Kronos Quartet

Indescribable beauty. Unbounded nuance and range of expression.

They opened with the disagreeably enthralling, avant garde, short attention span theatrics of John Zorn's "Cat O' Nine Tails (Tex Avery Directs the Marquis de Sade)," a song that allows them to flex all of the muscles and loosen the joints, then in the next two songs, quickly jumped from Mingus to Bollywood.



Wynton Marsalis' "Many Gone" hauntingly filled the Holland and moved me very much. That and the raga were my standouts of the first set. Hank played an Amazing solo on the viola, imitating the sarangi for the "Raga Mishra Bhairavi." They also inserted another Scandinavian number that isn't on the setlist, a beautiful, longing, slowly evolving song that honestly made my eyelids droop a bit after the hypnotic, raga-trance subsided.

I finally glance at the program notes during intermission to find Steve Reich closing the second set. "Triple Quartet" no less. I smiled broadly. The piece is written for three quartets, which Kronos accomplishes by playing over two tapes of themselves playing the other parts. Impeccable and pulsating, then slowly shifting through various dissonances before returning to the near-frenetic reprise.

The first encore was an amazing Sigur Ros tune, translated as "A Thousand Thoughts" I believe, with that Radiohead sort of gear-shifting from melancholy to fist-pumping.

Second encore started out with the most spastic polka I've ever heard, composed by Igor Stravinsky, supposedly for an elephant, during the darkest days of World War II. Take the soundtrack needed for a Tim Burton movie about psychopathic mass murder and hypercube it, and you'll have a vague idea what it sounded like. It was precision spasticity, mind you, but it wouldn't compare to the show closer.

Jimi's "Banner."

It may very well have been better than the real thing, which is a big compliment coming from me, Hendrix is not something to be screwed around with if you aint got the goods, but then again, they are screeching to the power of four, dripping with gainy overdrive every one. The lightshow flashed along with the bows, tension mounting as the quartet swirled in one electrified tornado, the melody divebombing through barb wire clouds. Our meager crowd erupted in an equal cacophony and I whistled as loud as I could. It felt good to bust out the loud-as-hell, find-you-across-the-back-pasture whistle for a string quartet at the Holland.




I snagged a seat in the first tier boxes, right over the third row of the audience but in that little balcony that rings the stage.

Setlist:

John Zorn "Cat O' Nine Tails"

Charles Mingus "Myself When I Am Real"

R.D. Burman "Mehbooba Mehbooba" (Beloved, O Beloved)

Wynton Marsalis "Many Gone" from At the Octoroon Balls

Hildegard Von Bingen "O Virtus Sapientie"

Ram Narayan "Raga Mishra Bhairavi"

--Intermission--

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh "Mugam Sayagi"

Steve Reich "Triple Quartet"

--E1: Sigur Ros "A Thousand Thoughts"

--E2: Igor Stravinsky "Circus Polka"

Jimi Hendrix "Star Spangled Banner"