Kronos: Music of Our Time

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And we're discovering musical territory that I think makes us unique in the world of music. Music Playing in a quartet is really the interaction

of the four different people getting together and working out something and coming up with one collective idea. And I think that's the core of a quartet. We just try. When we're working within a composition, we're trying to accomplish a lot of things with it. We're trying to play it in tune. We're trying to play it together. We're trying to play the dynamics of the composer road. But also, we're really trying to create a mood. I was really out in the line. We didn't start there. Could you have the metronome? It seemed like it did slow down a little bit. The third bar. Just the touch. What do you guys think? The second bar is speeding up. Sometimes I feel like I have to wait. I think you're playing the rhythm differently in the second bar than the first bar. Do you want to do it once again?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see the four of us as very, very hard workers. You know, I think people don't realize that we rehearse many, many hours. We're practicing at home individually. We're very dedicated in what we're doing.

And I think the reason that we're so dedicated is that we enjoy it. You know what I hear? Is that that little 16th note, that one. David's playing it later than you are. And I don't know who's right. I wonder if yours is sounding like a 16th. I mean, a 3 second rather than a 16th. So David's holding the dotted eighth note longer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I noticed when you get, yeah. life in that you have to interact with these people and do it in a positive way because you're creating something and you're trying to get a goal and you have

to do it so that you have good results of course but you also have to get along with everybody too and it's very very difficult being in a quartet it's an odd existence but I wouldn't have it in the way you know I everyone is my best friend here. We excel around them in 40 and then the first two beats of 41 somehow it stopped. Every day we work together we think about our sound and we don't think of producing one specific sound all the time we think of a whole vocabulary of sounds that we can draw upon at any time but I do think that everybody's influenced everybody else's sound. I mean when I first came into the quartet you know I never played loud enough so everybody was saying play louder play louder. I mean so that was a basic technique or something I mean there's a basic core sound I think that's there. I mean now I have to re-hear my bow once a month you know. Well in 1973 I had the intense desire to play music every day and the music I'd

always played as a kid was quartet music and I think one summer night I had heard performance of Black Angels by George Crumb and that I think hearing that piece at that particular point prompted me to want to form Cronos and a month or so later Cronos was performing and rehearsing every day and so it was I think it was really the catalyst of being moved by George Crumb's piece frankly that got me going and since then the group has taken all kinds of turns in many

different directions that in 1973 I couldn't even have dreamt of I think. All four of us have evolved an image we thought a lot about it we don't want to we don't

want to appear like a traditional group and so why not choose clothes why not choose hairstyles or just be contemporary people. The tone of the variants can come further apart and really do something exaggerated with that. We want to look good on stage but we also want to look different that's why we work with designer Sandra Woodau. It stretches us and makes us look for something better something maybe a little bit farther out to push our audience in their expectation of what they see in a string quartet up on stage. I think we've done critics a

big service because many of them don't know a whole lot about music and so they don't know anything about music they can talk about clothes and they don't probably don't know a whole lot about clothes either but at least it gives them an opening sentence. Well I've thought for a long time that the artist's position in society is probably to reflect the inner life and for me that probably means I think

being responsive to as many of the different sounds that we have in our total environment. It's hard to step outside and see yourself but I think that probably I'm the initiator of most of the trouble we get into. David is the father of Prona's I would say you know because he's he's had the group longer than the three of us although he says that the group really never started until the four of us began but he's I think a survivor in that way he's in wanting to have a quartet and to start it there's always a great energy from him in anything he does I haven't come across boundaries yet that I think are insurmountable for our particular musical form. For me I see the past the

tradition of the string quartet as the springboard to the future. Well Joan is she's from the staff and so she has the gentle politeness about her at times I should say she has another side as well. I think I'm a fairly easygoing person however I can be a real bitch sometimes our life can be so stressful art is work what's the difference in some respects but she is

also a fantastic child in that she really plays from her soul. I was 11 years old when someone put the cello into my hands and said here try this and it took it was a good experience and something I enjoyed and became a lifelong obsession. I feel like we have such a close relationship that's why I can't understand how somebody can play in a quartet with someone and not have that same relationship

that that seems that we have because to me it's so so close and so human you know I mean there's so many emotions that you go through having that type of relationship that makes life worth living really I mean because if you don't have that what's the point that rings that has that that real there's a sound in that I started to play the violin when I was four years old and I've always been involved with contemporary music even when I was nine years old I remember playing duets a very obscure 20th century composers now I would never be satisfied playing earlier music I enjoy being the first interpreter of a

piece. John is amazing because I don't think I've ever met anyone who is so satisfied with their life he's like a little rock and your brawl turn John can be very very stubborn but I guess it's part of that too he knows what he thinks and I'll let you know that. Musically I think everybody's role in the quartet changes because of the music that we play but I think our sounds are they're each unique and we we like that you know I want to sound like myself at times and I think that's very important to have my own stamp my own character I think I was always drawn to the deeper sounds of the strings I think the cello the most one summer I was offered a viola scholarship to go to a music

camp by the end of that summer I had really grown to really love the viola. You think that we should be a quarter before the trill and should be the sure done? Yeah, I think it has probably the best viola sound that I've ever heard it's one of the richest deepest warmest sounds that I think you'll ever hear coming out of the viola. Hank really enjoys trying things you know I remember we're in the middle of Budapest Hank noticed there was a bowling alley and so we all decided to go bowling we found out these incredible things about Hank Hank is a very fine bowler he loves cars he used to dance. Being able to interpret with three other people is a great artistic achievement and that gives me a lot of fulfillment. The Chronos is a passive group of instrumentalists

that are available to be shaped by this or that composer I don't think that's what we're doing at all we've decided to play the music we play and you know we take full responsibility for the interpretation. Sometimes we're trying to sound like a drum and other times we're trying to sound like a trumpet or an oboe or a symbol or a grasshopper or in the case of Kevin Volens piece we're trying to sound like elephants and hyenas and baboons in the way they walk the rhythm that they walk in. For me the idea of very concrete images is something that that I think we all

make use of in rehearsals and certainly in performances. Whether it's a fragrance or a poem or something like that it's certainly feelings. This is fabulous. So should we keep that out? Yeah let's keep this one I'd like to

go through this. Last year our working repertoire was 75 quartets. This year I'm afraid it's larger than that. I've decided not to count this year. I've lost count how many we've actually played but it's it's somewhere around four or five hundred I think. Our scores come from composers publishers radio stations they come from wherever people are writing music. It's probably the largest library of quartet music that I've heard of and it's the music of our time and it comes from all over the world. It's hard to say what a musical statement really is. I mean it's it might be a memory that somebody

carries with them from a concert. I think ideally the art task is to create memorable musical experiences. When the soon three theater company asked us to do an original work with them first of all we thought it would just be playing fun and we knew it would be different so we took the chance. My primary interest was to try to incorporate the chrono's quartet into the real weave of the

composition so as you'll see there's a sense that they're always present either on film film within film they appear they appear a sculpture at a certain point the instruments appear in an archaeological dig so we've developed a method of actually using them structurally as characters in Magi. Magi is a play about the present nuclear danger set in the future. Probably in some ways we're the the last people that know what really happens on some of these large scale collaborations because we're involved in the center part of that and so with with

soon three and I don't feel that I've I've experienced the total effect but that that's not unusual and it's the person that really can experience the whole thing of course is the audience. It was clear right away that the music of monk was quartet music it

didn't take us long at all to to feel the the sound and the the sense of the music belonged in our in our repertoire. We couldn't have recorded the monk in Evans albums without owing keep news. Or in produced records of monk in Evans in the 50s he knew both of them personally very well and in the absence of the composers he was the most first hand information we had. What did you think of that?

I think it's getting awfully close but you're definitely going to have to do it at least one more time so let's come and listen to it. I think you have a tendency to be a little bit sort of two self conscious about trying to swing. Forget that it's a jazz piece in that sense just let it be what it needs to be around midnight is beautiful but not pretty and that's the whole kind of paradox of monk which if you express that right then then you know you're really getting the guts of the tone or I suppose I should say the composition. I don't know if they're just not like any other string quartet that they've ever made and since the loniest monk is not like any other jazz artist or composer that they ever made there's

another element of match there. Yes there were purists and there are purists out there that think that the loniest monk and the sound of of Kronos perhaps don't belong together. I think there was a lot more trouble with the purists from my world than the purists from Davids and the the jazz purists were I think on the hall far more easily offended by this marriage than anybody else I mean there are certain particular standards in jazz particular dumb standards like strings don't swing and things like that. I will admit that we have created some converts as we've gone along. I see a little bit something here that made I mean need to take a closer look at at some point

looks like there may have been some warm damage at one point but you may want to keep traveling is hard on my cello but after all my instrument is two hundred years older than I am. And I would need to look at it. Okay. Look at Brownie and Latte. So what was it there was a problem with the concert for a program of Kansas City? We were on the road two hundred days last year that's a long time to be on the road and away from your family it's a it's a hard adjustment. I mean I don't know what day we go where you know. We should really choose programs and we know that's jackerson for us because of like it would be

delayed six hours you might arrive there right at seven thirty because we're taking the graves on the tour you know that seems like it might be good and then we have all that stuff that we're doing and Lincoln. As we perform about a hundred and ten a hundred and twenty concerts a year seems like every year it's increasing but we don't tell anyone at home that. I wouldn't wish touring on anybody unless they really love music and need to do it. The noise and confusion of our culture is disorienting and you really find that out when you're away from home on the way to the next concert. I think being uncentered for long stretches of time is difficult but the center that you find as a performer is the center that keeps that possible.

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This was our only chance. Classical players as a broad rule rely on someone giving them the meter and their intuition second.

The parts are all transcriptions of what Mark has played, and they played with a jazz type feeling. Mark has written his plates for them on piano. What the string quartet part should sound like to swing. So they already hit the game and they played and interpreted quite well. I'm the person who does the improvising with the group. This is the first time I've ever played a piano. I've never played a piano before. I've never played a piano before. I've never played a piano before.

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We know I think that we have to remember that I wrote this piece 21 years ago. So I think we should think of as an archaeological experience. So today's the big, right? This is the deck. I know, but you probably know more about than I do at this point. You can almost start with anyone. I don't think it matters. It's a strange one. It's strange, isn't it? It's nice. I don't know.

That must be what the real shape of it is. It sounds really nice, isn't it? I think if this piece had been done in 1966, I think it would have been a lot of trouble. Some people thought it was a moral. Yeah, it's a really interesting. People get very well wound up with music in a certain way. I don't know exactly what they meant. The chorus is an American quartet. We grew up in a different way. I don't know exactly what they meant. The chorus is an American quartet. We grew up in the same musical world. We grew up maybe in slightly different times.

But the kind of music that's available to us has been the same. From rock and roll to concert music to jazz to folk music. It's all part of our background. I would almost use the word gift that the performer brings to the music. And it's a discovery. It's the emotional and the spiritual part of it. That doesn't put music. It's the space between the notes. That's what they bring to it. That's what they bring to it. That's what they bring to it. That's what they bring to it. That's what they bring to it. That's what they bring to it.

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to Music Company to Music Company to Music Company Composers have a way of being themselves in their music. To Music Company For me John Cage is the most perfect example for myself in music. That is his personality for myself in music. That is his personality his music is to play him. I don't distinguish between music and noise. I'm interested in all sounds. I haven't heard any yet that I don't enjoy. Some people often put their fingers in their ears that I leave my ears open in order to have the experience say of something louder than usual.

I think the sound of strings is actually a very special taste. Marcel Duchamp had no interest in string music. He said he couldn't imagine what had led people to play on cat-gap to scrape both on cat-gap. But I've grown to love the string quartet and now even the telephone. I haven't meant to make things strange.

I have wanted to hear things that I haven't heard before. And I think of the most practical piece I ever wrote, I might say, is the 433, the silent piece which has no sounds in it. It's simply a way of catching the sounds that are there in it already. I've actually wrote it for any number of performers and it was first played by David Tutor as a piano solo, but it has been played in other places I think is in orchestral work, even, in which the people simply make no sounds during three periods of silence. It's a piece with three movements. That's also music, you see. I've kind of music. What I'll do is mix you off a bunch of new colors that you can use.

Okay, John, if you can go over a little bit, a little bit more, but get a little bit more. Now, stand out the way you were, but just move over. The shadow is falling down exactly the middle of your face. Now, if you just stand up naturally. I'll spend the long nights with the spare, okay?

Music belongs to people. It's like a great natural resource that we have and nobody owns it. You can pay performers and you can pay composers and you can audiences can buy tickets and in the end nobody owns music. And that's it's great. It's like a great natural resource that we have and nobody owns it. And you can pay performers and you can pay composers and you can audiences can buy tickets and in the end nobody owns music. And that's it's great strength just to be next to it every day for me as a great joy.

I can't imagine life any other way. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.