Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet, American string quartet, founded in 1973 in Seattle and based in San Francisco since 1978. In the early years there were some changes of line-up, but from 1978 to 1999 the quartet consisted of David Harrington (1st violin and founder), John Sherba (2nd violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Jean Jeanrenaud (cello). In 1999 Jeanrenaud left and was replaced by Jennifer Culp. From its inception Kronos has been dedicated to expanding the possibilities of the string quartet medium through an exploratory approach to a range of musical traditions.

Leading American composers have written for the quartet, including Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Morton Feldman (the four-hour-long 2nd Quartet, 1983), and Steve Reich (Different Trains, 1988, combining pre-recorded tracks and live performance). Among many others, Henryk Gorécki, Peter Sculthorpe, and Osvaldo Golijov have contributed to Kronos’s repertoire, which also takes in jazz (Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans), rock (an arrangement of the Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze” appears on the 1986 Kronos Quartet album), early music, and world music.

Kronos’s recordings have gained numerous awards and nominations. Black Angels (1990) won awards in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Australia. In 2003 the quartet received a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance for Lyric Suite by Alban Berg—the first recording of this work to include a reconstruction of the vocal part in the last movement (sung by Dawn Upshaw), in accordance with Berg’s original intentions. Kronos also received the First Place Prize in the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers)/Chamber Music America Award for adventurous programming on eight occasions between 1985 and 1999. In 2003 the 30-year old quartet won the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Award of Merit and was chosen as the journal Musical America’s Musicians of the Year.

Kronos tours frequently and extensively, especially in North America, Europe, and Australasia, and is involved in educational activities as part of its commitment to expanding the audience for the string quartet. Its efforts also include multimedia projects, such as Sun Rings (2002, with music by Terry Riley) and Visual Music (2003). Kronos regularly commissions works, and its ongoing Under 30 Project aims to develop its relationship with a new generation of composers.