What`s wrong with this picture? You trot into your local record store to check out the new releases, and there, nestling between Diamond Dave`s ”Eat
`Em and Smile” and the Poges` ”Rum, Sodomy & the Lash” is a piece of vinyl modestly called ”Kronos Quartet.”
To confuse you even further, the classical quartet (yes, they really are a string quartet–the ignorant clerk must have dropped them in the ”Popular” section while daydreaming) are looking suspiciously trendy in the new-wavish, moody cover shot–not at all like classical nerds.
But most puzzling of all is the sticker on the shrink-wrap. ”Kronos Quartet plays music of Philip Glass, Jimi Hendrix (`Purple Haze`), Peter Sculthorpe, Aulis Sallinen and Conlon Nancarrow” it announces proudly. Glass? Fine. Hendrix? Does not compute, as Mr. Spock was fond of saying.
It`s no joke, however. Stick this album on the turntable and out pops the quartet`s version of Jimi`s psychedelic masterpiece, without distortion and feedback, perhaps, but with all its original power and glory surprisingly intact. Ironically, the other, more esoteric, compositions are slightly more predictable, but no less enthralling in the hands of these masters of gut and varnish.
”Audiences were pretty surprised when we first started playing `Purple Haze` live in concert, alongside works by Bartok and Shostakovich,” says founding member David Harrington, ”and that type of shock reaction was exactly why I formed the quartet in the first place–to get people to sit up and take notice of a musical format that`s largely taken for granted today. I`ve always loved the sound and the combination of two violins, viola and cello, but I also felt that the string quartet was simply dying because it was trapped in academia.”
Harrington`s solution to the problem was startlingly simple–and revolutionary. Throw out all the old familiar warhorses by Mozart, Haydn and Handel, and build up a repertoire made up exclusively of music of living composers and 20th Century artists. So out go Bach and Beethoven, and in come John Cage and Terry Riley, Thelonious Monk and Jimi Hendrix.
The violinist and quartet spokesman, who also happens to hail from Hendrix`s hometown of Seattle, first formed the Kronos (the name is a pun on
”chronos,” the Greek word for ”time”) back in 1973, when he dropped out of music studies at the University of Washington. ”I wanted to experiment with the quartet format, which I think is just magical and as valid today as in the 18th Century,” says Harrington. ”And it seemed to me that there was an enormous amount of modern music that was simply being ignored by the more traditional approach.”
After a few initial personnel changes, the quartet settled into its current line-up: Harrington on first violin, John Sherba on second violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Jean Jeanrenaud on cello–which has remained constant since 1978.
”We`re really a sextet,” points out Harrington, ”as we couldn`t function properly without administrative director Janet Cowperthwaite and financial director Teresa Byrne. They take care of all the bookings and tour business.”
And over the last few years, it has become very big business indeed. The San Francisco-based group tours constantly throughout America and Europe, playing more than 110 concert dates a year. Their eclectic programs typically might present compositions by Schoenberg, Elliott Carter, Steve Reich and Frank Zappa all in the same night.
”Our audiences have no problems at all with putting such composers back to back,” comments Harrington. ”It`s the composers themselves who`ve occasionally tried to object to some of our eclectic programming. I remember we recently played Carter`s `Second Quartet` and then followed it with some Terry Riley, and Carter simply couldn`t understand why we did it. We had a similar reaction from Jacob Druckman when we juxtaposed one of his pieces with a sort of rock arrangement at the Aspen Festival last year. It was surprising, and worked well, we all thought, but he became rather resentful.”
Harrington and the others have no doubts about what they`re trying to do, however. ”After all, the performer has a very important creative role in the life of any piece of music,” he stresses, ”and we`ll just continue to do what we think serves the music best, even if it ruffles a few composers`
feathers. They often seem to think that they own the space around their compositions, but we feel that the public and the performers have equal rights. It`s really up to us to take their music away from them and interpret it for the rest of the public–and if performers don`t do it, who else will?
”The great thing about pursuing a catholic repertoire as we do is that it allows us to make an enormous amount of musical connections that probably wouldn`t otherwise occur. Of course, critics and the like are very anxious to stick labels on us, but they have a hard time when it comes down to analyzing the Kronos. I feel that we really do cover everything from classic modernism to rock-related pieces, jazz-influenced works, American and European scores, post-Cageian experimentation, and even some musical comedy and California mood music.”
The cross-fertilization afforded by playing in such a wide variety of styles has noticeably widened the quartet`s musical boundaries, says Harrington. ”I`ve begun to realize that all music is related in a way that I never appreciated before. For instance, some of the sounds that we`re going after in the Hendrix piece are very related to things in Bela Bartok or Henri Dutilleux.”
In addition to the touring, there are recordings for the Nonesuch, Landmark and Gramavision labels, a nationally syndicated radio series for PBS, and a host of projects with experimental theater and video companies. Hardly surprising, the quartet has also premiered more new works than any other string outfit, a feat that particularly pleases Harrington.
”We get stuff sent to us all the time. In fact, we have more than 3,000 scores submitted for our consideration, which says something about the state of the string quartet,” he says.
”The funny thing is that since we`ve become so successful with 20th Century composers, a lot of people now ask us if we`ll ever give `The Kronos Treatment` to the older classics. Well, nothing`s strictly off-limits, and we`ve occasionally thought about hooking up some mikes and amps and tackling some Bach or Beethoven. The only problem is, as each year goes by, there seems to be more and more exciting new music written especially for us, and with all that to perform and record, there simply isn`t time for the classics.”
