With so many innovative composers now edging into the mainstream, navigating the forms and structures of the new musical landscape can seem a daunting task, for listeners and young composers alike. To be sure, modern works have enjoyed an increase in visibility, but while there is no shortage of outlets for these pieces to be judged, there are precious few opportunities for them to be studied. Forever straddling the "cutting-edge" or the "ultra-contemporary", much of the 21st Century repertoire has been anxiously awaiting induction into the western---if not, global---music canon. To remedy this, David Harrington, Artistic Director of the Kronos Quartet, has recently flung open a new door, embarking on a project that has the potential to fundamentally transform the way music is taught in the 21st Century. Welcome to the Fifty for the Future Project.
As part of a five-year project in which 50 composers will be commissioned to compose a string quartet for Kronos, a unique and unprecedented twist has now made possible the [extremely generous] availability of these scores---all 50 of them---to the public, for free, on the Kronos webpage. They will become available this April 15th.
Ten composers will be commissioned each year: five men and five women. With next year's composers recently announced, last year's selections are already in line for their premieres. Featuring the entirely original works of Aleksandra Vrebalov, Wu Man, Karin Rehnqvist, and Fodé Lassana Diabatéas, but also with arrangements such as as Jacob Garchik's arr. of Pete Townsend & The Who's "Baba O'Riley", a total of nine pieces (four in the The Kronos Learning Repertoire) will appear in Saturday, April 2nd's all-premiere concert at Zankel Hall (at Carnegie Hall), in Manhattan.
The following week will then see Kronos extend their educators' passion to the workshop arena as three quartets (Argus, Friction, and Ligeti) arrive at Carnegie to tackle selections from Terry Riley's Salome Dances for Peace, as well as some of the Fifty for the Future compositions. On April 15th (also at Zankel Hall), the week-long workshop will result in a public performance of different movements from each quartet. (The experience will allow audiences to hear multiple interpretations of the same piece.)
But before the craziness begins, Classicalite had the chance to speak with David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet about the quartet's drive to educate musicians, about this week's Fifty for the Future premiere, and about the project's implications for future music literacy and dissemination:
CL: A steady stream of fresh music must serve as vital nourishment for an active quartet of 42 years. Has the consumption and performance of modern music been your favorite part of working with Kronos?
DH: Being able to take out onto the stage something that nobody else has ever heard before---that’s thrilling. It’s scary, too; it never has gotten less scary. Music always sounds different in front of an audience than it does in a rehearsal. You can rehearse for a month on the same piece and it’s going to sound different when you go out and play in front of an audience. It’s just going to be different, and you’re going to feel like you don’t know where you are, and all of a sudden you’ve got to figure it out and you’ve got to go for it.
One of the things that I’ve loved the most in Kronos is the way each member of the group contributes his or her best thoughts. It’s really interesting to see how the individual concerns that we have add up to an entire approach. It really takes all four of us to do this.
And then we try to learn as much as we can from our composers. A lot of times, I’ve found that asking questions that don’t really seem like questions sometimes gives us information that ends up being really important to interpretations. Trying to get our composers to sing for us so we hear their voices, or to get them to move to their own music and see how their body responds to the rhythms they’ve created or the experience they’ve made---I’m constantly trying to get our composers to do things like that so that we learn more.
CL: What outcomes of the Fifty for the Future initiative do you ultimately hope the project will cultivate? More compositions? More style diversity? Better insights into style & formatting? Give us your best case scenario. (Your utopia, if you will.)
DH: For me, Kronos’ Fifty for the Future will be everything I hope for it when we go to high schools around the world and we go to colleges and universities, and we hear this music being practiced, rehearsed, performed by young groups---that’s going to be amazing.
It’s great to think that within a very few short months, any group in the world is going to be able to play a really fabulous piece by one of Mali’s greatest musicians. It took me years to find a very first piece by an African composer, and one of the things I’m already most proud of of Fifty for the Future is that our very first piece was written by Fodé Lassana Diabaté from Mali. It’s a great experience to be able to play African music. A great experience to play Lassana’s music. All I can say is the feeling that you need to have of the beat, and the feeling of rhythm and melody is such a wonderful aspect of music, and it’s wonderful to be able to bring those kinds of considerations into concerts and rehearsals.
For me, growing up, it was always such a lack. When I was 16, I started exploring the world of music, and there was no African string quartet music that I could get a hold of. There was no South American music that I knew of, there was no Chinese or Japanese or Indonesian or Indian music. Kronos has spent a lot of our time, creativity, and energy trying to be certain that our medium, the string quartet, begins to reflect the awesome variety of the world we share. Thinking, “What makes a balanced musical experience? What’s going to give us the most energy, the most creativity?” And I think that very shortly, groups are going to be able to have incredibly wonderful music from various places in Africa, Central Asia, China, around the United States, South America, you name it. By 2020, we intend to have 50 inspiring works: 25 by women and 25 by men, a primer of the musical world we occupy and a gift to the next generation of string quartet players. Fifty for the Future is going to create a pageantry of creativity, a mosaic of possibilities for the future.
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