For over fifty years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has reimagined what the string quartet experience can be. One of the most celebrated and influential groups of our era, Kronos has given thousands of concerts worldwide. Additionally, they have released more than seventy recordings and collaborated with many of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers across many genres. Kronos has received over forty awards, including three Grammys and the Polar Music, Avery Fisher, and Edison Klassiek Oeuvre Prizes. In 2024, Kronos’ Pieces of Africa album was inducted into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. Most recently, Kronos Quartet has been selected as the Doomsday Clock Artists in Residence for The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Through its nonprofit organization, Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA), Kronos has commissioned more than 1,100 works and arrangements for quartet. KPAA also manages Kronos’ concert tours, local performances, recordings, and education programs. There, in its most ambitious commissioning effort to date, KPAA has recently completed Kronos Fifty for the Future. Through this initiative, Kronos has commissioned—and distributed online for free—fifty new works for string quartet. Here, these are designed for students and emerging professionals, written by composers from around the world.

PROGRAM TO BE SELECTED FROM THE FOLLOWING

Jlin (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Little Black Book **
Abel Meeropol (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Strange Fruit (inspired by Billie Holiday) +
Neil Young (arr. Paul Wiancko) / Ohio +
Michael Gordon / The Sad Park – Part 4: And all the persons that were in the airplane died. *
John Coltrane (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Alabama +
Link Wray (arr. Jacob Garchik) / Rumble +
Traditional (arr. Jonathan Berger) / Ya Taali’een ‘ala el-Jabal (inspired by Rim Banna) +
J. Fred Coots (arr. Jacob Garchik) / For All We Know (inspired by Nina Simone) +
Aleksandra Vrebalov / My Desert, My Rose **
Kronos Quartet featuring Joe Rainey and Andrew Broder / TBD