Among the musicians she met on her journey were the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, which she brought to the U.S. for the first time—touring to 11 cities around the nation. She has also toured around the world as a Master Musician in the Aga Khan Music Initiative—a group of performers, composer-arrangers, teachers, and curators who create music inspired by their cultural heritage of the Middle East, South and Central Asia, West Africa, and China.

Ms. Wu boasts a discography of over 40 albums including the Grammy Award-winning Sing Me Home (“Best World Music Album”) with the Silkroad Ensemble on Sony; the Grammy Award-nominated Our World in Song, featuring familiar folk songs from around the world arranged by her with Hawaiian instrumentalist Daniel Ho and Cuban percussionist Luis Conte; and Elegant Pipa Classics, which combines traditional pipa repertoire with modern compositions, both released by Wind Music. Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago features her Grammy Award-nominated performance of Lou Harrison’s Pipa Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as a Grammy-nominated recording of Tan Dun’s Pipa Concerto with Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists on Onyx Classics. In May 2012, she released her Independent Music Award-nominated CD / DVD Borderlands, which traces the history of the pipa in China. It is the final installment of the acclaimed ten-volume “Music of Central Asia” ethnographic series produced by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In Wu Man and Friends, released on Traditional Crossroads in 2005, she blends Chinese, Ukrainian, Ugandan, and Appalachian traditional music, performing alongside musicians from these regions.Her solo recordings include Pipa: From a Distance, released on Naxos World Music in 2003, and Immeasurable Light, released on Traditional Crossroads in 2010. Fingertip Carnival, her latest release for Wind Music, explores the connections between Chinese and Mexican folk music and each culture’s use of stringed instruments with the San Diego-based son jarocho group Son de San Diego. Her most recent recordings have seen her pair the pipa with traditional wind instruments: with the Japanese shakuhachi on Flow with Kojiro Umezaki released on In A Circle Records; and with the Chinese sheng on Distant Mountains with Wu Wei recorded live at the 2018 Morgenland Festival Osnabrueck and released by Dreyer Gaido.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Ms. Wu studied with Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. Accepted into the conservatory at age 13, her audition was covered by national newspapers and she was hailed as a child prodigy, becoming a nationally recognized role model for young pipa players. She subsequently received first prize in the First National Music Performance Competition among many other awards, and she participated in many premieres of works by a new generation of Chinese composers. Her first exposure to Western classical music came in 1979 when she saw Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing in Beijing. In 1980 she participated in an open master class with violinist Isaac Stern, and in 1985 she made her first visit to the U.S. as a member of the China Youth Arts Troupe. She moved to the U.S. in 1990 and was awarded the Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998. She was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive the United States Artist Fellowship (2008) and the first artist from China to perform at the White House. She currently resides in California.

wumanpipa.org

Anouk Yeh is a spoken word poet, journalist and organizer from Saratoga, California. She is Santa Clara County’s 2021 Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate, a 2020 National Student Poet Program semifinalist and a U.S. delegate to the International Congress of Youth Voices. 

She is a firm believer in Toni Cade Cambarayou’s words: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible” and is always looking to d​​ocument social and political issues — especially those that affect immigrants & teenage girls  — through her poetry. 

Her poetry has been featured by Stanford University and Planned Parenthood. Her journalism pieces have been published in Refinery29, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Education Post, among others.

anoukyeh.com