{"id":19947,"date":"2020-12-17T05:30:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T10:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=19947"},"modified":"2020-10-26T15:50:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T19:50:23","slug":"kronos-quartet-on-thelens-circular-lines-and-kronos-50-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/17\/kronos-quartet-on-thelens-circular-lines-and-kronos-50-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Kronos Quartet on Thelen’s “Circular Lines” and Kronos’ 50 for the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Z\u00fcrich, Switzerland composer Stephan Thelen has composed four new modern classical works, collected on a new album, World Dialogue<\/i>. Three of the string pieces are performed by Polish all-female ensemble the Al Pari Quartet. One of those pieces, \u201cSilesia,\u201d was composed expressly for the Al Pari Quartet.<\/p>\n

The other track on World Dialogue<\/i>, \u201cCircular Lines\u201d was the piece that inspired the entire project. It was written specifically for \u2013 and is performed on the album by \u2013 San Francisco-based (and world famous) ensemble Kronos Quartet.<\/p>\n

During an interview primarily focusing on Kronos Quartet\u2019s own new release, Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger<\/i><\/a>, I spoke with Kronos violinist and founder David Harrington about the \u201cCircular Lines\u201d and the larger endeavor of which it is now a part. Here\u2019s a lightly edited transcript of that part of our conversation. \u2013 bk<\/p>\n

When I think of the creative process of making an album or making a recording in the world of rock and pop music, I think in terms of demos. When I think of classical and more serious works, I\u2019m more likely to think in terms of the score. From what I understand, for \u201cCircular Lines,\u201d Kronos received a demo; is that correct?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, \u201cCircular Lines,\u201d I did receive a demo. We receive a lot<\/i> of demos. I mean, the first demo that I ever got was \u201cDifferent Trains\u201d by Steve Reich. So, our demos go back a ways.<\/p>\n

How much room for interpretation is there in a case like that, and how does Kronos\u2019 performance of \u201cCircular Lines\u201d differ from the demo?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, there are all kinds of articulation possibilities, sonic possibilities. Working with the sound and the texture, my experience is that demos are pretty flat, usually. But, having said that, we do a lot of work with music that is performed and recorded. Then, a translator \u2013 like Jacob Garchik, for example; he did all of the Seeger arrangements or translations \u2013 will translate that recording into musical notation. And we will then interpret that notation. Then, we arrive at something that is not like the original.<\/p>\n

For example, Jacob did a fabulous version of the funeral ritual of the Aka Pygmies for Kronos; it\u2019s one of my very, very favorite pieces of music. It\u2019s performed as a community around the body of an elder or someone that has died. During that ritual, the community is teaching the kids how to sing, and you can hear that happening. I thought, \u2018Somehow, I want this in Kronos\u2019 music.\u2019 So I sent the recording to Jacob, and he figured out a way to notate this in a way that we could put it in rehearsal and then work with it ourselves.<\/p>\n

Now, that\u2019s just one way that we have done this sort of thing. So, is that a demo? It\u2019s not<\/i> a demo in the sense that that is the performance, the actual field recording that was made. But it is<\/i> a demo in the sense that, for us, it became the source material. The score, really, the aural score. Then, Jacob turned it into a notated score, then we consulted the aural score and notated score and made our interpretation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Please tell me more about the library of works that you\u2019re building for Kronos\u2019 \u201c\u201850 for the Future\u201d repertoire, of which \u201cCircular Lines\u201d is now a part.<\/b><\/p>\n

What we\u2019re trying to do is make a body of music available to other players around the world, make it available to them for free: the scores, the parts, our recording, source material, interviews with composers, videos, all kinds of information. And we are<\/i> making that available: you can go on the Kronos website right now and go to \u201c50 for the Future.\u201d<\/a> At the moment, there are 35 pieces that are fully available.<\/p>\n

After March 13th, it became very clear that quartets all over the world could not rehearse. Okay, so what can be done in this instance? I was speaking with Angelica Negr\u00f3n about this problem, and she came up with an ingenious solution. So, there is a piece \u2013 the most recent one \u2013 that can be played on Zoom. With the latency problems and all the problems that exist, the piece works. She even commissioned an artist to make a backdrop for every one of the players. So, the backdrop is available on the website as well.<\/p>\n

So, anyway, the idea is a result of realizing that almost all of our music is basically not available in any music library in the world. If you\u2019re a young player, for example, and you want to play a Kronos piece, you could not go to the San Francisco Public Library, the UC Music Library; wherever you\u2019re thinking of, you could not go there and find almost any of our pieces. So, we felt we needed a solution to this informational problem, really. The idea is to make a wide ranging palate of music, of approaches to notation, culture, sound available, especially to young players. What\u2019s happening is that young players of all ages are taking this music up right now. So at this point the best place to get [our music] right now is at our \u201c50 for the Future\u201d site.<\/p>\n

It takes on a life beyond what was even originally envisioned for it! <\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah. And there\u2019s some really amazing choreography being done to some of the \u201c50 for the Future\u201d pieces. I\u2019m very happy about it. It\u2019s taking on quite a dimension that I had no idea we\u2019d be able to take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Z\u00fcrich, Switzerland composer Stephan Thelen has composed four new modern classical works, collected on a new album, World Dialogue. Three of the string pieces are performed by Polish all-female ensemble […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,40,41,49],"tags":[1265,4360],"class_list":["post-19947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classical","category-instrumental","category-interview","category-new-release","tag-kronos-quartet","tag-stephan-thelen","cat-17-id","cat-40-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19950,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19947\/revisions\/19950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}