Preview
SUN RINGS
Kronos Quartet and the Festival Chorus of Calgary
Composed by Terry Riley
Presented by One Yellow Rabbit
January 10
Jubilee Auditorium
Wanna go for a ride? How about into the cosmos with the Kronos Quartet?
The most ambitious and experimental string quartet on the planet has recently celebrated its 30th anniversary and shows no signs of quenching its musical curiosity. Founded in 1973 by violinist David Harrington, Kronos also consists of John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola) and cellist Jennifer Culp.
Collaborating aggressively over the years with an impressive list of composers, the American quartet has accumulated an extensive body of work unequalled by its peers. The group’s vast repertoire includes more than 500 pieces that have been written or arranged specifically for it.
One of its more recent and unlikely commissions came from the NASA Art Program, which resulted in the multimedia extravaganza Sun Rings. Kronos has been touring this piece for the past year and is launching the Canadian debut in Calgary on January 10 as part of One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo.
For this one-night-only event, Sun Rings will be performed by Kronos along with the 80-strong Festival Chorus of Calgary. As if that weren’t enough, the show also features sounds and visuals from outer space and a stage design by artist Willie Williams.
"We got a phone call in the late spring of 2000 while Kronos was in Europe. It was from the arts director of NASA," explains Harrington during a telephone interview from his office in San Francisco. "He wanted to know if Kronos might be interested in adding to our concerts some of the sounds that were recorded during the Voyager expeditions. When I heard that, I got very intrigued. I didn’t know there were sounds in outer space, for one thing!
"Just the thought that there might be a whole palette of sonic information, almost like a language I had never heard before, was something that I felt we should investigate," says Harrington. "I was hearing this panorama of sounds that were definitely a part of nature, but an aspect of nature I had never heard before. I found this really amazing and thought somehow we’ve got to include these sounds in our music. And of course, the composer that came to my mind was Terry Riley."
Riley’s involvement with Kronos dates back to the 1970s, and so far their collaboration has resulted in more than a dozen string quartets. A minimalist pioneer, Riley altered the face of musical structure with his 1964 classic "In C," which contained interlocking repetitive patterns. The repercussions of this musical form are still being felt today in the works of many prominent and diverse composers.
"If you’ve followed his work from his very earliest days in the ’60s, he was always involved in unusual sounds and approaches that maybe hadn’t been taken before," says Harrington. "Somehow just the vastness of space and all the questions that one might have about what it might sound like seemed the type of musical question that would intrigue Riley. When I did ask him about this, he jumped at the opportunity, and within a few weeks we had gone down to Cape Canaveral and witnessed the launch of the Challenger. It was very inspiring."
Shortly after that, Harrington and Riley both separately visited Donald Gurnett, the man who invented the machine that recorded the sounds on the Voyager expedition. A leading authority on plasma physics, Gurnett, who is based at the University of Iowa, has been collecting space sounds for the past four decades, employing instruments he designs for NASA spacecraft. These sounds have never been incorporated into music until now.
"It was kind of like being in Isaac Newton’s or Galileo’s office," recalls Harrington. "Gurnett’s enthusiasm somehow brings the whole vastness of space into focus even for a layperson like me. It was wonderful to hear him talk about these sounds. He had hundreds more that we hadn’t heard before, so it was a thrilling few days that we got to spend with him."
Riley’s initial approach for the piece was to evoke the experience of a person gazing out into the vastness of space. He began composing the music in August of 2001, but was forced to reconsider his perspective by the events of September 11 of that year.
"Like many artists and people from all over the world, Terry was momentarily silenced," says Harrington in reference to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. "He began to question his ideas for the piece. By November he was able to write again, and the piece took on an entirely different approach. The standpoint that he arrived at for Sun Rings was (of someone) being a long way from the Earth and looking at what we have here.
"It’s certainly one of the most beautiful pieces that he’s ever written," adds Harrington. "It’s very expansive, sensitive and gentle. Some of the sounds are just thrilling."
At a certain point, Riley began to feel that there should be a video component to Sun Rings. So Kronos’s manager, Janet Cowperthwaite, contacted Willie Williams, who is best known for his stage designs and video work for such arena rockers as David Bowie, the Rolling Stones and U2. Williams, who coincidentally has a lifelong interest in astronomy and is a former physics student, couldn’t wait to be involved. In addition to his stage design, he assembled space images from NASA’s archives, augmenting the visual component.
However, not all of the pieces were yet in place. "At a certain point I got a call from Terry who said that the string quartet is also going to need a large choir," say Harrington, laughing. "I thought, ‘Oh no, how are we ever going to play that?’ But it’s proved to be a wonderful experience. We’ll come to a new city and get to involve a large group of performers with us in this piece. A choir is one of the greatest sounds that’s ever been invented – many human voices together is such a beautiful sound."
Due to the elaborate nature of the production, this must surely be the most ambitious work that Kronos has undertaken.
"I think in its scope I would say so," agrees Harrington. "It’s not (like) a Hollywood blockbuster kind of film; it’s a very sensitive and inquisitive aural and visual look at some aspects of this universe that we share. There’re so many levels this piece has taken us into. It’s certainly the largest production that Kronos has ever been a part of.
"I’m very happy with this piece and what it means at this time," he concludes. "When you just step back and listen, it really is thrilling. We’re very proud to be a part of it and very proud to be able to bring it to Calgary."
The essential Kronos Quartet recordings
Sculthorpe/Sallinen/Glass/Nancarrow/Hendrix (1986): A must-have for the Kronos collector, even if only for the group’s groundbreaking string quartet version of Jimi Hendrix’s "Purple Haze."
Winter Was Hard (1988): A virtual smorgasbord of contemporary composers, including Terry Riley, Astor Piazzolla and Avro Pärt. The eclecticism of John Zorn’s "Forbidden Fruit" is alone worth the price of admission. The title track features the San Francisco Girls Chorus, complete with reed organ. Eclectic and beautiful.
Steve Reich – Different Trains (1989): Avant-garde minimalist composer Steve Reich’s moving musical documentary of the Holocaust. Musical notation is based on survivors’ speech patterns as performed by Kronos.
Pieces of Africa (1992): Kronos performs the music of eight different contemporary African composers. Various African percussion instruments are employed, along with occasional African vocals. The result is a majestic and highly listenable recording.
Short Stories (1993): The cartoon-music madness of John Zorn’s "Cat O’ Nine Tails" is explored with typically flawless musicianship. Canadian composer John Oswald’s "Spectre" features multitudes of over-dubbed Kronos Quartets buzzing away like an approaching swarm of locusts. Complete with a very unfaithful version of the 1960 Willie Dixon number "Spoonful." Highly recommended.
Released (1995): A beginner’s guide to Kronos. Disc one is an appropriately diverse collection of previously recorded works. Disc two contains previously unreleased recordings, including a humorous take on Michael Daugherty’s "Elvis Everywhere."
Requiem For a Dream Soundtrack (2000): Clint Mansell’s score features Kronos mixed in with some tasteful electronica. It stands alone as an interesting and entertaining musical piece without the film.
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