KRONOS TOUCHING ALL THE BASES, MANY CULTURES 
                                              By D. Rane Danubian
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Oct. 11-18, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 24
             The Kronos Quartet made another round-the-world musical swing, hitting all the inhabited continents except Australia (what, no Sculthorpe string quartets from Down Under this time around?). The far-out sounds from the most distant and exotic cultures in the world drew something close to a full house at the Old First Church in a Oct. 9 benefit to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Old First Concerts, one of the city’s most varied and most active offerings.
            Kronos’ current fascination lies with a geographic rainbow from the Eastern Mediterranean to India. Since very little of this multicultural World Music is written for string quartet, there are myriad arrangements and sound-track supplements, culminating in one  nonet---five prerecorded, plus the four Kronos string players live. To carry out this complex program, Kronos set up two banks of speakers taller than you are, and used various live percussive devices to supplement the basic violins, viola and cello.
            The wonder of it is the audience. In an era when other string quartets are uneasy about attracting audiences if playing anything past Ravel or Debussy, Kronos is dissonant, abrasive, boldly unconventional---and the Kronos faithful, drawn from a much broader (and younger) base of music aficionados, turn out en masse every time. Clearly Kronos is the new-millennium pied piper, drawing one and all into its vortices as it plows through mountains of repertory, much of it written for or arranged for the ensemble.
            The nonet “12/12” composed by the Café Tacuba  committee tries to tell Mexican history in music, from the very old to the experimental---mournful song, guitar strums,  the whistling sounds of wind in the desert (with Hank Dutt manipulating a whip), then moving through eclectic passages and voices, ever more intense. Excerpts from John Zorn’s “The Dead Man” showed high intensity, fast scrapes on the instruments, and even a session of rather comic “fly-swatting” as players sung their bows through the air, narrowly missing one another.
            Perhaps the best-known of these composers, the Russian Sofia Gubaidulina, contributed another very soft opus of hers, Quartet No. 4, marked by the drawing of soft drum sticks over strings. There was an Indian raga with drone, pieces from Greece, Azerbaijan, Nubia, the West Bank and Georgia (no, not the Atlanta kind), many based on traditional forms rooted deep in history.
            Kronos has a definite reportorial taste, leaning toward very intense and very new music with high energy, and often high dissonance, moving away from contemporary string quartet forms heard elsewhere. It adds percussion and prerecorded tracks, and it always amplifies its music, even the live portions. And its eclectic programs---this one, with 10 works plus an encore---there’s a kaleidoscopic "wow" effect preventing focus on more extended musical statements. Clearly, Kronos is not for every taste. But their concerts are fast-flying affairs where you instinctively try to fasten your seat belt and hang on for dear life. There is no quartet remotely like it. In addition, in most of their concerts, skillfully designed lighting changes further illuminate the new sounds heard.
            The personnel comprise founding 1st violinist David Harrington, 1973 to the present, plus, moving down the scale,  John Sherba, Hank Dutt and Jeffrey Zeigler.
            Old First Concerts, with changing ensembles and performers about twice a week. For info: (415) 474-2608, or go online.  
            The San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet, in concerts of very contemporary music in numerous locations. For info: go online.

        ©D. Rane Danubian 2009
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        D. Rane Danubian has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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