USOperaWeb Interview - David Harrington

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Time Travelers
Kronos Continues Its Journey Through the World of Music Theater
By Robert Wilder Blue

During an era when most new music groups were hiding apologetically in university towns and out-of-the-way concert halls, the Kronos Quartet walked onto center-stage in innocent defiance and almost immediately became one of the most important and relevant contemporary music ensembles in the world. Since the group's formation in 1973, they have performed over 600 works (including 400 new pieces) by 450 composers, most still living, almost all from the 20th and 21st centuries. In so doing, they have reinvented the concert-going experience and redefined chamber music as an art form that includes less of the traditional Western European heritage (or baggage, if you prefer) and more of the various popular, current and classical influences from around the world. They have created music that is uniquely American, that acknowledges the infinite ways to make and combine sounds, and that represents our melting-pot society.

The group's founder and first violinist, David Harrington, developed his passion for the string quartet and for new music at an early age. "I grew up playing string quartet music - Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn, and so forth. I was able to convince our teacher in high school to form a chamber orchestra and a string quartet class, so I was actually getting credit for playing this music. By the time I was sixteen, I was working with composers who were writing pieces for various groups I was in. I went to a high school in Seattle that had a great record collection and we were also a couple of blocks from a record store, Standard Records and Hi-Fi, where you could open up the records and listen to them in a listening booth. More often than not, you'd find me there during school hours. It's where I heard Ives, Varese, Stravinsky, Thelonius Monk and the Modern Jazz Quartet for the first time. It was a great place for a kid to get to know music."

Harrington left Seattle for Canada briefly, where he played in an orchestra to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. When the U.S. suspended the draft in 1973, he returned home. "There was an entirely different musical landscape then. There was all this upheaval in the world and for a while there was no music that made sense to me, except for Jimi Hendrix. Then late one night in August 1973, I heard George Crumb's Black Angels on the radio and everything changed. I knew at that moment I wanted to form a group to perform that piece. I told my friend Ken Benshoof I was getting a group together and asked him to write a piece for us. So even before we had a rehearsal we had someone writing music for us. And that was how Kronos started out.

"We did every kind of performance imaginable, on ferry boats, in art museums, at schools. We took advantage of every opportunity and slowly - very slowly - we began to find the music that felt right to us. When we started out, a lot of people had given up on the string quartet as a creative art form. Hearing Black Angels I realized that there were enormous possibilities for us and that I could spend the rest of this lifetime exploring them. I still feel as though we're only getting started."

It was a natural step for Kronos to begin performing in theatrical settings and to embark on collaborations with dancers, actors and singers. "From the beginning we were experimenting with what we would wear at our concerts. In the early '80s we began performing music that involved sets and lighting and changes of clothes; we had a singing robot walk on stage in a concert we did at Mills College. We've experienced what it was like to play in a lot of different settings, from nightclubs to prisons to opera houses. We played at La Scala a few years ago and all of us noticed how bizarre the place felt. It has this larger-than-life kind of reputation, but it reminded me of the book [The Innocents Abroad] by Mark Twain in which he goes to the Holy Land and can't believe how small the River Jordan is.

"We performed at the Great American Music Hall (a nightclub in San Francisco) and did all of Bartok's quartets in one evening and [Stravinsky's] The Rite of Spring with piano on another. We began to do pieces with synthesizers and electronic instruments and percussionists and had to start using a soundman. Eventually we developed a theatrical presentation of Black Angels which is the way we perform that piece now - with lighting and a setting that evolved over a long time. We've done Steve Reich's Different Trains and Tan Dun's Ghost Opera. We have worked with different dance companies over the years and have also gotten involved in film soundtracks."

In 1996, Kronos played a score by David Lang [link] for A.C.T.'s production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The project proved satisfying to all parties and Kronos was eager for another collaboration. "We felt it was important to continue our relationships with David and A.C.T. We worked with David again a couple of years later on a film called Requiem for a Dream. When Carey Perloff called about The Difficulty of Crossing a Field I thought it would be a very cool project to work on. Carey's sense of theater and her sensitivity to music are incredible. I did not know Mac Wellman or his work, but I had enjoyed the work of Ambrose Bierce for a long time."

We asked David to tell us how the actually collaboration worked. "We have thought carefully about the way we as musicians are seen and what role we play in relation to the story and the production. At this point, we're still working a lot of that out. Of course, there are considerations of lighting because we need to be able to read the music. But, our primary job is to play the music David Lang wrote as well as we can. The piece has evolved through two workshops and David has been very receptive to our input. He wrote an amazingly beautiful song for Mrs. Williamson and me alone and after hearing it, I thought it would be nice if the other members of the group had similar opportunities. So David has expanded our individual roles throughout the piece. What is wonderful about quartet music - even traditional music - is that the roles are always changing."

The press of late has spent quite a lot of effort examining the role and necessity of art in our lives following September 11. Has Kronos noticed a difference in the their concerts? "The first concert we played after September 11 was over in Berkeley. The last piece on the program was the Fourth Quartet of Peteris Vasks, which he had written for us. The final movement is this amazing song in which the first violin part keeps getting higher and higher and at a certain point reaches the highest melodic note that has ever been written in the string quartet repertory, that I know of. At the same time, the cello part goes lower and lower, and at one point there is almost a six-octave range between the two. Whenever we play this piece, audiences are kind of stunned at the end. But at this particular concert, there was a long silence that went on and on. I felt it was something the audience was composing for us - this amazing silence that was the most beautiful prayer I could imagine.

"Music we have been attracted to over the years and music that has been written for Kronos have dealt with what I think of as the internal sound or the spiritual sound. The people who write for us are often dealing with matters of life and death in one way or another. Issues of violence and irrational suffering, for example, have always been aspects of the music they have made for us. Recent events might have changed how people listen to music, but I'm not sure that the people writing for us have changed. Composers have often spoken to me about the desire to speak more directly to audiences with their music. I think back to Black Angels. As George Crumb said to me, referring to the time it came from, 'there were strange things in the air.' There are strange things in the air today and musicians are listening to those strange things and responding the only way they can - through music."

"I notice that as that we are getting older, our audience is getting younger and they are giving us a lot of energy. I have the feeling that people who come to hear us want to hear the best new stuff we can find. We are always on the lookout for what charges us up and gets us excited. Ever since I was a kid I have loved the sound of two violins, a viola and a cello together. Recently, I was speaking to someone who is doing a story about the Modern Jazz Quartet. We played with them back in the early '80s and I loved their sound and the fact that each one of them was so identifiable and had so much personality. I've always wanted that in Kronos - to be one voice when we needed to be and four totally distinct voices when we needed to be and everything in between. I have wanted to reflect the curiosity of each of us and explore the possibilities none of us ever imagined could enter into this musical realm.

"I feel like we're living in a very fertile the time for musicians. It's a more exciting and dynamic and diverse place than it was back in 1973. What goes into being a musician now is richer and more complex and I think the possibilities echo that. I feel I'm continually on the edge of my chair, not knowing what will attract my attention next. I'm interested in those people out there who are going to be the next generation of Beethovens and Schuberts. The world would be a better place if more composers were getting opportunities to write string quartets their own way and I want to spend my time encouraging artists to stretch beyond what they ever imagined they could accomplish."

For more information on The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, see also the USOperaWeb interviews with David Lang, Mac Wellman, Carey Perloff

More on The Kronos Quartet
http://www.classicalnotes.net/columns/kronos.html

More on Steve Reich
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/reich.html

More on George Crumb & Black Angels
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/crumb.html
http://www.georgecrumb.com/comp/black-p.html

More on Ambrose Bierce
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/bierce.html
http://richardgingras.com/devilsdictionary/
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Bierce/
http://www.biercephile.com/
http://donswa.home.pipeline.com/
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/18661913/lit/bierce.htm

More on Mac Wellman
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/articles/wellman.html
http://www.theatermania.com/news/feature/index.cfm?story=658&cid=1
http://theatreschool.depaul.edu/PERFORM/0002/s2guide01.htm
http://www.theaterartaud.org/field.htm
http://www.theatrezone.org/productions/past/surreal/surreal.htm

More on David Lang
http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Lang.shtml
http://www.schirmer.com/composers/lang_bio.html
http://www.bangonacan.org/ads.html