FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 17, 2014
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
"The unbearable pain of all humanity in a single note":
Kronos Quartet's music/film project recalls WWI
Photos: Beyond Zeroin concert, photo by Lenny Gonzalez; Kronos Quartet (L-R) John Sherba, Hank Dutt, David Harrington,Sunny Yang, photo by Jay Blakesberg.
HANOVER, NH—Hop audiences are offered a powerful and haunting sound-and-image experience of World War I in Beyond Zero: 1914-1918, performed by the Kronos Quartet in the Hop's Spaulding Auditorium on Tuesday, February 10, at 7 pm. Co-commissioned by the Hopkins Center, the concert is part of the Hop's "World War I Reconsidered" series.
The San Francisco-based quartet—which this year celebrates 40 years as a group that has refreshed and redefined the string quartet—created this project with two of today's most interesting artists: Serbian-born composer Aleksandra Vrebalovand filmmaker Bill Morrison, known for films that combine archival film material set to contemporary music.
While Kronos performs Vrebalov's music, Morrison's film will be projected onto the 30-foot-wide Spaulding screen—as was done with the last previous Morrison collaboration performed at the Hop, The Great Flood with guitarist Bill Frisell.
The effect is powerful, critics say. Wrote The Herald (Scotland),"Bill Morrison's assemblage of archive film and Aleksandra Vrebalov's musical composition follow a path through an artillery barrage ofrepeated rhythms and brief but expansive moments of release to depict war and moral chaos…If it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, then the Kronos Quartet prove that, in the right context, a chord is worth a thousand pictures, whether an atonal assimilation of a world torn apart or a classical Turkish lament that carries the unbearable pain of all humanity in a single note."
Kronos rounds out the Hop program with Prelude to a Black Hole, a suite of music and recorded "found sound" from around 1914, including string quartet music by Rachmaninoff, Webern, Ravel and Stravinsky as well as recordings ranging from Byzantine chants to old blues 78s to American Charles Ives' own rendition of a song he composed in response to the First World War, They are There.
At noon the day of the concert, the public is invited to join Kronos’ David Harrington, Vrebalovand Dartmouth faculty members Laura Edmondson, Barbara Will, Katie Hornstein and Colleen Boggs for a conversation on artists’ responses to war, in 41 Haldeman, Dartmouth College.
Born in 1970 and educated in Serbia, The Czech Republic and the US, Vrebalov wrote her first work for Kronos in 1998 and has written several other works for them. A highly regarded musician, she has been awarded a number of high-profile commissions, residencies and awards. Her recent projects include a two-act opera, Mileva, about Mileva Marić, the Serbian physicist and mathematician who was Albert Einstein's first wife.
Morrison ("One of the most adventurous American filmmakers" – Variety) is best known for his experimental collage film Decasia (2002). Created in collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, Decasia was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for its National Film Registry in 2013, becoming the most modern film selected to the list. His films have been screened at festivals, museums and concert halls worldwide, including the Sundance Film Festival, The Tate Modern, London, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles. He has been commissioned to create films for some of the most important composers of his time, including John Adams, Dave Douglas, Henryk Górecki, Vijay Iyer, David Lang, Harry Partch and Steve Reich. His work with New York's Ridge Theater has been recognized with two Dance Theater Workshop Bessie Awards and an Obie Award.
Collaborations like this have been a hallmark of Kronos' 40 years—it which it has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings, and winning a Grammy, the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize. The quartet has teamed up with many of the world’s most intriguing and accomplished composers, commissioning more than 800 works and arrangements for string quartet. Along with Vrebalov, these composers have included Americans Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Henryk Górecki and Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh. The Hop has proudly commissioned four previous works for Kronos.
Additional collaborators in concert and/or on disc have included Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man, performance artist Laurie Anderson, Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov, legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle, Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, and rockers Tom Waits, Amon Tobin, and the Icelandic group Sigur Rós.
The Kronos Quartet is made up of David Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola and Sunny Yang on cello.
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CALENDAR LISTINGS:
Kronos Quartet in Beyond Zero: 1914-1918
For 40 years, the Kronos Quartet has championed music that challenges the global outlook. In Beyond Zero, it teams up with Serbian-born Vrebalov and acclaimed filmmaker Bill Morrison—working with decaying archival footage as he did in The Great Flood—to create a heart-stopping sound-and-film narrative of WWI. It’s preceded by an absorbing cross-cultural suite of short, largely circa-1914 works that characterize that era’s artistic foment.Also works by Webern, Stravinsky, Ives and others.
Tuesday, February 10, 7 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
$24/40/50, Dartmouth students $10, 18 & under $17/19
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
Artists Respond to War, Part 2 – Faculty Roundtable
From World War 1 to Vichy-occupied France and the former Yugoslavia, artists have always offered humanity a unique perspective on wartime. Join Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington, composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Dartmouth faculty members Laura Edmondson, Barbara Will, Katie Hornstein and Colleen Boggs for a conversation on artists’ responses to war. Cosponsoredby the Leslie Center for the Humanities. Lunch is provided. RSVP requested, but not required:
Tuesday, February 10, 12 pm
Room 41, Haldeman Hall
Free
Information: Hop Outreach at 603.646.2010
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Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.