Kronos Quartet with special guests Friction Quartet, Rafiq Bhatia, and Victoria Shen
Kronos Festival continues on Friday, June 23 with much more from the Kronos Fifty for the Future repertoire, expanding the compositional canvas with several longer-form works. San Francisco’s eclectic Friction Quartet opens the concert with a compelling mix of works, including Trey Spruance's Séraphîta, a three-movement work based on the novel of the same name by Honoré de Balzac;
Barry Guy's what is the word, which draws on the poetry of Samuel Beckett; and Lu Yun's Temples in Taiwan, inspired by a trip the composer took to Longshan Temple. Sound artist, experimental music performer, and instrument-maker Victoria Shen collaborates with Kronos to reimagine works from Kronos Fifty for the Future, offering a unique perspective on the ensemble’s repertoire.
The program continues with Kronos Quartet performing Little Black Book by the prominent electronic composer Jlin; Nicole Lizée's Another Living Soul, a work the composer describes as “stop motion animation for string quartet”; Canadian Inuit composer and throat singer Tanya Tagaq's powerful Sivunittinni; Aleksandra Vrebalov's My Desert, My Rose; and the third movement of Terry Riley's lively and playful This Assortment of Atoms — One Time Only! Guest guitarist and composer Rafiq Bhatia of Academy Award–nominated experimental band Son Lux joins Kronos for his work Glimmers.