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| The return of The Kronos Quartet to Cincinnati after nearly 20 years |
| band: Kronos String Quartet |
| Album: Interview with David Harrington |
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David Harrington Interview
Upon His Arrival In Cincinnati
For The First Time In 20 Years
36 Years Of The Kronos String Quartet
The World In An Hour
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
~ William Blake
I can't imagine a more exciting time in music than right now. I've been doing this since 1973, and I have to say now is the most exciting time to be a musician.
~ David Harrington, leader and first violin for The Kronos String Quartet
THE INTERVIEW
Sitting at the bus stop on Hamilton across from Shake-It Records, I asked the young man next to me what kind of music he listened to. He said, "Everything," and ticked off a comprehensive list of all music: R&B, hip hop, rock, and soul. That was his world of music for a kid from Northside. We boarded the #27 together and I told him I was headed over to interview David Harrington of The Kronos String Quartet. I started trying to tell him about Jadoo, the improvisational Uzbek band I met on the internet and the Kronos concerts I'd seen many years ago of Steve Reich's "Different Trains," a silent piece by the composer Havda, and so on and so forth. The bus was moving along at a good pace, but my conversation was going nowhere. It occurred to me that this one quartet had expanded my musical universe more than any group ever. They could deliver a world of music in an hour.
I arrived at The Hilton and walked proudly to the front desk and asked if Daivd Sherba had arrived. They told me he had. This was an inauspicious beginning, since the two violins in the Kronos are John Sherba and David Harrington. I'd met composers, conductors and musicians before and hadn't been nervous, but The Kronos had become holy to me. They were a source of new music with a range like no other group on earth. David Harrington exited the elevator and shook my hand. I had that feeling he was about to casually expand my universe. That's what he did.
I asked him if he would like to talk about 36 years of the Kronos, or the concert at Music Now which was coming up. "Well, I'm always interested in the concert coming up," he began. "We haven't played in Cincinnati in nearly 20 years. Brice Desner is a wonderful young musician. I don't know how he heard about Kronos, but he did and he was in touch with us. He's introduced me to a whole group of new composers, [including] Tyondai Braxton and Richard Perry both of whom have recently written new pieces." The Kronos would work with these two composers in the next couple of days and perform their work at Cincinnati's Memorial Hall on Wednesday and Thursday. The Kronos had scheduled nearly 10 pieces each night.
WHERE IS MUSIC GOING?
I suppose it's inevitable to ask the two-bit question: "Where is music going?"
When David stopped laughing, he tried to respond to the unanswerable question. "There's been a lot of movements in the last 35 years. I can't keep track of them." Then an insight, "The thing for me, what I'm most interested in would be individual composers and the trajectory that each person has in his or her work." A commission by Kronos can greatly improve a composer's prospects. "I'm constantly thinking about where each musician is in his or her career and life and trying to find the right moment to have each person write something for the Kronos that will make a real statement about our time and music and the creative fabric of each composer." A great deal of what The Kronos does isn't seen by the public. Every orchestra and chamber group alters the future of music by the choices they make. The effect of these choices made by The Kronos are on an order of magnitude more powerful because of the intensity of David Harrington's 36-year search for new music. "So there's quite a lot of thought that goes into what we do. And kind of projecting and taking a chance." We discussed the moment when Arvo Pärts who brought 12-tone to Estonia made his transition to writing in the tonality of the Middle Ages, and when Henryk Görecki's Third Symphony marked his departure from extended tonality resulting in the Second Movement of that extraordinary symphony reaching a respectable number on the pop charts in England. "We're trying to find the right moment." There's more to the Kronos than meets the ear. The work they've taken on is the cultivation of the future of music, and nothing less.
THE FUTURE
David Harrington had thick black hair when I first saw the Kronos. I was just a little younger than he was. The Kronos was making waves by seldom performing work by a dead composer. They were young loose cannons respectfully abandoning the establish canon. That hair has gone through salt and pepper to white. David changes the subject: "Actually, we're going to do a kids concert here. That to me is something that I've really wanted to do. Just be sure when it's all said and done that there's another generation of people that know the sound of two violins a viola and a cello. It's important to hand that off. Like I look at runner who hands off the baton. I want to be doing this for another 30 years, I'm intending to." David told the kids at another such concert: "'Ask your parents, ask your teachers at school.' I didn't need to say those things in the 70's. When I started, there was a lot more music in school." I was proud of my new home in Cincinnati for supporting music and the arts. "Tyondai is in his 20s. The age range of our composers is early 20s to 80s. That's what it is. I just can't predict where the work is going to go. I keep my ears open 24 hours a day, and I need to be ready."
SOME THOUGHTS ON MUSICAL NOTATION
Billy: I love the quote from Stravinsky: "I've never understood a single bar of music in my life, but I felt it.
David: He said that?
Billy: It's on the Internet.
David: I've always liked the Stravinsky quote: "Good composers borrow, great composers steal."
Billy: It's so good that it was later attributed to Picasso. [Laughter]
David: What is notation? That is something I've thought about a lot. Because basically each composer uses notation in a different way. Part of being an interpreter is trying to figure out a way that works for this music.
Billy: How do you know it works?
David: Well, first of all it pleases you.
Billy: You feel it?
David: Yeah.
And then you play it for the composer and he or she has this or that to say. Comments. You can write a "crescendo" . . . "Oh, I didn’t mean THAT crescendo." Or when you start finding out that notes are these very tactile things. And they are filled with humanity and they are filled with information. And the way it looks on a page, especially now with computerized scores, all the notes look the same. But that doesn't mean what the composer has in mind is the same.
We've just been putting Terry Riley's piece together. [Riley's earlier piece] "In C" is strictly notated. You listen to everyone else and you try to stay within two or three or four modules of everyone else. You move forward according to a feeling.
I introduced Terry Riley to the Transylvanian horn fiddle. Bowed trumpet instruments. What's amazing is that he got really inspired by this new sound. We had to work with this for four weeks. We hardly ever work as long on a piece as we did with Terry on this piece. You know, if you looked at the notes, you'd think these look like the same kind of notes that Bach or Beethoven or Schubert or any of those old guys used. The way the music is printed and notated looks the same. There's pianos and there's fortes.
But when we played it for Terry he said that's not what he wants at all.
There's an rich oral tradition that has been passed to us. You can say that with Görecki. You can say that with Piazzolla. You can say that with every composer. Music is an oral tradition. And notation is just a short cut. It allows us freedom to move.
Notation is this amazing discovery. It's like that alphabet. People did everything by hearing, and that's great. It's an ability to use your ear in an imaginative way.
There is sometimes a divide in music between people who do everything by ear, and people who do everything by reading notation. In so many cases in our work, we fall right in the middle. You walk down the street and you look in the cracks in the sidewalk and that's where the life is. That's where the moss is and the weeds and the algae. I like being in the cracks of the sidewalk, but I have immense appreciation for musicians who learn by hearing. They can listen to music once and they've got it. And that's incredible.
WHAT IS A CONCERT?
I hadn't seen the Kronos play in at least 10 years. Cincinnati hasn't seen the Kronos is close to 20 years. We turned our focus to concerts. "I've spent these years thinking about 'What is a concert?' What does it mean to be a musician? It's not only being older than I was when I started the group, it's also that we are playing in a different time. There's a different sensibility." This whippersnapper quartet has made a name for itself. They don't have to focus on building a reputation anymore. Their success has created a market for new music. "What's so great about the time that we are a part of is it's possible for us to learn so many things about people, cultures, instruments, sounds. I want Kronos concerts to celebrate that. I want us to take this possibility and just run with it and go for it."
THE GIFT
Now the interview was over. We shook hands and David started to head upstairs, but that wasn't all. I had brought some CDs for him. My experience had not always been good with this "gifting." Tom Schnabel in Los Angeles had refused me saying, "I have 50,000 unopened CDs at home. I don't want them."
I explained that I'd brought local hero Matthew Shelton's album, "Cold Water, Hot Blood" and that I thought of him as Gary Cooper with an art education. He had personally done original art for the first 60 or so of his CDs, and he was an astonishing songwrter. I quoted, "When you're sick of your body, you gotta trade with somebody. Wouldn't that be nice?" I handed Matt's CD and two others to him. David smiled and laughed. He said, "Wow! I'm going to listen to all of these."
He stood on for a moment and I told him about Vladiswar Nadishana from Siberia, and the improvisational Uzbek band Jadoo, Chapa from Los Angeles, and Nu & Apa Neagra's improvisational psychedelia using ancient and modern instruments. With a smile and a glint in his eye he said, "God, I've got to hear that! You've got to make a list of these things for me."
This was an amazing moment to me. First of all, I was shocked that I had something new for David to hear, but it was something more. There was a pure generous inquisitive spirit about this man. He had surely been pelted with CDs for 35 years like to threaten his life with plastic discs. And yet his love for new music was so great that he was delighted at the thought of something he hadn't heart yet.
I believe that is what makes The Kronos String Quartet the juggernaut of the new in the world today. I've known sound men at clubs who have no stereo at home, because it's hard to stay in love with music when you hear so much of it everyday. But this man seemed to have a boyish joy at the thought of a new sound. I believe I have never seen a love so deep for music in my life. The most important part of any musician is his or her ears. Our radios might be full of great music if DJs and A&R men had such an undying love for music.
I told David about Vladiswar Nadishana's alternative reality called Kuzhbar. It is the place that musicians like the Kronos are from where portholes open in time and musical priests can teleport to every location. David laughed and said warmly, "That's what music can do."
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