Kronos Eclipse
San Francisco’s Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet has a gravitational force, unlike any other musical ensemble.
Over 45 years, it has pulled thousands of collaborators into its orbit. While Kronos may be best known for its partnerships with artists like Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and filmmakers Guy Maddin and Darren Aronofsky, it also frequently works side-by-side naturalists, astrophysicists, and other scientists. The NASA Art Program has even commissioned music for the group! As part of a space-themed multimedia concert, Kronos reprises “233rd Day, before and after Totality” by the Exploratorium’s composer-in-residence Wayne Grim. The piece was originally performed on August 21, 2017, to a computer sonification of the total solar eclipse, in real time, as the eclipse progressed.
Photo credit: Jake Blakesberg
Friday, May 17 , 2019
8:00 pm
Pier 15 The Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA 94111
Artist Profile
Wayne Grim
Grim currently curates and produces music and sound works for the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Grim is a sound artist, composer, and improviser. His work with acoustic and electronic instruments, computers and sound objects explores worlds between beauty and failure. His work spans a variety of areas, generative music, spontaneous composition, non-western musical techniques, improvisation, durational works, minimalism, noise, conceptual art, and the sonification of scientific phenomena.
Artist Profile
Kronos Quartet
For more than 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet – David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello) – has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 60 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world’s most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 950 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos has received over 40 awards, including both the Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians, a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and “Musicians of the Year” (2003) from Musical America.