If you still think there’s a defining line around what can be called classical music, prepare to expand your conceptions.
The Kronos Quartet will perform the world premiere of Maria Schneider’s String Quartet No. 1 as the centerpiece of their concert Saturday night in Page Auditorium. The work, which was commissioned by Duke Performances, marks the first collaboration between these giants of contemporary music.
Saturday’s concert is the newest chapter in an ongoing relationship between Duke Performances and the Kronos Quartet, comprised of founder and principal violinist David Harrington, violinist John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler. In September 2007, the ensemble played two performances at Duke, one for the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and another as part of Duke Performances’
Following Monk series, which celebrated the work of North Carolina-born jazz pianist Thelonious Monk.
“We’ve worked with them so much because the integrity they bring to the work is so high,” said Director of Duke Performance Aaron Greenwald. “As an ensemble leader, Harrington has built an institution around Kronos. It’s a model organization for arts innovation.”
Since its founding in 1973, the Kronos Quartet has sought to redefine the role of the string quartet within and across the limits of popular, classical and traditional music. As Harrington explained, the evolution of the music world over the past 37 years has allowed the quartet to participate in an infinitely wider sphere of exchange between different genres and cultures.
Indeed, having performed the work of such diverse artists as George Crumb, Bill Evans, Sigur Ros and Nine Inch Nails, the ensemble does not shy away from unorthodox collaborations and new sonic territory. Their latest album, 2009’s Floodplain, explores the musical traditions of low-lying areas throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.
“Harrington is obviously in love with the string quartet; he believes it’s an essential music-making unit”, Greenwald said. “He’s a tireless musician with incredible passion, but most of all his ears are wide open to an incredible range of different music.”
Harrington’s ears eventually led him to the work of Maria Schneider, the celebrated composer, arranger and bandleader whose most recent recordings have earned her two Grammy awards, for Best Large Ensemble Album and Best Instrumental Composition.
“It was the eloquence of her music that originally caught my attention,” Harrington said. “There’s a certain confidence in her own voice that I sensed the very first time I heard her music, something very natural that comes from a fertile imagination and lots of experimenting.”
Harrington and company first approached Schneider with the proposal of a string quartet commission more than five years ago, but she was initially wary of the idea. Schneider said the unique vocabulary of big-band jazz composition is not immediately translatable to a string quartet palette.
When she finally warmed up to the offer, it meant Schneider had to teach herself an entirely new craft.
“All of the things that I’m used to are suddenly absent,” she said. “Normally, my music is full of wide, sonorous textures. I’m used to a rhythm section and soloists. I’m used to writing for chordal instruments.”
Despite these challenges, Schneider looked at the writing process as a learning experience and soon found a way to channel her compositional voice through the string quartet. Among other elements, she cited the piece’s harmonic fluctuation and overall lyrical quality as particularly unique to her style.
Furthermore, the work’s unmistakable Latin flair reflects the diverse array of Schneider’s own compositional influences.
“My music has been influenced by Brazilian music and flamenco music for such a long time,” she said. “The flamenco rhythms that I use are divisible by three, rhythms that turn inside out from one another, like buleria. I listen to so much flamenco music that it just kind of comes out in my writing.”
Harrington said the rest of Saturday’s performance will serve to frame the presentation of Schneider’s work. Beginning with Ben Johnston’s arrangement of the legendary hymn “Amazing Grace” and ending with Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov’s “…hold me, neighbor, in this storm…,” the performance will traverse centuries and continents, with Schneider’s artistic statement at the very center to provide direction.
For Harrington, performing new pieces such as this one with Kronos is about more than stretching the string quartet tradition or exploring the intermediary space between genres.
“We’re aware of the fragility of things, of how short life is,” he said. “We’re aware that the world that we share is full of strife and tension and environmental disaster, but that there are also moments of absolute beauty. These things need to be expressed, explored and celebrated. That’s what we want to do.”
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