Kronos Quartet Performs Terry Riley’s Sun Rings as part of the Fresh Ink Series in the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater on April 19
March 22, 2007
"Music of supreme beauty and spiritual impact" –Los Angeles Times
One of the most celebrated and influential ensembles of our time, Grammy® Award winning Kronos Quartet explores a celestial string performance of NASA- commissioned Sun Rings by composer Terry Riley at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater on Thursday, April 19 at 7:30pm. An ode to the earth and its people, the program Sun Rings incorporates the sounds, images and discoveries of deep space captured by NASA scientists, exploring the relationship of humans to the cosmos. Whistling sounds made by lightning; bird-like sounds called chorus spontaneously produced by electrons trapped in magnetic fields surrounding Earth; and the roaring boom of a turbulent shock wave formed by Jupiter in a high-velocity plasma streaming away from the Sun are just some of the striking acoustics to accompany this multimedia performance. Singing City Choir will accompany Kronos Quartet’s performance under the direction of Jeffrey Brillhart. Projected images from space are an integral part of the performance and were designed by Willie Williams.
The Kimmel Center’s 2006/07 Fresh Ink Series is made possible by a grant from the Philadelphia Music Project, a program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts. The Kronos Quartet performance is also a See Hear! concert, where sight and sound are melded as one, and is supported in part by the Wolf/Mostovoy Initiative.
Tickets for Kronos Quartet are priced at $34, $48 and can be purchased by calling 215-893-1999, online at www.kimmelcenter.org, or at the Kimmel Center box office, open daily from 10am to 6pm and later on performance evenings. (Additional fees may apply.) For group sales call 215 790 5883.
A limited number of $10 tickets are available for every Kimmel Center Presents performance at the Kimmel Center. Tickets go on sale the day of the event and can be purchased at the Kimmel Center box office beginning 2.5 hours prior to curtain time and 11:30am for matinees. Limit one ticket per person.
Kronos Quartet specializes in new music with over 600 commissioned new works. For more than 30 years, Kronos has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. Seasoned worldwide performers with more than 40 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, Kronos has collaborated with many of the world’s most eclectic composers and performers. Their work has also garnered numerous awards, including a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and "Musicians of the Year" (2003) from Musical America. One of Kronos’ most exciting initiatives in the group’s commitment to new music is the "Kronos: Under 30 Project," a unique commissioning and composer-in-residence program for composers under 30 years-old, launched in conjunction with Kronos’ own 30th birthday in 2003.
Kronos has collaborated extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, recording his complete string quartets and scores to films like Mishima and Dracula; Steve Reich, whose Kronos-recorded Different Trains earned a Grammy; and diverse artists, including the legendary Bollywood “Playback singer: Asha Bhosle, featured on Kronos’ Grammy®-nominated CD, You’ve Stolen My Heart; Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood; the renowned American soprano Dawn Upshaw; Mexican pop-rockers Cafe Tacuba; among others. Kronos has performed live with the likes of icons Allen Ginsberg, Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, Betty Carter, and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings with singer-songwriters Dave Matthews, Nelly Fortado, Rokia Traore, Joan Armatrading, and Texas yodeler Bon Walser. Their music has been featured prominently in films such as Requiem for a Dream, 21 Grams, Heat, and True Stories.
One of the quartet’s most frequent composer-collaborators is "Father of Minimalism" Terry Riley, whose work with Kronos includes the early Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector; Cadenza on the Night Plain and Salome Dances for Peace; 2002’s Sun Rings, and most recently, The Cusp of Magic, commissioned for Kronos in honor of Riley’s 70th birthday celebration and premiered by Kronos and Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man in 2005. His revolutionary classic In C in 1964 provided a new concept in musical form based on interlocking repetitive patterns. Its impact was to change the course of 20th century music and its influence has been heard in the works of prominent composers and in the music of rock groups including The Who, The Soft Machine and many others. Riley’s hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated Eastern flavored improvisations and compositions set the stage for the New Age movement that would appear a decade later.
Sun Rings is an evening-length work comprised of 10 "spacescapes." Each movement was written with the intention of letting the sounds of space influence the interplay between live "string" and recorded "space" sound. In some movements, the quartet travels through spatial atmospheres, symbolically representing the wanderings of space probes Voyager and Galileo as they moved through the solar system; In other movements, the choir was added to instill the significance of humans as they reach out from earth to gain awareness of their solar system. With visual design by Willie Williams, lighting design by Larry Neff and sound design by Mark Grey, Sun Rings is a multimedia production featuring choir and both sounds and images from space. The piece received its first performance at the University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium in October 2002, and has since been performed in cities including London, San Francisco, Calgary, Tucson and Boston.
Kimmel Center Presents' 2006/2007 season is supported by: Mellon Financial Corporation, University of Pennsylvania Health System, National Endowment for the Arts, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, ARC Wheeler, The William Penn Foundation, The Wachovia Foundation, Verizon Foundation, The Presser Foundation, Philadelphia Music Project and Dance Advance, Initiatives of The Pew Charitable Trust administered by The University of the Arts. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Kimmel Center Presents. Toyota is the Official Vehicle of Kimmel Center Presents Jazz and World Pop programming. NBC-10 is a Media Partner for Kimmel Center Presents. The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com are media sponsors for the Great Orchestras on Tour series.
FREE AT THE KIMMEL events are made possible through the Wachovia Gateway to the Arts Community Access Program supported by a generous grant from Wachovia Foundation.
KIMMEL CENTER PRESENTS
Thursday, April 19, 2007 | 7:30pm
Perelman Theater
Fresh Ink Series
Kronos Quartet
David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello
Singing City Choir
Jeffrey Brillhart, conductor
Sun Rings (2002)
Four string quartet, chorus and pre-recorded spacescapes
- Sun Rings Overture
- Hero Danger
- DeebopterismoM
- Planet Elf Sindoori
- Earth Whistlers
- Earth/Jupiter Kiss
- The Electron Cyclotron Frequency Parlour
- Prayer Central
- Venus Upstream
- One Earth, One People, One Love
FREE AT THE KIMMEL EVENT
Thursday, April 19, 2007 | Post-show
Perelman Theater
Artist Chat with Kronos Quartet
Join us for an artist chat with Kronos Quartet and Kimmel Center’s Director of Programming Tom Warner; following the Kronos Quartet ticketed performance.
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