Alarm Will Sound. Bang on a Can All Stars. Eighth Blackbird.
The Kronos Quartet blazed the trail for these well-known ensembles and dozens more like them, helping to invent the whole notion of a contemporary classical ensemble and demonstrating how such a group could be wildly successful.
This daring foursome, which was seen as too edgy and out there for many traditional chamber-music and performing arts series when it began performing in 1973, has since become an esteemed fixture of the international classical-music scene.
“It’s kind of mammoth what they have done,” said Chicago composer Stacy Garrop. “To have that kind of staying power, to be always looking for something fresh and new and to be touring constantly doing this.”
The Ravinia Festival, which has hosted seven Kronos concerts from 1987 through 2008, will welcome the group back June 13 for a program that holds special importance, starting with it being part of the ensemble’s seasonlong 50th-anniversary celebration.
In addition, it will be one of the final performances of two of the ensemble’s longest-serving and most revered members, who are retiring at the end of June. Violist Hank Dutt joined in 1977 and violinist John Sherba came a year later.
“In a way, I’m very bittersweet,” Dutt said. “Last night, I played [Steve Reich’s] ‘Different Trains,’ and I realized it was the last time I was going to be able to play that [1988] piece, so it was very emotional for me. So, there are a lot of last times going on in these last few months. But it’s been a great, great journey.”
Also giving this program significance is the inclusion of the local premiere of Garrop’s “Glorious Mahalia,” a 2017 work for string quartet. It is performed in synchronized fashion with an audio track containing excerpts from two radio broadcasts in the 1950s and ‘60s featuring famed gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.
Kronos heard a Cedille Records recording that featured works by Garrop, and violinist David Harrington, the group’s founder and artistic director, was so impressed he set up a meeting with the composer. That encounter led to the commission by New York’s Carnegie Hall for Kronos.
As part of a Carnegie series centered on the 1960s, the quartet wanted to perform a work that would allow it to be essentially what Garrop called “Mahalia Jackson’s back-up band.” At Harrington’s suggestion, Garrop perused the WFMT-FM archives and selected a performance of a spiritual and excerpts from an interview with famed radio host Studs Terkel for the audio track.
“It just seemed to me that Stacy Garrop ought to be the person who brings Mahalia Jackson and Studs Terkel into the realm of Kronos,” Harrington said. “Something about her music and her sensibility suggested that.”
The result is a layered performance, with the music overlaying the recordings. Rather than try to match the pitch of the voices in some way, Garrop wrote music that suited the changing mood and tempo of the conversation.
“It was incredible to have the people you’ve been admiring for literally decades email you,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Are you sure they are emailing me? Do they think I’m somebody else?’ You know that every composer is probably throwing themselves at Kronos, so that’s why I was so thankful that they called me.”
Through the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association, the San Francisco-based quartet has commissioned more than 1,100 original works and quartet arrangements by composers around the world, including repeat collaborators like Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Aleksandra Vrebalov.
As the quartet’s website makes clear, many of these works address socio-political themes like war and destruction (Mary Kouyoumdjian’s “Bombs of Beirut”), climate crisis (Laurie Anderson’s “Landfall”) and social injustice (Zachary James Watkins’ “Peace Be Till”).
“What I’m finding is that the world is getting more interesting as far as music goes,” Harrington said. “People are writing wonderful pieces these days. The possibilities have never been as exciting as they are right now.”
Despite losing two of its key players, Kronos has no plans to quit performing.
“It’s not something that’s even conceivable for me,” said Harrington, who will continue along with cellist Paul Wiancko. The quartet has already named replacements for the departing members — violinist Gabriela Díaz, concertmaster of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and violist Ayane Kozasa, a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet.
“The new people they have are stupendous,” Dutt said, “so the quality is not going to go down. I’m really happy that the mission of Kronos will continue.”
