KRONOS FESTIVAL
Program Notes

Kronos Makes Sounds With Stuff (2020)
Danny Clay

About Kronos Makes Sounds With Stuff, Danny Clay writes:

“A few days after the shelter-in-place order began in San Francisco,” writes Clay, “Kronos reached out for a simple, fun creative project that could be done from home. I asked them to go on a scavenger hunt around their houses to find different types of sounds, and then I built a short video collage from the noises they discovered. Special guest appearances from Olivier, Cowboy, Jasmine, and Beethoven.”

Now it’s your turn! Click here to go on your own sonic scavenger hunt at home.

God-music from Black Angels (1970)
George Crumb

“Things were turned upside down. There were terrifying things in the air . . . they found their way into Black Angels.”
—George Crumb, 1990

Black Angels is probably the only quartet to have been inspired by the Vietnam War. The work draws from an arsenal of sounds including shouting, chanting, whistling, whispering, gongs, maracas, and crystal glasses. The score bears two inscriptions: “in tempore belli” (in time of war) and “Finished on Friday the Thirteenth, March, 1970.”

Black Angels was conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world. The work portrays a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption).

The numerological symbolism of Black Angels, while perhaps not immediately perceptible to the ear, is nonetheless quite faithfully reflected in the musical structure. These “magical” relationships are variously expressed: e.g., in terms of length, groupings of single tones, durations, patterns of repetition, etc. . . . There are several allusions to tonal music: a quotation from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet; an original Sarabanda; the sustained B-major tonality of God-music; and several references to the Latin sequence Dies Irae (Day of Wrath). The work abounds in conventional musical symbolisms such as the Diabolus in Musica (the interval of the tritone) and the Trillo Di Diavolo (the Devil’s Trill, after Tartini).

Black Angels appears on Kronos’ Nonesuch recording of the same name which was released in August 1990.

Train Scene from Users (2020)
Film by Natalia Almada
Music: Angry Run by Dave Cerf

This scene is excerpted from Users, a new film by Natalia Almada that captures the ruthless locomotion of technology. Her camera flies with ferocious speed alongside jet streams, trains, trucks, and underwater cables that carry data at the speed of light. But just as her lens documents the power of frenetic human invention, so does it dive into technology’s greatest existential competitor: rising oceans, crackling fires, scorched mountain tops—a planet at war with so-called societal progress. In the center of this storm, Almada’s young son stares unquestioningly into his computer screen and is rocked to sleep by a seamlessly paced electronic crib. He’s soothed by forces outside of Almada’s—or, for that matter, any parent’s—influence. With transcendent camerawork that peers into the internal organs of a technologically dependent planet, Users both marvels at and fears for a world in which a child is not only at risk from a warming Earth but comes to trust a perfectly constructed artificial caretaker over his own biological mother.

KRONOS FESTIVAL Science Report: Lobsters
with Alyssa Tam, correspondent
Filmed by Jung Park
Script by Fionn Quinn
Video edited by Kayla LaCour

Excerpt from 3000 Reefs (2020)
Film by Julia Sumerling
Music: Daughters of Sol (2017) by Aftab Darvishi

About 3000 Reefs, Julia Sumerling writes:

“During my 93-day surface interval, being completely landlocked, I found what kept me sane was seeking out beautiful things, creating new work and listening to beautiful music or just photographing nature in my back garden. It kept my mind active and myself busy with constantly creating new work. After the first several weeks I had a new routine and a new creative world started flowing like it hasn’t in a long time. During this time, 3000 Reefs was made.

“When I hear music, I have always seen imagery in my head, like a film, So, when I was given the opportunity to create a short film using a piece of music played by the Kronos Quartet from San Francisco, by Iranian composer Aftab Darvishi, all I could see was the fish and beautiful marine life of The Great Barrier Reef inside my head. I missed being amongst the 3000 Reefs. But this piece of music transported me back there and I could almost reach out and touch it. Making 3000 Reefs gave me the hope I needed and reminded me of the world I had to look forward to once I could get back to the underwater realm again.

“Special thanks to: David Harrington, from the Kronos Quartet and everyone from Kronos Performing Arts Association; Aftab Darvishi for composing such an exquisite piece of music; and Mike Ball Dive Expeditions for continually giving me opportunities to work in the most beautiful office in the world amongst the 3000 Reefs of The Great Barrier Reef”

About Daughters of Sol, Aftab Darvishi writes:

“Daughters of Sol is inspired by a poem by Ahmad Shamloo who is a contemporary Iranian poet. This piece contains gentle transitions and detailed changes, which leads to dissolving of different shades and colors. It is a constant evolution between shadows and lights. It is a journey about conveying gentle circular movements, which I think resembles cycles of life. We evolve and dissolve in gentle and harsh conversions. We change colors, yet we tend to go back to our roots despite of our differences.”

Excerpt from Satellites: III. Dimensions (2015)
Garth Knox

“Dimensions” is the third and final movement of Satellites, about which Garth Knox writes:

“‘Dimensions’ deals with the many possible dimensions which surround us, represented by the physical movements of the bow through space. In the first dimension, only vertical movement is possible. In the second, only horizontal movement along the string is possible. Then only circular motion, then alternating between the two sides of the bow (the stick and the hair). The fun really starts when we begin to mix the dimensions, slipping from one to another, and the piece builds to a climax of spectacular bow techniques including the ‘whip’ and the ‘helicopter,’ producing a huge range of other-worldly sounds.”

Hansel and Gretel (2015–16)
Wind-up mechanical music box
Created by Yuliya Lanina
Music by Yevgeniy Sharlat

Hansel and Gretel is part of Once Upon a Time, a series of small-scale mechanical sculptures based on popular folk tales. Collectively, they examine the underlying moral messages of fairy tales and their effect on a child’s psyche. Each sculpture is a wind-up toy comprised of a painted wooden box with moving figures, as well as music clockwork that plays a custom-composed melody particular to each scene.

The music is played by a revolving brass cylinder that plucks the tuned teeth of a steel comb.

Music of the Birds (2020)
Music and Film by Sahba Aminikia
with San Francisco Girls Chorus with Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Her Yerde Sanat Derneği, and Smithsonian ornithologists, vocals

San Francisco Girls Chorus
Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Artistic Director

San Francisco Girls Chorus School, Level II
Monica Covitt, Director
Nina Al-Badeh, Meher Arvind, Giovanna Barroso, Luciana Baubert, Devon Blumenfeld, Gabriela Bogiages-Garcia, Sofia Bourgon-Trujillo, Gabriella Cave, Madison Chow, Ella Cody, Rowan Cranley, Aleksandra Das, Sofia Rose DeLuca, Elizabeth Dominguez, Aida Beatriz Donahue, Lillian Escher, Tolifili Fa, Zuri Hart-Porter, Leena Heckm Anya Jayaraman, Angelina Jiam Avah Keyhani, Taisia Kozmin, Sophia L’Don-Hayuk, Anabel Laughlin, Addison Li, Zara Nelson, Aubrey Nettesheim, Maya Ng, Samantha Nieper, Lily, Grace Normanly, Alyssa Novakovic, Sophia Ohliger-Yang, Ava Pollard, Evie Poynter, Olivia Preston, Ava Saddler, Carissa Satuito, Shayla Sauvie, Thalia Savage, Ashni Singh, Kennedy Sink, Willow Stokes, Dorothea Tompkins, Kiyomi Treanor, Valentina Esperanza Sabine Vazquez, Avery Wong

Soloists:
Gabriella Cave
Lillian Escher

Biologists and Ornithologists:
Dr Sahas Barve, Dr Peri Bolton, Dr Carla Dove, Dr Sarah Luttrell, and Jim Whatton – Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Dr Chris Balakrishnan, Dr Peri Bolton, and Kristen Orr – East Carolina University
Stephanie Aguillon – Cornell University
Dr Alice Boyle – Kansas State University
Diego Calderón-Franco – Colombia Birding @diegoCOLbirding
Dr David P Craig – Willamette University
Dr Tyler Imfield – Regis University
Dr Roland Kays – North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Dr Nicola Khan – Nottingham Trent University
Katie Schroeder – University of Massachusetts – Amherst

Sirkhane Social Circus School, Turkey
Pinar Demiral, Founder
Sahba Aminikia, Music Director
Darişan, Fatma, Hamit, Hemrevin, Hevin, İbrahim, İrem, Mahmut, Muhammet, Mustafa, Ömer, Pinar, Refik, Sahba, and Ziyat

Birds (in order of appearance):
Scaly-naped pigeon, mourning dove, tawny frogmouth, large billed lear warbler, Indian cuckoo, Indian peafowl, common hawk-cuckoo

Tegere Tulon: I. Funtukuru (2018)
Music by Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté (arr. Jacob Garchik)
Film by Moustapha Diallo and Lucy Durán
with Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté and Rokia Kouyaté, vocals

Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté’s Tegere Tulon takes her back to her roots and forwards into the realm of composition. Commissioned to compose a piece for Kronos’ Fifty for the Future project, Hawa decided to revisit the handclapping songs of her childhood, which were such formative experiences for her, and which are gradually dying out except in remote villages.

Performed exclusively by girls outdoors in a circle, usually on moonlit nights, the handclapping songs are normally very short, consisting of one or two phrases repeated in call and response, often involving counting, each one with its own dance. Children make them up spontaneously, using the rhythms of language to generate musical rhythm, with playful movements, some individual, some coordinated by the whole circle. Building on her own memories of the handclapping songs she used to do as a young girl in Kela, Hawa has created four new pieces in handclapping style, which she hopes will encourage Malians not to abandon this rich cultural heritage. The lyrics are humorous and poignant—they talk about the importance of family, the teasing relationship between kalime “cross-cousins” (a man’s children and his sister’s children are cross-cousins), a girl who loves dancing so much she falls into a well and then climbs out, and how long it takes to get to Funtukuru, her husband’s village, where she went to film handclapping.

“Funtukuru” is the first of Hawa’s Tegere Tulon songs, and is made up of three short call-and-response songs whose lyrics are built around counting, which is a characteristic component of the tegere tulon tradition. It was inspired by a trip to film handclapping songs in Funtukuru, a village located deep in the rolling savannah countryside of western Mali, where Hawa’s husband, Demba Kouyaté, is from. Funtukuru is inhabited almost entirely by Mande jelis (griots, or hereditary musicians), and they carry on traditions that are mostly lost in the bigger towns and cities of western Mali, including tegere tulon.

The song plays on the name of the village, which is made up of two words in Maninka (the main language of the region). “Funtu” means “to arrive” and “kuru” means “hill.” Funtukuru is indeed surrounded by hills of big red boulders that rise sharply out of the earth.

To get to Funtukuru, you drive northwest from Bamako, Mali’s capital along a pot-holed road for 170 kms, passing through the historic town of Kita—a place famous for its music—and then onwards down a dirt road for another 30 kms, past cotton fields and many small villages. It’s a long and dusty journey, along which our car had several breakdowns. So the song celebrates our arrival there in the late afternoon, where we were treated to some truly wonderful and creative handclapping dance-songs, which astonished even Hawa.

The rest of the song is about a tall girl called Marama who loves dancing so much that she falls into a well, but then somehow climbs out and carries on dancing; she is fearless, even in front of a host of men. This is Hawa’s playful reflection on the joy of handclapping songs. It is her way of encouraging girls—who are the ones that perform the tegere tulon—not to be put off by the stern gaze of male elders.

Program note by Professor Lucy Durán

Using the Library of Congress (2021)
By Todd Harvey and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress

Knights of the Traptable (2021)  world premiere
Film by Joel Tarman
featuring Tadi Todi, dancer
Music sampled from Yotam Haber’s From The Book from Kronos’ 50 for the Future, remixed by Cameron “BEAMONEM” Collier
Produced by Joel Tarman and Sunset Youth Services

Knights of the Traptable was developed as part of Kronos Music: Remix, a collaboration between Kronos Quartet / Kronos Performing Arts Association and Sunset Youth Services in San Francisco. Sunset Youth Services (SYS) has a long track record of helping in-risk youth realize their potential as artists, musicians, recording engineers, and community leaders. SYS serves 14–24 year-olds who struggle with chaotic family systems, destructive behavioral patterns, trauma, and drug use. Because the youth served by SYS often experience traumatic life events, programs are designed to create physically and emotionally safe spaces where activities are flexible, age appropriate, gender responsive and relationally rich. Kronos and SYS share a commitment to encouraging work that addresses social issues, especially in marginalized or adversely impacted communities. 

Participants of Kronos Music: Remix engage with works commissioned for Kronos’ 50 for the Future, a learning library of pieces by composers from around the world designed to introduce student musicians of all ages to contemporary music. Kronos’ professional recordings of selected works from 50 for the Future are provided to participants as source material for the creation of their own new work as remixes and original songs. This material encompasses a diverse array of musical traditions and cultural backgrounds, which participants are empowered to incorporate into their own personal expression. The structure of the project prioritizes opportunities for youth to collaborate one-on-one and in small groups, with creative mentorship from Kronos and technical guidance from the staff of SYS.

Kronos Music: Remix is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Additional support is provided by The Sam Mazza Foundation and San Francisco Grants for the Arts.

Excerpt from Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat: II. Chebiyat Muqam – Third Dastan (2015)
Traditional (arr. Wu Man, real. Danny Clay)
featuring Oakland School for the Arts Orchestra with Nick Kanozik, Director of Orchestras; and Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts Orchestra with Tristan Arnold, Director, Orchestra Department

About Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat, Wu Man writes:

“After two decades of collaborating with the Kronos Quartet, I am finally beginning to understand Western string instruments. With the group’s encouragement and support, I was able to create these—my first works for string quartet.

“Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat is a two-movement suite which, taken together, resembles a set of portraits of traditional cultures from around China. In Chinese traditional music, instrumental pieces often have poetic titles to express their content and style. I decided to continue this tradition with this collection. The inspiration for these suite came from styles of traditional music in China familiar to me, including Uyghur Maqam of Xinjiang province, a pipa scale from the 9th century, and the Silk-and-Bamboo music, or teahouse music, from my hometown of Hangzhou.

“Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat is adapted from the Uyghur Muqam Chebiyat. In 2010, thanks to the Aga Khan Music Initiative, I had the opportunity to learn these pieces directly from the Uyghur musicians Abdullah Majnun and Sanubar Tursun.

“I feel quite grateful to be able to bring these old styles of traditional music into the repertoire of Western string ensembles. The left-hand portamento, or sliding, technique called for here is quite distinct from the types of expression found in Western music. I hope that audiences will come to better understand the richness and diversity of music from China through these four stories.

“I’d like to thank Kronos for their trust and encouragement, for letting me be a part of their 50 for the Future project, and for giving me this opportunity to share my musical experiences with young string quartets around the world!”

Garbage (inspired by Pete Seeger) (1971)
By Bill Steele (arr. Jacob Garchik)
with Lee Knight, vocals

It was a year before our first Earth Day celebration when Bill Steele wrote this tune. The late 1960s found Steele living in San Francisco, troubled by the Bay Area’s trend of dumping garbage into the bay, not as trash, but as landfill to build more waterfront condos. His response was to write this song. It wasn’t long before “Garbage” moved and morphed its way through various singers and festivals, eventually landing in Pete Seeger’s regular rotation and quickly becoming the environmental anthem it is today. Sadly, as Steele was known to point out, “Most topical songs quickly become outdated; it’s unfortunate that this one hasn’t.”

Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Garbage is part of Kronos Quartet’s Music for Change: Pete Seeger @ 100, which was commissioned by the FreshGrass Foundation for the 2019 FreshGrass Festival at MASS MoCA, and recorded for the 2020 album Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger (Smithsonian Folkways).

Aftab Darvishi’s Daughters of Sol, Garth Knox’s Satellites, Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté’s Tegere Tulon, Yotam Haber’s From the Book, and Wu Man’s Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat were commissioned as part of the Kronos Performing Arts Association’s 50 for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, which is made possible by a group of adventurous partners, including Carnegie Hall and many others.