United States Varied: Kronos Quartet (David Harrington, John Sherba [violins], Hank Dutt [viola], Paul Wiancko [cello]), Peni Candra Rini (voice), Leslie Grey, Andy McGraw, Midiyanto (shadow theater). Cal Performances, Zellerbach Corridor, College of California, Berkeley, 2.3.2024. (HS)

Severiano Briseño – ‘El Sinaloense’ (arr. Osvaldo Golijov)
Sofia Gubaidulina – Quartet No.4
Peni Candra Rini – ‘Segara Gunung’ (world premiere, arr. Jacob Garchik and Andy McGraw)
Steve Reich – Triple Quartet
Michael Gordon – from gfedcba
Nicole Lizée – ‘ZonelyHearts’

In its fifty years, the Kronos Quartet has been a pathbreaker. Not solely have they commissioned a whole bunch of works from main up to date composers, they normalized audio amplification in reside performances, and used lighting and visible property to develop their plain virtuosity on their very own devices.

They all the time shock. A large-ranging program in Berkeley acknowledged the group’s longevity with works they commissioned, amongst them Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet from 1999 and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Quartet No.4 from 1993. The spotlight of this system was a world premiere steeped in Indonesian gamelan parts by the multitalented Indonesian singer-composer Peni Candra Rini.

The daughter of a famend East Java shadow puppeteer, Rini is well known as a vocal soloist in a conventional type of gamelan. Her voice proved extraordinary, with an Yma Sumac-like vary that soars simply into ultra-soprano heights and finds subtleties in a sultry mid-range, all with spectacular precision in pitch. Her melodies entrance with conversational simplicity, however she will not be shy about incorporating deftly-placed melisma and ornamentation.

And, after all, there was a visible facet – eye-catching shadow puppetry by a crew of three, enlarged and mirrored on an enormous display above the musicians. The puppetry completes a sensuous presentation, with backgrounds of timber and seascapes transferring throughout a display behind silhouettes of animals, leaves, followers and folks. The four-part piece, ‘Segara Gunung’ (Ocean-Mountain), traces issues with altering local weather, of particular significance to an island nation.

The instrumental preparations by Jacob Garchik (a Brooklyn-based movie composer who has tailored dozens of pop and jazz items for Kronos) and Andy McGraw (chair of music on the College of Richmond, with experience in East Asian music) discover ingenious methods to double and harmonize with Rini’s voice.

I might have wallowed fortunately in Rini’s voice alone, however the context added a lot to the delight and richness of this work. All of the whereas, Kronos’s sound match simply into the mandatory rhythms and shapes.

One other premiere, a brief motion by Michael Gordon that served as a type of preview to a extra expansive piece, timed a bouncy nursery-rhyme-like ditty to a video loop of an cute kitten lapping milk from a spoon. Such social media memes, apparently, can encourage composers. The stability of the work, titled gfedcba and destined to cowl about thirty actions, continues to be in progress.

A short video documentary summarizing the quartet’s historical past and personnel opened the proceedings, adopted by ‘El Sinaloense’ a swaggering Forties Mexican fashionable tune organized for Kronos by Osvaldo Golijov. Gubaidulina’s thornily dissonant one-movement Quartet No.4 made a jarring neighbor to the oh-so-tuneful and rhythmic items surrounding it, however maybe its density underlined the sheer fantastic thing about Segara Gunung.

Reich’s energized, minimalist Triple Quartet, which layers the reside quartet towards components prerecorded by the identical musicians, emerged with all its vitality to start out the second half. The composer might have achieved this manner higher with ‘Totally different Trains’, but it surely was actually value revisiting such a landmark work.

This system concluded with the weirdest piece of the night: ‘ZonelyHearts’ by Nicole Lizée, a composer who builds entire worlds out of vernacular sources akin to early MTV movies, thrash metallic, Nineteen Sixties psychedelia and outmoded know-how. Set to a surreal video impressed by the Nineteen Sixties tv present ‘The Twilight Zone’, full with a Rod Serling-esque narrative introduction, the musicians used paper-towel tubes to bow their devices, performed miniature TV units as percussion and sang into Fifties telephones. Apparently, Lizée’s music goals at Era X, which clearly will not be mine.

Viewers members who slipped out throughout that one missed one thing particular by not staying for the encore – ‘Purple Haze’ by Jimi Hendrix, in an association that dates from the quartet’s eponymous 1986 album. Bathed in violet gentle, the quartet dug into the hard-rock groove in a profitable mash-up of classical gamers and high-level rock music.

Harvey Steiman