After 50 years, 40 albums, more than 1000 pieces specifically written for you, and an uncountable number of performances—well, it might be time for a big change.
San Francisco-based contemporary music heroes Kronos Quartet’s annual Kronos Festival (Fri/25-Sun/27, SFJAZZ) promises to be another bracing explosion of musical ideas, poetry, and community interaction. Last year’s highlight for me was “An Ocean Escapade,” a Choose Your Own Adventure-style™-style audience-participatory composition involving a stranded ship and a very hungry shark, written by incredibly cool local teen Hannah Wolkowitz.
On this year’s sonic menu? A work inspired by Pre-Columbian sounding objects by inti figgis-vizueta; Sun Ra’s interstellar Outer Spaceways Incorporated, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s Folk Faer Andlit, written in response to the mistreatment of refugees in Iceland; vocalist Laura Ortman’s Scended Sparks, drawing on her White Mountain Apache heritage; and dozens more incredible things.
The whole shebang is themed “Good Medicine,” after a section of former Berkeley resident Terry Riley’s ecstatic masterpiece Salome Dances for Peace, which Kronos recorded for one of their landmark best-selling CDs in 1989. The festival “seeks to bring healing to the world through music”—and it’s in the spirit of renewal that the event is introducing two new member of the quartet to audiences, after mainstay members Hank Dutt and John Sherba retired after more than 45 years, each having been with the quartet since 1978.
Last fall, violinist Gabriela (Gabby) Díaz and violist Ayane Kozasa were welcomed by founding member David Harrington and cellist Paul Wiancko into Kronos’ whirlwind schedule of content touring, recording, rehearsing, and all the wild ideating and technical innovation that contemporary music requires. (I have heard Kronos play everything from puppy squeaky toys to electrified wire fences—each of which requires some very unique technique.) I spoke with Diaz (from Boston) and Kozasa (from Cleveland) over Zoom.
48 HILLS Congratulations on stepping into some really big shoes! What was your first encounter with Kronos?
GABBY DÍAZ I definitely discovered their recordings first, in my my first year at New England Conservatory, going down to the listening library. I heard [1970 recording of Robert Crumb’s 1970 piece about the Vietnam Wart] Black Angels, which I think was an intro to Kronos for a lot of people. The idea of contemporary music, a contemporary music string quartet, all these amazing sounds of Crumb like shouting and playing crystal glasses… All of that was something I had never even imagined in my wildest dreams. So it there were a lot of very exciting ear-opening things just at once from that recording.
AYANE KOZASA I’m pretty sure my first contact was their [1987 re-run] Sesame Street appearance. At the time I had no idea at I wanted to play chamber music for a living or anything like that. I was just a kid who played violin. Even just seeing the thing I played on this show I watched was mind-boggling to me. And then to hear these fantastic, wild sounds that I’d never heard before coming from these instruments on top of it. It wasn’t until I got older that I discovered that all the excerpts they had played in that episode were all real pieces of music. They were playing actual contemporary composers, and it was amazing that they would bring the full force of their identity like that, to a kid’s show.
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48 HILLS You’ve been playing with Kronos since September, but this is your debut for San Francisco audiences. How are things going? Just looking at everything that Kronos does, it seems like a crazy schedule to jump into.
AYANE KOZASA It’s great. It’s wild that every concert has been almost different repertoire. There’s some overlap, but especially for me and Gabby, there’s always something new to discover and to learn with each concert. Even for David and Paul, who may gave done something before—and David may have done many times—each concert has something brand new to share. What’s so exciting is that we’re constantly discovering new things together.
GABBY DÍAZ You know, Kronos being so associated with San Francisco for so many decades, it’s really exciting for us to come there and do the hometown proud. I can’t wait to feel what it’s like to play for the San Francisco audience, to get to know them and for them to get to know me and Ayane.
48 HILLS What was the audition process for you like? This kind of thing happens only once ever 50 years or so…
GABBY DÍAZ Yeah, I’ve gotta reach 100 and then there’s the next audition [laughs]. To tell you the truth, it all came totally out of the blue, very unexpected. I wasn’t so up on like what was happening with Kronos a few years ago. I wasn’t aware that there was even going to be a possible turnover or anything like that. So it came as a total surprise when Paul got in touch with me to see if I’d be interested in auditioning.
Then it was a no-brainer, and every moment was just like, “Oh! OK.” I was really excited learning all of this new music, because most of the pieces that were on the audition were pieces that I haven’t played. The only one, I think, was Black Angels, which in my mind I had associated with Kronos for so long. I thought, “I can’t believe I’m going to like play part of this in an audition with David Harrington.” The audition process itself was so warm, and kind, and welcoming. We just played together for like a day and a half, basically, and ate some meals together, and everything clicked.
AYANE KOZASA I was recommended by Hank, the former violist, who thought I would be a good fit. I think David did a lot of research into my playing—even before joining the quartet became a possibility. It’s funny how timing works because maybe eight months before I got the call to join, my former quartet Aizuri was invited to play Kronos’ 50 for the Future celebration.
And two months before David invited me to join, I had made a kind of mini-mini-residency for Kronos at the Cleveland Conservatory, where they worked directly with three or four groups of students, which was so cool. The whole thing was going to be capped off by a performance—and this is how amazingly David’s mind works, he just said, “Why don’t the students just play with us?” I hadn’t even put those two things together. So, like 10 students got to play live on the big stage with Kronos Quartet, which was just incredible for them. David saw that possibility right away. And then, like, boom, I got the call to join two months later.
48 HILLS The theme of this Kronos Festival is “Good Medicine.” What does that mean to you?
GABBY DÍAZ Well, there’s the Terry Riley composition itself, which just has this amazing good energy throughout the piece. It’s like, you know, just bopping along the whole time. You feel like you’re on a joyful train. Thinking about how there’s a lot going on in our worlds right now that is incredibly difficult and very hard to understand—what do we need? More than just good feelings towards each other. We need actual connection. The overarching theme of music that brings us together is so important.
And then, you know, so many pieces on the festival tell incredibly personal stories, either about the composers’ lives themselves, or where they’re from, or things that have happened in the history of their homeland. They give the audience and us chances to reflect on these very different elements. At the festival, there’ll be pieces that inspire and challenge and encourage people to learn more about each other and the world. So much good can come from that.
AYANE KOZASA The pieces on the programs are so varied, which is part of the Kronos brand, for sure. I’m particularly excited about the first half of the third concert on Sunday. We open with Nicole Lizée’s Death to Kosmische. In the seven-ish months that Gabby and I have been with the quartet we’ve recorded three albums,—that’s just how things go with Kronos—and Nicole is the composer for one of them. It’s a fantastic piece, followed by a new version of Scended Sparks by Laura Ortman, and she’s there herself performing with us, so it’s yet another new thing we get to present to the world.
And then that first half ends with Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Bombs of Beirut, which is really heavy and tragic, but also such an important work to play. For Gabby and me, this will be our first time getting to share it. I’ve been listening to the album that just got released of Mary’s music [Witness]. I’m really looking forward to digging in deep and being together with everyone to feel something really intense.
KRONOS FESTIVAL runs Fri/25-Sun/27 at SFJAZZ. More info here.
