Middle East Premiere
Kronos Quartet - Residency
Music and Live Cinema
3 different performances - Thursday, Feb 15 @ 8pm | Friday, Feb 16 @ 4pm | Thursday, Feb 22 @ 8pm
The Red Theatre
Past Event
For over 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagine the string quartet experience.
Kronos is one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with an eclectic mix of composers and performers, commissioning over 900 works for string quartet, and receiving over 40 awards. During a week-long residency, Kronos will perform three different concerts: one of recent works and featuring a surprise guest, a family friendly musical journey around the world, and a live cinema performance piece that explores the power of music through Kronos’ past, present and future.
“The Kronos Quartet has broken the boundaries of what string quartets do.” – The New York Times
Watch the Introduction to Kronos Quartet video
“The quartet remains as geographically, politically and spiritually feisty as ever. Forget about genre; Kronos made that an irrelevant term ages ago.” – Los Angeles Times
Thursday, Feb 15 @ 8pm
For the Future
An adventurous concert of new works never before heard in the Middle East. Many of the compositions are from Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, an education and legacy initiative that is commissioning – and distributing for free – the first learning library of contemporary repertoire for string quartet. The Arts Center is a Legacy Partner of this unprecedented project that recently inspired The Washington Post to declare “Kronos Quartet is at it again, committing acts of imaginative generosity in support of creativity.”
Friday, Feb 16 @ 4pm
Around the World with Kronos – Family Concert
An eclectic and energetic mix of music from across the globe. This hour-long program is suitable for children ages 7 and up.
Thursday, Feb 22 @ 8pm
A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary by Sam Green and Kronos Quartet – UAE Premiere. Co-commissioned by The Arts Center
Transcending the typical live cinema event, A Thousand Thoughts quickly becomes a meditation on music itself – the act of listening to it closely, the experience of feeling it deeply, and the power that it has to change the world. Teaming up with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sam Green to create a “live documentary,” the wildly creative multimedia experiment blends live music and narration with archival footage and filmed interviews with such prominent artists as Philip Glass, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Reich, Wu Man, and Terry Riley. As Green tells the multi-decade and continent-spanning story of the groundbreaking string quartet, he crafts an important record and exploration of late 20th and early 21st-century music.
“I am remixing forms to create something utterly contemporary – a form that site at the intersection of disciplines and responds to this moment of great flux, upheaval and possibility in the film and performance worlds.” – Sam Green
Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire is a program of the Kronos Performing Arts Association and is made possible by generous support from an adventurous group of partners, including Carnegie Hall, The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, and many others. www.kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future
“There’s an energy in the room that you can’t capture in a videotape, that’s tangible. I like that.” – Indiewire on Sam Green