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.
Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer and documentary filmmaker; David Harrington is a violinist and the founder of the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet. Mary and Kronos recently made a record together, Witness, which was just released in March by Phenotypic Records. To celebrate, she and David got on a call to catch up about it, and more.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Mary Kouyoumdjian: Well, David, I know we’re supposed to talk about the album, but I was also thinking that this is an opportunity for me to ask you random questions. I know that you don’t have a lot of downtime and that you are someone who, even in your downtime, likes researching and learning things, and you’re still kind of working the whole time. But I do wonder, in these times between tours that are a little more mellow and quiet, what do you do for fun?
David Harrington: Well, first of all, I’ve been on the edge of my chair for 51 years, so there’s no lack of fun. For me, being able to play now with Paul [Wiancko], Ayane [Kozasa] and Gabriela [Díaz], that is fun. And to be in communication with [interesting people] — the other day, for example, I had a walk in Golden Gate Park with Rebecca Solnit. [It’s fun for me] to just be talking about issues that, really, every one of us on the earth is facing some of the things that Rebecca is so eloquent at pointing out. And because of the fact that I’m a musician and I’ve been doing this for all this time, I get to have these kinds of conversations. It’s the same with you. And the fact that when we get to see each other, we kind of just go right back to where we left off.
Mary: Yeah.
David: That’s a privilege, and it’s something really beautiful. And I think music enables that, it encourages that, it allows us to have amazing opportunities and friendships. And it connects us, to not only other people, but other ways of thinking. If you learn something new, I bet eventually I’ll find out about it. If I learn something new, I’m going to be sure you learn about it. And that’s part of being a musician and part of being a part of this community that we have. And so, downtime — well, Regan [David’s wife] would tell you, I have never taken a day off.
Mary: [Laughs.] Do you watch TV? Do you have any hobbies that are beyond music?
David: I mean, I love to take walks. In fact, after this, I’m going to go over to the arboretum and I’m going to get a couple of flowers for Regan. We’re gonna plant some flowers tonight.
Mary: Oh, that’s really nice.
David: And, you know, I get to have just amazing opportunities to learn new things with many people. And for me, that is relaxing. It’s fun. It gives me energy. It gives me lift. And the other thing is, I’m getting lifted up by Paul and Ayane and Gabriela. And in a way, to have this generation of musicians joining me — I don’t know if I told you, but last June, all of a sudden, the average age in Kronos went down 27 years.
Mary: [Laughs.] You did not tell me that, but OK.
David: [Laughs.] Just a little fact. But here’s the thing that I’ve noticed: These other musicians that I get to work with now have grown up with Kronos and the work that we’ve done so far. They understand it in a way that I [don’t] — I’ve been doing it for all these years, but they have sensed it from an audience point of view. In some cases, they’ve studied some of the pieces in college. Their knowledge of Kronos is from a different perspective that I am now receiving. And I’m enjoying it so much.
The other night at Zankel Hall, Aleksandra Vrebalov asked if I would read a dedication before we played her piece. And, I mean, you’re as aware of the time we’re in as anyone — in Serbia in the last month-and-a-half, I don’t think there have been any concerts. There have been no classes, no school. The people have shut down the society as a response to repression, greed, violence, and I think on Sunday, there were a 1,300,000 people in the streets of Belgrade. But anyway, at the concert, I just read this little statement, and I realized most Americans don’t know what’s happening in other places.
Mary: Yeah, we don’t.
David: In spite of all the news, we just don’t internalize it. And when I’m thinking of positive things we can do, we can remind ourselves of what other people are experiencing. And that can be a statement just like “Silent Cranes” is a statement. You hear voices of survivors of the Armenian Genocide. There is a reality there that is absolutely undeniable.
Mary: Yeah.
David: And of course, people can try to hide it. They can try to say, “Well, this didn’t really happen, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t all this.” And that’s going on every minute of the day all over the world, and especially in our country right now. I mean, trying to erase Harriet Tubman is about as absurd as one can get.
Mary: Yeah. I wonder if we could even talk about speaking through music, and activism through music. Because I know that Kronos Quartet has always been dedicated to activism and has been very forward about that in the music that it presents and just your presence on stage. Whether a piece is directly political or not, just even your choice in programming is activism. It’s in the pieces that you’re programming, where you’re programming these pieces — context matters. Also in my own music, I’ve been very direct in my activism for almost 20 years now, too, and this is the first time in my creative lifespan where I have felt that here in the United States, this is of great risk. There’s fear that’s being instilled into presenters over pieces that they program, people that they curate, and having funding pulled. And I understand why people are nervous and why people are scared and why things are happening. But I wonder, given everything that’s happening right now, what is on your mind? Are you facing difficult conversations right now? Do you feel any differently now than even a year ago?
David: Well, what I feel right now is I’m so glad that the push that existed within a certain circle of Kronos back a year-and-a-half or so ago that, “You know, after 50 years, it’s time to retire.” And anybody that knows me knows that, well, that’s not something that I…
Mary: [Laughs.]
David: I’m clearly a lousy retiree. [Laughs.] But I feel as an elder — and I’m getting elder-er and elder-er even as we speak — that an example needs to be set for younger people, and it’s essential to me that Kronos pushes through the obstacles and whatever attempts at erasing messages that we feel we need to make. Whatever attempts exist, we have to not just keep going, we need to be expanding. It’s not a time to just stay in place. And so every conversation I have with every composer, with every other performer, with presenters — now is the time that we push. And we use the weight of our experience, and we use the thrust of our imaginations, to help us find the future that we all want. So in that sense, I’m energized. I feel on the edge of my chair. There’s just so much to do. And then, of course, there are people that say, “Well, you’ve already done this and this and this and this,” and that is true. There are things that have been done within this group, many things. But my opinion is that’s just opening the book to more things that can be done, and that should be done. The more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know.
Mary: Yeah.
David: And every time you make something, the next time you try to make something, you think, Maybe I’ve learned how to do it better than I did last time.
Mary: Yeah. I am curious: Kronos is playing “Bombs of Beirut” now with this iteration of the quartet, and I’m curious about their interpretation of this piece. Because I have so ingrained into my ears the version that I’ve known, which is with John [Sherba], Hank [Dutt], and Sunny [Yang]. And I’m really excited to hear a new interpretation.
I’m also curious about how the audience will engage with this piece, because it premiered in 2014 as a piece around the Lebanese Civil War, and it’s sort of detached from what was going on. This is like a look back at what had happened. Now, so much of history has already repeated itself, and we’re in the middle of a very similar conflict going on in Lebanon and in surrounding areas. So it feels different. I’m wondering, are there conversations within the quartet around a piece like this, around comfort or even interpretation? What were reactions to people running through the piece for the first time?
David: Well, we’ve done that several weeks ago. We haven’t put it in microscopic rehearsal yet.
Mary: Sure. But the first pass of the piece.
David: Of course, we have the advantage of the recording that Paul and Hank and John and I made to refer to. But in terms of the way it will enter our current repertoire, I know that it’s going to have a different feel. There’s no way it can’t. And the especially with Ayana and Gabriela being new to the group and playing the piece for the first time, they will hear things and suggest things, and by the way they play will influence the way Paul and I play as well. So it will be a new way of thinking of the piece. And of course, as you say, the events and just the world that we’re a part of now presents its own challenges. The program that it’ll be on is going to be, I think, really incredible, and I look forward to the way “Bombs of Beirut” sounds within this new context that we’re coming up with. But then, as you know, I like to play a different program every night. I like to put, let’s say, an older piece next to a new piece that we’ve never played, because then we learn more about each piece that we play. So curating the experience that we have, and then in turn the audience has, is something that I love to do.
By the way, you’re going to be here for that concert, aren’t you?
Mary: I am! I just bought my plane ticket this morning.
David: Oh, great. Are your parents going to be there?
Mary: Yeah, they’ll come too.
David: Excellent.
Mary: Yeah, they haven’t heard the piece in, like, 11 years. Live, anyway — they have the album now. But I’m curious too, because I haven’t heard it performed live in also about 10 years. It’s been about 10 years since I’ve heard that in space beyond my own speakers and headphones, and also heard it in the context of an audience to feel their response. My memory of the middle section, with the field recordings of the bombings, is that I’m usually holding very tightly to the chair, feeling that edge of, Is this OK? Is this not OK? How is the audience feeling? In performance, it feels very different than accepting it as a recording at home when you’re listening. So I’m curious about that.
David: And don’t forget, you’re going to be married in June.
Mary: [Laughs.] Yeah. That’s a thing that’s happening.
David: And what a beautiful, amazing moment that’s going to be. I wonder how that will affect the way you listen to that piece, the way you listen to other pieces.
Mary: Do you think it will?
David: Yes I do. I definitely do.
Mary: How come? I’m so curious! What do I have to look forward to?
David: I mean, the anticipation of a blessed moment, I think it changes us.
Mary: I’m so curious what will shift… OK, I have another question for you.
David: Uh-oh.
Mary: Is there anything in the back of your mind that you’ve maybe been a little nervous to try? And by nervous, I don’t necessarily mean afraid of, but that there’s a little buzz of something that you want to try and you haven’t quite gone there yet. Are there things that feel like a reach for you? Maybe the answer is just “no.” [Laughs.]
David: No, there’s lots of them. One thing I want us to do is just create cosmic fun, belly laugh, laboratory, family music experiences.
Mary: Yeah. That’s hard.
David: Something that grandparents bring their grandkids, parents can bring their kids, and normal listeners will think, Wow, this is cool — I want to do that every day of my life, because I have so much fun doing that kind of thing. And one of the things that Kronos is talking about now is making musical experiences that can then be used in classrooms, actually having the kids write their own. I want to make our music available and visceral, the way we get to feel it when we rehearse. Having your ear right next to a violin, and the white noise of the bow and the action is so wonderful and thrilling. I want more people to know about that. I think the world would be a more fun place if more people felt that. So that’s on my mind.
Mary: Gosh, I feel like you guys need to go back on Sesame Street. [Laughs.]
David: We’ll they’re probably going to outlaw Sesame Street.
Mary: Oh, my god, I know. What a bizarre time that we’re living.
David: Look for Kronos to show up as Teletubbies. [Laughs.]
Mary: [Laughs.] You mentioned music that makes you belly laugh — that’s so hard in music, and so hard particularly in the concert hall. A lot of the types of venues that ensembles perform in, I think oftentimes audiences go in saying, “I’m about to listen to serious music, and it’s not OK to chuckle out loud because it’s supposed to be quiet, and blah blah blah.” So I feel like to have an environment where you’re disarming the audience and saying, “It’s OK to feel joy and to make sound” — and these are things that kids don’t need reminders of, because they just respond while you’re playing music however they want to, because they haven’t learned yet to be afraid to do that. But I wonder, how do you get an audience to join you in that joy from the very beginning and to allow themselves to laugh?
David: One of my happiest moments was when our kids were — well, Adam would have been about three at the time, so Bonnie would have been about six. And we played a piece called “TV Madness.” We were playing all these TV tunes, and all of a sudden, right in the middle, Adam stands up and says, “Daddy’s playing Popeye!” [Laughs.] And that’s one of the happiest moments I can recall. He loved it, and the audience loved him loving it. And for me, I’ll never forget it. So there are ways to do things… If we really do our job to the full extent, I think an audience ought to be taken through many emotions in a concert. And so when I think about making a real program that I want to play for my family and my closest friends and myself, there would be smiles, there would be laughter, there would be sadness, there would be tears. One would go through the spectrum of emotional possibilities within the context of an hour-and-a-half or two-hour experience.
One thing that I remember thinking about was, when Haydn wrote his quartets, there was usually a scherzo, and scherzo means “joke.” And the problem now is that we don’t know what the punchlines were for Haydn’s jokes.
Mary: [Laughs.] Or maybe he just wasn’t very funny!
David: Maybe he thought he was funnier than he was. Who knows? But what would have happened if people actually laughed during those scherzos? Now, you know, when you hear a Haydn scherzo there would be no laughter. So how much have we lost by just forgetting or no longer knowing? And is it possible to bring back that sense of fun? I think it is. And at the same time, if we were to program “Silent Cranes,” let’s say, as the ending piece on a concert, what if an audience was able to really feel some joy, maybe even some laughter, somewhere before in the experience?
Mary: Yeah. Maybe you need to be commissioning some scherzos of our time. We do need a lot more humor in our world right now, at least to help us get through it.
Well, David, thank you so much for talking with me today.
David: Great to talk to you, as always.
