It must be so much fun to be in the Kronos Quartet. Violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler walk out on stage and just emanate cool. They wear denim and leather, have messy hair, awesome lighting, pre-recorded electronic tracks and enjoy making noise, both ugly and traditionally beautiful. Oh, and they also dedicated their entire performance to the late historian Howard Zinn. These guys are hip; and the best part is that three out of four of them are old enough to be my Dad. My Dad is cool, but certainly not like this. (Love you, Dad!)

Friday night I attended the third of four performances all featuring Jon Rose’s piece “Music from 4 Fences” at Z-Space in San Francisco. Each of the four nights also included compositions by Terry Riley, Damon Albarn of Blur & Gorillaz, (what doesn’t that guy do?) John Zorn, Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream soundtrack), and Bryce Dessner of The National. I got to hear the Mansell piece in all of its intense glory. See the video below.

One of the more interesting pieces they played was commissioned for the Kronos a couple years ago by the Palestinian collective, the Ramallah Underground called “Tashweesh.” According to their facebook page, most of the Ramallah Underground’s music combines music ranging from Arabic electronic music, hip-hop, trip hop to downtempo. From the stage first violinist David Harrington explained that he had come across the group on myspace. He developed a relationship with them and asked the Ramallah Underground to write a piece for the quartet.

Jon Rose's "Music for 4 Fences" was the central showcased piece of these four performances and it was just awesome. Even though this was not traditionally beautiful music by any means, and I probably wouldn’t buy the record, it was an absolute pleasure watching Kronos create such a variety of sounds with these metal fences as they bowed, flicked and plucked the amplified metal barbed wire, changing the length of vibrating wires to change pitch. What made the piece even more interesting and fun to watch was the visual projection composite of all four musicians playing at once. Video cameras were mounted on each fence, all four images were combined to make a video collage. See the slideshow of their performance in Sydney, Australia below.

As a non-profit performing arts organization, Kronos is dedicated to pushing the limits of sound and music as well as the mind of the listener. In the program, founding member Harrington states:

“The idea that musicians can turn objects of confinement, detainment and violence into musical instruments has inspired me since I first heard the fence music of Jon Rose. Through our concerts, Kronos attempts to make statements about our world. That we are surrounded by fences seems to be an essential part of the time we live in. There might be a way to transform the nature of fences, by bowing them. We will try.”

I found the entire night entertaining and mind expanding (as there were some selections that I was eager to end), but I'm glad to know that Kronos is fearless in their musical choices when it comes to picking composers, commissions and compositions. This is how the canon is made.

For more information visit the Kronos Quartet's webpage