Since its founding in 1973, the
Kronos Quartet has become the foremost ambassador of contemporary chamber music, determined and successful at breaking down barriers between musical genres and between musicians and audiences. In 2022, with
Rinde Eckert and Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, the
Kronos Quartet issued the album Jonathan Berger: Mỹ Lai. As of that year, the quartet had commissioned more than 1,000 works and arrangements, not just for string quartet but also for quartet plus other performers and even other sound sources.
David Harrington -- the ensemble's founder and first violinist -- was inspired to form the group after hearing
George Crumb's Black Angels. By the end of the 1970s,
Kronos settled into a tight collaboration between
Harrington, violinist
John Sherba, violist
Hank Dutt, and cellist
Joan Jeanrenaud and found a home base in San Francisco, California. Early on, that initial musical inspiration and the audience reception at its performances led
Kronos to devote itself entirely to contemporary music and to present its music in a more relaxed environment not normally found at typical chamber music recitals.
Kronos' first big album was 1987's
White Man Sleeps, and its 1989 recording of
Reich's Different Trains won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition. In 1999,
Jeanrenaud left the quartet, and
Jennifer Culp stepped in as the cellist.
The
Kronos Quartet has had a particularly close working relationship with
Terry Riley. In 2002, NASA commissioned
Riley to write Sun Rings for the group, featuring sounds and images recorded by NASA instruments throughout the solar system. Other long-standing partnerships developed between the
Kronos Quartet and composers
Philip Glass,
Steve Reich, and
Henryk Górecki, among others. The
Kronos' 2002 album
Nuevo was nominated for both a Grammy and a Latin Grammy, and 2003's recording of
Berg's
Lyric Suite won another Grammy for the ensemble. The group's recordings reflect its broad interests in jazz, world music, young composers, and film. In performance, it is just as catholic in its venues and collaborations, even working with several choreographers and multimedia artists.
Culp left the ensemble in 2005 following the recording of
You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood and was replaced by
Jeffrey Zeigler. Personnel changes aside, the quartet continues to appeal to an eclectic mix of listeners and receives high praise for its championship of unique music. In 2011, just after the release of
Uniko, a collaboration with accordionist
Kimmo Pohjonen and sampling artist
Samuli Kosminen, it was announced that the
Kronos Quartet was the recipient of both the Avery Fisher Prize (U.S.) and the Polar Music Prize (Sweden) for its exceptional achievements.
Zeigler was succeeded by
Sunny Yang in 2013.
Following concerts in New York and London to celebrate Nonesuch's 40th anniversary with labelmates
Oliver Chaney,
Rhiannon Giddens,
Natalie Merchant, and
Sam Amidon, the quartet regrouped with their collaborators to record the album
Folk Songs. Released in 2017, the album featured several traditional compositions with contemporary arrangements. The following year saw the release of
Landfall, a collaboration with
Laurie Anderson inspired by the latter's experience with Hurricane Sandy. After the Nonesuch anniversary, filmmaker Sam Green was asked to make a documentary about the quartet. The result, A Thousand Thoughts (2018), was a live tour event with
Kronos performing the music for the film while Green narrated.
Kronos won a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album for
Terry Riley's Sun Rings and later that year issued Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger on Smithsonian Folkways. The
Kronos Quartet returned to that label in 2022 with a recording of Jonathan Berger's Mỹ Lai, performed with vocalist
Rinde Eckert and multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ. ~ Patsy Morita