A Political Evening with the Kronos Quartet |

imagesBy(Anika)

Waiting outside Bing Hall for the Kronos Quartet, I didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not the overbearing vocals of Gabriel Kahane, contemporary singer-songwriter, from the intercom. This was just one of several techniques the ensemble used to go beyond a simple stage performance. The quartet’s repertoire for the night comprised entirely of songs written or arranged for Kronos, including one by the fifth recipient of Kronos’ Under 30 Project.

Kronos strives to push the boundaries of ensemble performance. They experiment with different effects, from manipulating lighting to playing on instruments other than those found in a standard string quartet—Kronos is anything but standard. Of the repertoire for the night, Aleksandra Vrebalov’s “…Hold Me, Neighbor, in this Storm…” especially embodied the ensemble’s avant-garde approach to music. The piece began not with violin or cello or viola, but instead startled the audience with the sounds of the gusle, a harsher alternative to the violin, and the tapan, a folkloric drum typically played in both Europe and the Middle East. The two foreign instruments in tandem with tolling church bells through the speakers and periodic shouts by the violinist-turned-drummer let us know that we had been transported to a different time and place: a time of cultural turmoil in the Balkans, a place filled with religious tension. Kronos captured this intensity on stage, moving and playing with a purpose, as though they had forgotten the audience in expressing the violent contrasts of the Balkans. Yet there was a refreshing flexibility in the group’s playing style. Only a third of the way in, after returning to their primary instruments, Kronos lapsed into a more calm and melodic style. They didn’t just begin playing in a different style; the aggression and intensity of atmosphere were replaced by lyrical melancholy. Simply put, the ensemble created an auditory representation of yearning and angst. This once again transitioned completely into a more lighthearted and playful style at the end, demonstrating Kronos’ ability to capture a diverse range of emotions in a single piece.

As if the contrast in the “…Hold Me, Neighbor, in this Storm…” wasn’t enough, the ensemble followed the piece with an arrangement of Geeshie Wiley’s “Last Kind Words” by Jacob Garchik. The work remained jazzy and relatively light throughout, a clear break from the ups and downs of Vrebalov’s work. Kronos began by plucking their strings in unison, a technical feat when considering how cohesive the sound was. “Last Kind Words”, while much shorter and seemingly less complex, becomes much more interesting upon examining the lyrics of the actual song. Once again, we are delighted to uncover Kronos’ motivation behind a particular song. The lyrics add another dimension, tying in themes of war, death, mysticism, and other rather heavy topics. “Last Kind Words” dates back to WWI, keeping consistent with Kronos’ political and international theme for the night. The song forced the audience to question the surface of anything readily presented to us and encouraged us to probe at contradictions within a single work. Kronos pointed us in the right direction for exploration, including an intriguing lyric in the program itself: “If I die in the German war, please don’t bury my soul. Ah, child, just leave me out, let the buzzards eat me whole.” For a three-and-a-half minute jazz song, this single line seems out of place—the group once again broadened the audience’s horizons, nearly without us realizing it.

Keeping with the politically provocative theme, the group chose to end the seven-song concert with Mary Kouyoumdijan’s “Bombs of Beirut.” Kronos immediately drew the audience into Beirut through recordings of former Lebanese citizens reminiscing about a once-beautiful place. These relatively peaceful, if heart-wrenching, memories soon took on a new intensity as Kronos mimicked the citizens’ agitation from remembering pre-Civil War Lebanon. Slow sadness melted into an active turmoil and back again before finally climaxing toward the actual war. Voice recordings played simultaneously as Kronos crescendoed with its aggressive playing style and discomfiting dissonance. Each member of the group was so completely immersed in the war; the audience glimpsed some of the tension and sudden abruptness of war through Kronos. All too soon, the music and recordings died down—only to be replaced with ever-growing sounds of war. Actual recordings of artillery filled the audience members’ minds, such that when Kronos began imitating the warning sirens, it was only as an extension of the recording and not as a performing group. The blasts got louder, closer, more intense, until I could feel each heartbeat and could only wait for Bing to collapse under the onslaught of firepower. This adrenaline, this fear—Kronos took us to the front lines of war and forced us to watch as the civilians that we are. They set out to make us aware of the before, during, and after of war, from the perspective of those that cannot escape, and they succeeded.

I went to the concert that night expecting to see a world-famous group perform music. Instead, Kronos turned Bing Concert Hall into the Balkans, Germany, Cuba, and Lebanon, taking us back in time to relive moments rich in conflict and tensions. This is what Kronos excels at—creating not just a performance, but an enriching experience.