On Saturday’s (6/4) “Weekend Edition” program on NPR, Tom Vitale reports on the Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future project, which involves “commissioning 50 works from as many composers. It will premiere each piece, and then hold workshops with the composer and young musicians. Then the score will be posted on the Kronos website, free for anyone to download, along with performance and instructional videos.” The Friction Quartet recently performed Garth Knox’s Satellites as part of the project. Friction violist Taija Warbelow says, … ‘You learn a whole host of new techniques, and you help support the music that is being created now.’ … The five-year project has a budget of $1.5 million, funded in part by Carnegie Hall…. Kronos violinist David Harrington says when all 50 of the commissions are delivered, the result will be a mosaic of what is possible in string quartet music … [including] works … by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. ‘What I hope will happen is that the art form is just going to expand,’ he says. ‘And the explorations … will just bring a lot of new energy into the field.’ ”
Posted June 9, 2016
