KRONOS QUARTET David Harrington, violin John Sherba, violin Hank Dutt, viola Sunny Yang, cello

Lincoln Center Out of Doors Friday, July 26, 2013 KRONOS at 40 Omar Souleyman (arr. Jacob Garchik) / La Sidounak Sayyada (I’ll Prevent the Hunters from Hunting You) Alter Yechiel Karniol (arr. Judith Berkson) / Sim Sholom Ramallah Underground (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Tashweesh Traditional/Kim Sinh (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Lưu thủy trường Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ / Selections from All Clear III. Christmas Storm • V. Patching Up Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ / Queen of the Night with special guest Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, đàn Bầu, đàn Tranh Ram Narayan (arr. Kronos, transc. Ljova) / Raga Mishra Bhairavi: Alap Magda Giannikou / Strophe in Antistrophe World premiere with special guests Magda Giannikou, laterna Marcelo Woloski and James Shipp, percussion All works on this program were written or arranged for the Kronos Quartet.

Omar Souleyman (b. 1966) La Sidounak Sayyada Arranged by Jacob Garchik Omar Souleyman is a Syrian musical legend. Since 1994, he and his musicians have been a staple of folk-pop throughout Syria issuing more than 500 studio and live-recorded albums which are easily spotted in the shops of any Syrian city. He was born in rural Northeastern Syria, and the myriad musical traditions of the region are evident in his music. Classical Arabic mawal-style vocalization gives way to high-octane Syrian Dabke (the regional folkloric dance and party music), Iraqi Choubi and a host of Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish styles, among others. This amalgamation is truly the sound of Syria. His popularity has risen steadily and the group tirelessly performs concerts throughout Syria and has accepted invitations to perform abroad in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Lebanon. Trombonist and composer Jacob Garchik, born in San Francisco, has lived in New York since 1994. He has toured Europe and North America extensively with the acclaimed Lee Konitz New Nonet, and has played with Konitz since 1997. Since 2006 Garchik has contributed dozens of arrangements and transcriptions for the Kronos Quartet of music from all over the world. An active freelance trombonist, he plays with groups including the Ohad Talmor/Steve Swallow Sextet, the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Slavic Soul Party!, and the Four Bags. His second CD, Romance, was released in 2008 on Yestereve Records. Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of La Sidounak Sayyada was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.

Alter Yechiel Karniol (1855–1929) Sim Sholom (c. 1913) Arranged by Judith Berkson This arrangement of Sim Sholom is inspired by a recording made by Cantor Alter Yechiel Karniol around 1913. Karniol was born in Dzialoszyce, Poland (near Krakow), and sang in Hungary in a number of congregations before being invited by the Hungarian congregation Ohab Zedek in New York City to be its cantor. He returned to Europe to officiate at the Great Synagogue of Odessa, but after the 1905 pogrom erupted he returned to the United States and eventually resumed officiating at Ohab Zedek. Karniol was noted for his extraordinary range and his intensely emotional, improvisatory style. He made the recording of Sim Sholom that this arrangement is based on in New York for Columbia Records, backed by a male chorus. The text is the final blessing of the weekday service, which says, in part, “Grant peace, goodness, blessing, grace, kindness, and compassion upon us and upon all of Your people Israel.” Arranger Judith Berkson is a soprano, pianist and composer who also performs as Liederkreis. Her solo record Oylam was released on ECM Records in 2010. She has performed at the New York City Opera Vox Festival, the BrucknerTage in St. Florian, Picasso Museum Malaga, Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, and Joe's Pub and the American Festival of Microtonal Music in New York. She collaborated with Kronos Quartet in 2010 in a performance of Schubert songs, arranged for string quartet and analog keyboards, and an aria from Mileva, a forthcoming opera by Aleksandra Vrebalov. In 2011 she received a Six Points Fellowship and is writing an opera about Viennese cantor Salomon Sulzer for chamber ensemble, voices, organs and percussion, which will premier in New York in 2012.

Judith Berkson’s arrangement of Sim Sholom was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research & Development Fund, and is part of a five-song cycle dedicated to the memory of Harold Goldberg. Ramallah Underground Tashweesh (2008) Arranged by Jacob Garchik Ramallah Underground (RU) is a musical collective, based in Ramallah, Palestine, attempting to rejuvenate Arabic culture through their music. RU was founded by artists Boikutt, Stormtrap, and Aswatt. They produce music ranging from hip hop to trip hop to down tempo. The members started off as producers; Boikutt and Stormtrap later picked up the mic and began to MC in Arabic, which added a political layer to the music. Their work comes out of a deep sense of their local culture and imposing presence of Palestine in their lives. The members of RU, as producers and as MCs, have collaborated and performed with artists across the globe, from Lebanon, United Kingdom, Switzerland, United States, France, The Netherlands, and other countries. RU has also performed live shows in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Vienna, London, Cairo, Lausanne, Brussels, Amsterdam and Washington, DC. In recent live performances, RU has incorporated a visual set, created by Palestinian visual artist Ruanne. RU’s express hope is to give a voice to Palestinians and Arabs, bringing an alternative voice from the Arab world. About Tashweesh, David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet writes:

“I first heard Ramallah Underground on MySpace. Their sound was distinctive, and they seemed very interesting as a group. They were open to the world of music. I began an email correspondence with them, and found that one member lived in Palestine, another in Vienna and the third in Dubai. I sent them a bunch of Kronos CDs and in exchange they sent me a lot of their music. After I had spent a lot of time with their work, I felt it would be great if they would write for Kronos. Tashweesh is the result.” Ramallah Underground’s Tashweesh, arranged by Jacob Garchik, was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Columbia Foundation and the David Harrington Research and Development Fund. Kronos’ recording is available on Floodplain, released on Nonesuch Records. Traditional / Kim Sinh (b. 1930) Lưu thủy trường Arranged by Jacob Garchik Kim Sinh is a nationally renowned Vietnamese musician, born in Hanoi, who performs cải lương, a musical theatrical style that is based in folk songs. As one of the most well-known master artists of traditional music in Vietnam, Sinh was awarded the title “Vietnam’s Artist of Merit” in 1983. Blind since the age of three months, he learned to play many different Vietnamese traditional instruments while traveling with music groups touring around the country. When playing dance music in hotels in Hanoi, he came into contact with the slide guitar as well. In the 1990s, he recorded with Ry Cooder, but an album was never released. This arrangement of Lưu thủy trường is based on a recording by Sinh. Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of Lưu thủy trường by Kim Sinh was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.

Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ (b. 1975) All Clear – Rõ (2012) Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ comes from a family of musicians, and began studying traditional Vietnamese music and the đàn Tranh zither at the age of four. She graduated with distinction from and subsequently taught at the Vietnam Academy of Music in Hanoi. In 1995, Võ won the Vietnam National Đàn Tranh Competition, along with first prize for best solo performance of modern folk music. In Hanoi, Võ was an ensemble member of Vietnam National Music Theatre as well as a member of the traditional music group Đồng Nội Ensemble, which she founded and directed. She has performed throughout Vietnam and many other countries. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2000, Võ has focused her career on collaborating with musicians across different music genres to create new works, bringing Vietnamese traditional music to a wider audience, and preserving Vietnamese cultural legacy through teaching. Among her compositions are the 2009 Emmy® Award-winning soundtrack for the documentary Bolinao 52, which she co-composed and recorded, and the soundtrack for the 2003 Academy Awards® nominee Daughter from Danang. Võ also co-composed and recorded for the recent documentary A Village Called Versailles, winner of the New Orleans Film Festival Audience Award. She performs with Kronos on the recording of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” released on the CD collection Chimes of Freedom: Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International. “Christmas Storm” and “Patching Up” are the third and final sections of a five-movement staged work titled All Clear. About All Clear, Võ writes:

“I was born right after the war ended. I remember the suffering of the people around me who went through it. In All Clear, I want the audience to feel the suffering of women and children who bear the brunt of war, and of the many innocent people who are caught in the middle. My perspective is that of someone who was not on any side. “David Harrington encouraged me to weave together the distinctive sounds of Vietnamese language, culture, and history. Together, we explored Vietnamese instruments and musical traditions. I searched for many sounds to use in All Clear and I had the chance to travel to many provinces in Vietnam to record the sound and thoughts of local people. “Through my music, I hope to share a thousand years of Viet cultural history, which was overshadowed by the war. My instruments – the đàn Tranh, đàn Bầu, k’ni, and artillery gongs – represent the Viet cultural legacy. These instruments may have been drowned out by the sound of war but they survive. “The sound at the end of All Clear is a bridge between the past and present. The past already happened, and there were wounds in our hearts that have healed over time. The past now has taken a new form that reminds us of how painful those wounds were. “In working with David for a year and a half, I might say that All Clear was composed by the two of us.” David Harrington writes: “I have long wanted Kronos to explore the world of Vietnamese musical culture, but the intricacies of this vibrant culture and the immense instrumental variety to be found in Vietnamese musical life have been overwhelming. I learned of Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ’s work when she

introduced herself after one of Kronos’ recent concerts at Stanford University. Van-Anh is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer, and possesses an enormous amount of knowledge about Vietnamese traditions. I felt I had found an expert guide to Vietnamese life, history and music. Together we started to explore making a concert piece. “Like many Americans of my generation, I knew about Vietnam mostly through the evening news reports about the war in the 1960s and early ’70s. I remember the horror of seeing people dying on TV – both Vietnamese and American. The North Vietnamese were demonized in our society at that time. I recall my spiritual confusion growing up in a mad-warrior society that was bent on its own ruin, and at the time I often wondered what I could do to help change this. “I found a moment of sanity one August night in 1973, when on the radio I heard George Crumb's Black Angels for the first time, performed by the New York String Quartet. In my opinion Black Angels (1970) is the great American musical masterpiece to have resulted from the ‘Vietnam’ War (known in Vietnam as the ‘American’ War). This was a time when, as Crumb later said to me, ‘There were strange things in the air.’ I formed Kronos the next month, in order to play that piece. “As time passed, my collection of recordings from Vietnam has grown and my appreciation for the varieties of music and instruments to be found there has increased immeasurably. I’ve long felt that much remains to be done to atone artistically for an American-made war that brought much suffering and ruin to so many innocent people. I hope to help create a musical experience that will explore some of the inner reaches of Vietnamese music. “Van-Anh and I began by listening together to Vietnamese

music of mourning. It seemed to me that the sound of the đàn Bầu, a one-stringed plucked instrument with a buffalo-horn whammy bar, was created especially for mourning. We want to tell a story through music using a variety of instruments from Vietnam and the West, connected by several poems by Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822). She was a 19th century woman with 21st century sensibilities. There are multiple dimensions of meaning expressed at the same time in her poetry – poems within poems – which contain images of female desire and longing coupled with scenes of everyday life. Van-Anh recorded and collected sounds from Vietnam, which we use to weave a web of sound, providing windows into Vietnamese culture and society. The music was built over this sonic ‘ground.’” Research assistance by Nikolás McConnie-Saad and Derek Lance. Backing tracks recorded at Women’s Audio Mission, San Francisco. Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ’s All Clear was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Kronos Performing Arts Association, and the David Harrington Research & Development Fund. Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ (b. 1975) Queen of the Night (2012) About Queen of the Night, Võ writes: “The spiritual music called Xa Thuong originated in northern Vietnam, and is used mainly in the Ceremony of Death to connect spirits in death and spirits in present life. After spending years playing music for and serving in spiritual ceremonies with my masters, I reached a point where music became an inner voice that could take me to different

lifetimes. The frightening feeling of being able to breathe and inhale in both worlds made it possible for me to travel to impossible places where desires of love, peace, and freedom flow unstoppable. Yes, Queen of The Night was born with these inspirations, and the đàn Tranh is the voice that helps me to express all of these passions.” Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ’s Queen of the Night was written for the Kronos Quartet. Ram Narayan (b. 1927) Raga Mishra Bhairavi: Alap Arranged by Kronos Quartet Transcribed by Ljova Ram Narayan is one of the world's most revered masters of the sarangi, the bowed string instrument from northern India renowned for its vocal expressiveness. Over the course of his long career, Narayan has been the person most responsible for bringing this ancient chordophone into the foreground of classical Hindustani music. Born in Udaipur, Rajasthan, Narayan grew up in a family of musicians, and began playing the sarangi as a child under his father's tutelage. He began his career as a music teacher in Udaipur at age 15, then moved to Delhi in 1947 to work as a staff player at All India Radio. Like most sarangi players of the era, he played as a vocal accompanist only; however, he soon realized the potential of the sarangi as a solo instrument and pushed to bring his performances into the spotlight—a practice that was unheard of at the time. He moved to Bombay two years later to play in the burgeoning film industry and slowly pave the way for a solo career. In the early 1950s his ragas were some of the first to be recorded on LPs produced in India, and by the end of the decade Narayan became widely acknowledged as a soloist. Since then, he has received numerous awards, including the

Sangeet Natak Academy Award, the highest honor issued in India for dance, music, and theater. Many innovations made by Narayan to bowing and fingering techniques on the sarangi have now become standard. Ram Narayan is known for his vivid interpretations of traditional Indian ragas. A specified combination of notes played and embellished within a parent framework called a thaat, each different raga has the power to evoke a unique emotional transcendence. This esthetic feeling was termed by music scholars as Rasavadhana: a mystic state completely unrelated to desire, which is purely compounded of joy and consciousness. This arrangement of Raga Mishra Bhairavi is based on a performance by Narayan, recorded in 1989. Ljova (Lev Zhurbin) is a composer, arranger and violist. Born in Moscow, he now works out of New York City. Ljova’s arrangements have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, Lara St. John, and many others. He has composed more than 70 works, including compositions for orchestras, chamber ensembles, jazz and Latin bands, as well as over a dozen scores for film and theatre projects. Recent commissions include orchestral works for the Staten Island Symphony, the Wild Ginger Philharmonic and the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble, as well as a chamber music commission from the American Composers Forum. The Kronos Quartet's arrangement of Raga Mishra Bhairavi by Ram Narayan was commissioned for Kronos by Deborah and Creig Hoyt in memory of Raymond Frase. Kronos’ recording is available on Floodplain, released on Nonesuch Records.

Magda Giannikou (b. 1981) Strophe in Antistrophe (2013) Greek-born composer Magda Giannikou can jump from Francophile sambas to Mediterranean-spiked exotica in the space of a short set, a feat she regularly manages with Banda Magda, her close-knit little orchestra. She grew up obsessed with film music and passionately encouraged by parents who listened to everything from pop to classical. She eventually went from working as a successful music educator, arranger, and TV and theater composer in Athens to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she trained in film scoring, a craft she honed as a fellow at the Sundance Composers Lab. A classically trained pianist and in-demand film composer, Giannikou has won awards for her film work and composed commissioned works for several orchestras and chamber ensembles, when not performing at Sundance or for the Obie Awards Ceremony. She has produced albums for a variety of artists, as well as myriad of Greek children’s albums. She contributed a forro and a bossa nova to the Louis CK’s show, singing a duet with the comedian. With Banda Magda, she was chosen to be part of the Carnegie Hall Musical Explorers Series. Giannikou’s next project will get kids playing music and discovering cultures from around the world. About Strophe in Antistrophe, Giannikou writes: “Strophe in Antistrophe reimagines the ancient call-and-response of Greek choruses to portray the counterpoint and blending of two radically different sonic propositions. The piece explores cause and consequence, question and answer, action and counteraction, two opinions-entities that are strong yet vulnerable and formless enough to be able to

overlap, sink into each other and be re-invented after every wave of interaction. Hence the word ‘in’ in the title. “Inspired by the laterna, an outdoor instrument that brings animated joy and exuberance, sounding loud and strong in outdoor festivities and gatherings with its nine song cylinders, Strophe in Antistrophe comprises nine small vignettes – dances, through which the laterna and string quartet sway and interplay. “As a result of my culturally diverse musical influences, these dances expand beyond the traditional Greek musical styles typically found in laternas, spanning from Northeastern Brazilian Maracatu to Moroccan Chaabi. Amidst this amalgam of global rhythms, drawn by the rich musical heritage of the country that I was raised in, I have installed segments of Greek Hasapiko and Tsifteteli, which are popular Greek folk dances in 4/4. “Strophe and Antistrophe are parts of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy. Strophe would be sung by a choir called Choros – which also means dance – who move from east to west. Antistrophe is the answer to Strophe that was sung while the Choros moved back from west to east. “The laterna that I play, constructed by Panos Ioannidis, is a little portable piano with an action activated by a wooden cylinder, which is pinned with several thousand little nails, each one being a musical note. It was the main music-reproducing instrument in Greece for almost a century until WWII. Extremely popular, massively manufactured and greatly adored by Greeks, it did in fact play a vital role in the evolution of Greek popular music in the 20th century. “Many different musical styles were stamped on the cylinders. It virtually carried on its back most of the Greek musical tradition. Today there are only a handful left and

none of the old craftsmen exist. A private effort commenced in the workshop of Panos Ioannidis to revitalize the instrument. It was a long and tedious process, as there were no manuscripts, notes, tools, or technical information in hand, and the instrument and its barrel are extremely complex and demand the highest precision. The first new laterna was built in 1996 complete with new songs. An effort is also made to transcribe old authentic songs and in the same tie improve the sound, technology and aesthetics.” Score preparation by Kyle Saulnier and Maria Im. Magda Giannikou's Strophe in Antistrophe was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Onassis Foundation (USA).