1996 Australian Broadcasting Company Classic FM — Best International Recording of the Year

These pieces incorporate the recorded/sampled voices of politically charged figures Allen Ginsberg, J. Edgar Hoover, and I.F. Stone. “‘People who regularly go to concerts have somehow convinced themselves that music is a refuge, that it’s a place to hide from the world of thoughts and ideas and action,’” Kronos’ David Harrington said in a 2012 interview with Raquel Laneri of the Daily Beast. “‘I’m intending to spend the rest of my life attempting to change that perception,’ he says. The group has played compositions that sampled the journalism of I.F. Stone, accompanied Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, and performed with Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. Harrington, who cites Kafka and Rilke as major influences, sees these collaborations as part of Kronos’ wider mission: to bring the entire world, with all its messiness, violence, beauty, and humanity, into the all-too protected, bubblelike classical-music venue.”