Explore the music of Seattle-based composer Ken Benshoof, longtime collaborator with the Kronos Quartet and members of the Seattle Symphony. Composed during a summer vacation in Iowa, Dvořák’s twelfth string quartet drew inspiration from American folk music and birdsong

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From Dvořák to Benshoof

Benaroya Hall

Kronos Quartet, the renowned, ever-evolving, musically expansive string quartet, celebrates fifty years of innovation with KRONOS Five Decades, featuring David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola) and Paul Wiancko (cello). The latest chapter in an already storied legacy, this performance is one of fifty in a series of events planned to commemorate this career milestone.

Kronos Quartet

University of California, Los Angeles

Ohad Naharin’s MOMO, set to music from Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet’s 2018 album Landfall.

Detroit Opera House debut! An exceptional dancer and choreographer, Ohad Naharin has made Batsheva one of the greatest contemporary dance companies in the world. His new creation for the company’s 18 dancers, MOMO, premiered in Tel Aviv in December 2022 and is set to a soundtrack largely drawn from the album Landfall by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet. Developed in collaboration with Batsheva dancers and former company member Ariel Cohen, MOMO has two souls. One sends long roots to the depths of the earth, and the other is in a constant search for an individual and distinct DNA. Through it all, a shared passion of deep sorrow and beauty unfolds on stage.

Batsheva Dance Company: MOMO

Detroit Opera House

For nearly 50 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet - David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Paul Wiancko (cello)—has challenged and reimagined what a string quartet can be. Founded at a time when the form was largely centered on long-established, Western European traditions, Kronos has been at the forefront of revolutionizing the string quartet into a living art form that responds to the people and issues of our time.

A Thousand Thoughts: Kronos Quartet And Live Documentary Film Narrated By Sam Green

Soka Performing Arts Center

Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground), in collaboration with Emmy Award®-winning writer and editor Joe Bini (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Grizzly Man), takes the stage with the legendary classical music group Kronos Quartet to create a “live documentary” that chronologically unfolds the quartet’s groundbreaking, continent-spanning, multi-decade career. Wildly creative and experimental in form, A Thousand Thoughts is a meditation on music itself—the act of listening closely to music, the experience of feeling music deeply, and the power that music has to change the world.

Kronos Quartet & Sam Green

Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Bay Area’s own Kronos Quartet—the groundbreaking ensemble that helped reinvent the string quartet for our global, connected, contemporary world through cross-cultural and cross-genre collaborations, ambitious commissioning projects, and enduring partnerships with living composers. The concert features two world premieres commissioned for the quartet’s anniversary from Michael Gordon and Peni Candra Rini. In his newest collaboration with Kronos, Gordon takes inspiration from Haydn’s scherzos to create a suite of lighthearted miniatures. Indonesian composer Candra Rini was among the artists selected to participate in Kronos’ visionary Fifty for the Future initiative, which commissioned 50 international composers to create scores made available as a resource at no cost for the next generation of string quartet players. Her new work includes shadow puppets, original artwork, and field recordings inspired by musical environments and cultures across the Indonesian archipelago. “No one is ever going to say that Kronos Quartet is satisfied with the string quartet status quo” (The New York Times).

University of California, Berkeley

For nearly 50 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Paul Wiancko (cello)—has reimagined what the string quartet experience can be. One of the most celebrated and influential groups of our era, the quartet has given thousands of concerts worldwide, released more than 70 recordings, and collaborated with many of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers across many genres. Through its nonprofit organization, Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA), Kronos has commissioned more than 1,000 works and arrangements for quartet. Additionally, the quartet has received more than 40 awards, including the Polar Music, Avery Fisher, and Edison Klassiek Oeuvre Prizes.  

Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts

This event has been rescheduled from November 2023; it will begin at 5pm to accommodate technical setup for the performance and to avoid conflict with the Grammy Awards broadcast on the evening of February 4. Tickets for the original date will be valid for the new date unless they have been returned. If you have any questions or choose to return your tickets, please phone the Ticket Office at 217.333.6280 Tuesday through Friday 10am to 6pm, or email kran-tix@illinois.edu. (The Ticket Office counter is only open on performance days.)

Kronos Five Decades

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts

For 50 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Paul Wiancko (cello)—has blended sounds across lines of culture and era, moving beyond the typical terrain for a string quartet. Through brave sonic explorations into the pressing issues of our time, Kronos has established a worldwide influence. Kronos has collaborated with many of the world’s most celebrated composers, breathing new life into the musical landscape.

Kronos Quartet: Five Decades

Stanford University

Featuring the recorded voices of Mahalia Jackson and Studs Terkel.

PPU Pittsburgh Playhouse

The perpetually groundbreaking Kronos Quartet welcomes a once-in-a-lifetime lineup of guest artists and ensembles to celebrate its 50th anniversary. This special concert includes a short film by award-winning documentarian Sam Green; the New York premieres of Carnegie Hall co-commissioned works by Michael Gordon and Gabriella Smith; and an extraordinary new “Sunrise Jam” version of Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector for 50 musicians.

Carnegie Hall

The San Francisco-based, Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola) and Paul Wiancko (cello)—are the special guests for tonight’s concert. For nearly five decades Kronos Quartet has challenged and reimagined what a string quartet can be. Kronos is one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our era, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 70 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, and collaborating with many of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers. Through its nonprofit organization

Kronos Quartet in Concert

Civic Auditorium Santa Cruz

All aboard! Kronos Quartet leads a musical world tour for kids and families. Featuring live performances and a kids’ Q&A with the quartet, the program will sample short works from the globe-spanning Kronos Fifty for the Future repertoire, with “tour stops” in the composers’ home nations of Canada, China, Iran, Ireland, Mali, and back in the U.S.A.

Kronos Festival – Family Concert: Around The World With Kronos (2023)

SFJAZZ Center

Kronos Quartet visits with frequent collaborator Wu Man for a kaleidoscopic program of compositions written for the unique instrumentation of string quartet plus pipa. Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic creates a sweet and joyful synergy between the quartet and the plucked Chinese lute. Tan Dun’s otherworldly, ritualistic Ghost Opera was written for the first meeting of this quintet in 1994 and has remained in Kronos’ repertoire ever since. The two works are complemented by a Wu Man original composition and her arrangements of Chinese traditional themes, created for Kronos’ open access education initiative Fifty for the Future. “[Kronos’] ability to inhabit completely different musical and cultural worlds within minutes of each other betrays the quartet’s depth of study, musical and technical prowess, and devotion to a variety of musical cultures and styles” (The Strad).

Kronos Quartet with special guest Wu Man, pipa

For 50 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, they have created 70 critically acclaimed recordings, collaborated with visionary artists and composers, and performed thousands of concerts across the globe. to The San Francisco-based ensemble celebrates its 50th anniversary with the KRONOS Five Decades tour, bringing new commissions, signature works from its repertoire, and pieces from Kronos’ Fifty for the Future project to Santa Fe.

Lensic Performing Arts Center

Kronos Quartet returns with a boldly expressive program honoring the strength and resilience of women. The first half of the program features works inspired by pathbreaking American gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, including an extraordinary work by Chicago composer Stacy Garrop entitled "Glorious Mahalia" using voice recordings of Mahalia Jackson as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and oral historian Louis “Studs” Terkel.

Kronos Quartet with Mahsa Vahdat

Irvine Barclay Theatre

For more than 45 years, Kronos Quartet – “the most far-ranging ensemble geographically, nationally, and stylistically the world has known” (Los Angeles Times) – has performed music that responds to societal issues, both contemporary and historic.

In this concert, Kronos is joined by Mahsa Vahdat, a prominent performer of Persian vocal music, who collaborated with the quartet on the evocative 2019 recording Placeless. The project features melodies Vahdat composed to classical poems by Hafez and Rumi, as well as contemporary texts by Iranian poets. “[Vahdat] is an alluring, descriptive singer… The sheer seductiveness of her voice and style proved compelling” (Los Angeles Times).

Kronos Quartet With Mahsa Vahdat

“No string quartet has ever been so popular or has had so wide an audience, globally, and culturally” (Los Angeles Times). The trailblazing Kronos Quartet continues to rewrite the rules of the string quartet, proving time and again the urgent relevance of the beloved art form. Experience the ensemble members’ virtuosity and adventuresome spirit when they return to Carnegie Hall with a program that features two premieres co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall: music by Sun Ra, reimagined by Terry Riley and Sara Miyamoto in collaboration with Kronos, and a new piece by Norwegian artists Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tjøgersen—with Maurseth and Kronos joining forces on Hardanger fiddles. Also on the program is Aleksandra Vrebalov’s lyrical Gold Came From Space, a New York premiere written for Kronos.
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