Kronos Quartet. Concert at Hanzas Perons

On Tuesday, May 13, 2025, the exceptionally virtuosic string chamber ensemble Kronos Quartet from the United States will return to Latvia for an exclusive performance in the Baltic States at the cultural venue Hanzas Perons.

Last year marked half a century since violinist David Harrington, inspired by the Vietnam War and George Crumb’s composition Black Angels, founded the ensemble. The use of water glasses played with a bow, passages incorporating spoken word, and electronic elements were innovations in chamber music composition that particularly captivated Harrington. Over time, and with changes in the quartet’s lineup, Kronos Quartet has persistently pursued its artistic vision, where fearless exploration and a continual rewriting of the experience of string quartets intersect. It is no exaggeration to say that Kronos remains the most significant string quartet in the world and one of the most influential music ensembles overall.

Currently, Harrington’s colleagues and fellow musicians—Gabriela Díaz (second violin), Ayane Kozasa (viola), and Paul Wiancko (cello)—continue to carry the torch of string quartet reformers with every concert, recording, commission, and collaboration with other artists. Through their creative work, they embody music-making as a living art form and define “contemporaneity” in its broadest and most precise sense. In other words, Kronos Quartet creates music that responds to the world’s most pressing questions, engaging directly with reality. As The New York Times aptly put it, they have long since “broken the boundaries of what a string quartet does.”

With thousands of performances worldwide, dozens of released recordings, countless collaborations with elite musicians and composers from various genres, and around a thousand commissioned works and arrangements, these are just some highlights in the quartet’s artistic biography. They have also received more than 40 awards, including the Polar Music Prize, the Avery Fisher Prize, and the Edison Klassiek Oeuvre award—some of the highest honors in music—as well as three Grammy awards: for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2004, for Best Small Ensemble Performance (where they won against themselves, as their recording of Alban Berg’s music outperformed their recording of Pēteris Vasks’ String Quartet No. 4), for their collaboration with Laurie Anderson on her 2018 album Landfall, and for Best Engineered Album with their recording of Sun Rings by their close friend and contemporary, Terry Riley, four years ago.

“My devotion is to try to create music that could embrace us all like hands,” said Kronos Quartet leader David Harrington about his life’s mission. Though spoken at different times, he echoed this thought in a conversation with Dāvis Eņģelis six years ago:

“I would love to find music that could protect children, people who will live here in the future. Music that is bulletproof. That would be wonderful. We haven’t found such music yet—music that, for example, could surround my grandchildren and shield them from danger. But I haven’t given up this search because I believe such music exists in this universe. If we focus and never stop looking. I am devoted to finding music so powerful that it would make violent people stop being violent.”

Today, such music and such artists are needed by the world more than ever.

Program:

Sun Ra (arranged by Jacob Garchik) - Outer Spaceways, Inc.
Terry Riley - Good Medicine from Salome Dances for Peace
Nicole Lizée - Death to Kosmische
Peni Candra Rini (arranged by Jacob Garchik) - Hujan (Rain) from Segara Gunung
Hildur Guðnadóttir (arranged by Kronos) - Folk Faer Andlit (People Have Faces)
Viet Cuong - Next Week's Trees

~ Intermission ~

Jlin - Little Black Book
J. Fred Coots/Nina Simone (arranged by Jacob Garchik) - For All We Know
Traditional/Rim Banna (arranged by Jonathan Berger) - Ya Taali’een ‘ala el-Jabal (Oh, You Who are the Mountains)
Gabriella Smith - Isabel from Keep Going
Steve Reich - Triple Quartet

Tickets for Kronos Quartet’s concert at Hanzas Perons on May 13 are available through the Biļešu Paradīze ticketing network.

Doors open at 6:00 PM.