Hey Scott...do you tour with the Kronos quartet? Looks like they are coming to Australia next year, but sadly no where near my home town.

Those guys are something else! Some time ago, when Detroit HAD a classical music station, I heard a recording of them doing a string quartet version of Hendrix's "Purple Haze". Now, how many classical ensembles do THAT?
Whitefang

I love 'em- they did some killer recordings of Astor Piazzola's modern Tango stuff and all kinds of other sonic adventures.

Yes, I've been touring with them, doing the live concert mix, for 20 years. We'll be in Perth, Adelaide, & Melbourne, in February I believe. We get to Oz about every year but our promoter there has missed Sydney the last couple tours. We'll be back.

They've moved pretty far beyond the confines & limitations of the "classical" designation. Their Purple Haze was a huge breakthrough when it was released 30 some years ago, but when I took over sound design it blossomed into a fully realized sonic extravaganza, which is to say, it became rock & roll. The live version makes the recorded version seem pretty small & conservative in comparison.

The Kronos Quartet definitely made an impact, and generated at least one other string quartet with a more modern approach, Turtle Island - I love the latter's version of "Crossroads".

I played mandolin at a church in the Village for a while, and the pastor's kids were classically trained on violin, viola and cello.
I called us the Neighborhood Church String Quartet - no, we weren't innovators - just hymns and CCM greatest hits, LOL. It was fun, though!

Since you're here and all...any plans for KQ to come back through the Dallas/Fort Worth area anytime soon?

There are quite a few groups which have said they decided to make music together as a result of the paths that Kronos has blazed, & most of them aren't string quartets. In 20th & 21st century contemporary classical/experimental music Kronos' influence has been enormous.

I don't have anything in the area on my calendar through the end of this touring year, i.e. end of June 2013. I haven't seen the next tour schedule though. We used to hit Dallas about every 3rd year, so maybe we're due. Last Texas gig was a world music festival in a park in Houston earlier this year.

Saw them live here recently (first time) and was extremely disappointed by the sound, as they were amplified, of all things! It took away from the delicacy and nuances of their instruments, but the performances compensated -- they are extremely dynamic and have the tightest rapport of any chamber group I have seen.

I have over half of their recordings, and that's saying a lot. Am having trouble tracking down the rest. I relate to their musical sensibilities and share them, and am grateful to them for opening the minds of classical programmers (stations, concert series, etc.) to embrace a wider definition that includes the music of other cultures (and also instruments not traditionally associated with western classical music).

Kronos is an amplified quartet. That's an aesthetic decision they made several decades ago, & it was determined by the requirements of the repertoire they were taking on. They see it as actually enhancing the delicacy & nuance of the instruments, since they are doing things with dynamics & timbre which simply don't translate to the scale of the concert halls they generally perform in. I could go into the whole philosophical & acoustic underpinnings of this approach, but that would be lengthy & boring to everybody here. Suffice to say, it's not something that is thrown together casually, but the result of thousands of concerts they have performed & thousands of concerts that I've mixed, over the last nearly 40 years.



Nonesuch tends to keep most of its catalog in circulation, but I find most record stores only stock the best selling half dozen Kronos releases. You might have to track them down on line. And there are some pieces available as downloads only which were never part of any CD release. Check iTunes for those.