David Harrington

David Harrington is the founder and artistic director of the Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet. For 40 years, the Kronos Quartet and its non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association have re-imagined and redefined the string quartet experience through thousands of concerts, more than 50 recordings and 800 commissioned works, and education programs for emerging musicians.

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Bio

Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers (1978–1999) had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola and Joan Jeanrenaud on cello. Jennifer Culp replaced Jeanrenaud on cello in 1999. Jeffrey Zeigler replaced Culp on cello in 2005. Sunny Yang replaced Zeigler on cello in 2013. Paul Wiancko replaced Sunny Yang in 2023. Recently, the Kronos Quartet began a commission process for composers under the age of 30, in the hope of bringing some of the talented young composers of our day to light. Kronos specializes in new music and has a long history of commissioning new works. In fact, over 850 works have been created for the Kronos Quartet. They have worked with many minimalist composers including Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Kevin Volans. Kronos has collaborated with composers from diverse countries such as Franghiz Ali Zadeh from Azerbaijan and Osvaldo Golijov from Argentina. Golijov is a MacArthur Fellow who has done compositions and arrangements for Kronos CDs such as Caravan and Nuevo. Kronos covers a very broad range of musical genres: Mexican folk, experimental, pre-classical early music, movie soundtracks (Requiem for a Dream), jazz and tango. Kronos has even recorded adaptations of Purple Haze, Flugufrelsarinn, Marquee Moon, and Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals. Composers aside, Kronos has teamed up with artists from around the world, including the legendary Bollywood "playback singer" Asha Bhosle; the American soprano Dawn Upshaw; Mexican pop-rockers Cafe Tacuba; and the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks. Kronos has performed live with the likes of the late poet Allen Ginsberg, Modern Jazz Quartet, David Bowie, and Bjork, and has appeared on recordings with such diverse talents as singer-songwriters Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traore, Joan Armatrading, and Texas yodeler Don Walser. Their official site is www.kronosquartet.org Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Talks

Meshell Ndegeocello Talks with David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) on the Talkhouse Podcast

By Talkhouse Podcast | June 20, 2024

Meshell Ndegeocello Talks with David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) on the Talkhouse Podcast

“When I play music it’s the only time I feel raceless and genderless.”

David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) Talks Tinariwen’s Emmaar

By David Harrington | February 11, 2014

David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) Talks Tinariwen’s Emmaar

It was Jim Thirlwell who first introduced me to the fact that deserts sing. Each dune has its own sound. Shifting sands create distinctive...

David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) Talks Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band’s Take Me to the Land of Hell

By David Harrington | September 17, 2013

David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) Talks Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band’s Take Me to the Land of Hell

There was a recent article in the paper about how ancient redwoods and sequoias are growing faster now than at any other time in their long lives.