The residency begins on January 21 with two quartet master classes with Junior Guildhall musicians. It continues on January 22 with Kronos Lab, a three day workshop in which four emerging quartets are given the chance to explore contemporary repertoire with the members of Kronos. There will also be discussions around the rehearsal process, the art of collaboration, and building audiences. On January 25, a Kronos Talk event, open to the public, gives audiences a chance to discuss our approach to collaborating and commissioning, working with composers, and the process of rehearsing a new work.

Each of the three concerts between January 24 and 27 takes place in a different venue. The first concert, Made in America, on January 24 at Hackney Empire, features works by American composers, including Bryce Dessner’s Aheym, the European premiere of Tyondai Braxton’s Uffe’s Woodshop, and London premieres by Terry Riley and Michael Gordon. The second concert takes place on January 26 at the Barbican and is entitled Awakening: A Musical Meditation on the Anniversary of 9/11. It is the UK premiere of a special program created in 2006 to respond to the fifth anniversary of the events of 9/11. The third concert, Early Music, takes place on January 27 at Wilton’s Music Hall, and features the world premiere of String Quartet No. 3 by Valentin Silvestrov. (The Early Music event is sold out but tickets are still available for Made in America and Awakening.)

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Barbican’s website.

Watch David talk about the history of the project and the selection process:

Born in Moscow in 1946, Martynov was the son of a well-known musicologist and writer. He studied music from a young age and attended the Conservatory before expanding his musical pursuits beyond the traditional classical canon and into folk songs, early music, avant-garde, rock, and electronic music. In 1979, he entered the Spiritual Academy at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, where he worked on preserving and restoring traditional Russian Orthodox chant. He returned to composition in the 1990s with a new style that combined the traditions of American minimalism with the repetitive chant of Russian Orthodoxy.

As Greg Dubinsky writes in the liner notes, Martynov explores the “perspective of the Orthodox Church’s hermetic, ascetic tradition of insight and ecstasy achieved through ceaseless prayer…In this uninterrupted circular motion, time lacks beginning or end. Through the insistent repetition of a single formula, the mind blocks out the external world…His goal is to create a music that maintains this pose of enraptured contemplation for as long as possible.” Kronos Quartet has commissioned five works from Martynov, three of which are on this new album.

Kronos requested the arrangement of The Beatitudes (originally written as a choral piece) to close its live-performance program Awakening, which reflects on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Harrington calls the piece “one of the great works of faith in our repertoire.”

Schubert–Quintet (Unfinished) draws from Schubert’s String Quartet in C Major, using its instrumentation of double cellos, which fulfilled Kronos’ request for a piece reuniting them with Joan Jeanrenaud. The Quartet’s cellist for 20 years beginning in 1978, Jeanrenaud had not played with the group since 1998 before this recording. She will join them for a performance of Schubert–Quintet (Unfinished) on February 28 at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall.

In Der Abschied (The Farewell), which Martyov wrote as a memorial to his father, the composer uses musical repetition to conjure his late father’s labored last breaths. This piece’s musical “mantra” is from Mahler’s Das Lied Von Der Erde (Songs of the Earth), leading Harrington to call it “the string quartet Mahler never wrote.”

Music of Vladimir Martynov is available for pre-order now on Kronos’ website, including copies signed by Kronos and Joan Jeanreneaud.

Written by Quin, a sound designer, naturalist, public radio commentator, educator, and music composer who has been hailed as the “Audubon of Audio” by the Washington Post, Polar Suite integrates the sounds of traditional instruments processed with captured sounds all controlled by movements of Keith McMillen Instruments’ K-Bow. K-Bow is a Kevlar and graphite bow that integrates sensors and CPUs with the feel of a traditional violin bow. Polar Suite brings together violin, viola, cello, digitally processed samples and interactive electronics controlled by the K-Bow.

In developing this new work, Kronos Quartet founder David Harrington commented, “this is an opportunity to essentially relearn our instruments and to transform how we approach live performance. Polar Suite is a very different kind of string quartet and an extraordinary sonic adventure—thanks in large part to the K-bow and what is now possible.”

Keith McMillen has been a pioneer in electronic and computer music for over 30 years. His instruments and inventions have been used by artists like Laurie Anderson, Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin. He invented the first programmable audio mixer and the Zeta violin, the gold standard for electric stringed instruments.

“Working with Kronos is the culmination of five years refining K-Bow. Douglas Quin’s demanding need for rapidly changing timbres and the incredible insights Kronos has into sound and beauty helps push technology to a level where it becomes secondary to the music it creates. New instruments should enable truly original music. When an instrument excels and merges with a great performer, an experience exceeding both can be achieved,” says McMillen, who has hand-made over 100 sensor bows to finally satisfy these demands.

Composer Douglas Quin said, “K-bow is an extraordinary and visionary invention in every sense. Keith’s passion for strings shines through in the detail and elegance of the bow’s design: packing in as much technology and punch as possible without losing sight of the feel of a traditional bow. As a composer the possibilities are endless and I finally have an opportunity to create what I have been conceiving in my mind’s ear.”

Douglas Quin’s Polar Suite premieres at Setnor Auditorium at Syracuse University, College of Visual and Performing Arts on November 9, 2011 at 8pm, as part of Kronos’ weeklong residency. Learn more about the performance here. Learn more about K-Bow here.

WTC 9/11 reflects on the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, when Reich and his family lived only four blocks away from the site of the tragedy. “On 9/11 we were in Vermont, but our son, granddaughter, and daughter-in-law were all in our apartment. Our phone connection stayed open for six hours and our next-door neighbors were finally able to drive north out of the city with their family and ours. For us, 9/11 was not a media event,” says Reich.

The piece is scored for three string quartets, all recorded by Kronos. WTC 9/11 also uses pre-recorded voices, with the speakers’ final vowels and consonants elongated in a stop-motion sound technique that Reich says is the “means of connecting one person to another—harmonically.” The voices and their texts belong to NORAD air traffic controllers, as they raised the alert that the airplanes were off course; FDNY workers on the scene; friends and former neighbors of the Reichs, recalling that day; and women who kept vigil, or Shmira, over the dead in a tent outside the Medical Examiner’s office, reading Psalms or Biblical passages.

The relationship between Steve Reich and Kronos Quartet spans more than 20 years. This is the third quartet the composer has written for Kronos. Upcoming performances of WTC 9/11 include Cal Performances in Berkeley, CA (Oct 9), Melbourne Festival (Oct 19), The Glaser Center in Santa Rosa, CA (Dec 2), Cité de la musique in Paris (Jan 18), and more. See the full list here.

WTC 9/11 was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Barbican/London, Carnegie Hall, Duke Performances/Duke University, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. This commission was also made possible by the Chamber Music America Commissioning Program, with funding generously provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund. Kronos’ recording of Tusen Tankar was made possible by the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

Buy the album digitally - including bonus track Tusen Tankar - here. CDs are available from Nonesuch and Amazon. Learn more about the piece here.

Watch the full ceremony after the jump.

The ceremony (in English) begins at 7:50 in the clip.

The quartet started the summer with a trip to New York to receive the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement and excellence in music. In a ceremony held at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, several people made remarks, including Nonesuch Records President Robert Hurwitz, who spoke of the label’s long relationship with Kronos as well as the quartet's boundless "idealism and optimism" and "life-long mission discovering and working with composers." After New York, the quartet headed north to Toronto's Luminato Festival, where Kronos was the artist-in-residence this year. In addition to concerts with Homayun Sakhi, Wu Man, and Alim & Fargana Qasimov, Kronos participated in residency activities at local schools, libraries, as well as a free outdoor concert with the Annex Quartet, Sakhi Trio, and the Qasimov Ensemble.

The quartet is now in Europe, with concerts in France, Malta, Poland, Germany, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. The tour began with a stop in Saint-Riquier, France, followed by a performance in Valetta at the Malta Arts Festival. Next is Krakow for the Festival of Polish Music, where the program includes premieres by Mark Nowakowski, Ken Walicki, and Alter Yechiel Karniol (arr. Judith Berkson) (July 22), followed by a trip to Germany for a concert in Ingostadt (July 24). The tour continues in Cork - the Irish premiere of Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 takes place as part of The Reich Effect festival (July 28), and finally Kronos heads to Derry, Northern Ireland for the Walled City Music Festival (July 30.)

In August, the quartet makes a special trip to Stockholm to receive the Polar Music Prize! The ceremony - which will be broadcast live in Sweden - takes place on August 30, with King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden handing out the awards. This year's other laureate is singer/songwriter/poet Patti Smith, and previous laureates include Björk, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Sir Paul McCartney, and Ravi Shankar, as well as Kronos collaborators Steve Reich, György Ligeti, and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Kronos will return to the US in September for a premiere involving two longtime collaborators. Clarinetist David Krakauer - whose previous work with the group includes Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind - joins Kronos for the world premiere of Aleksandra Vrebalov's Babylon, Our Own at the Clarice Smith Center in College Park, Maryland (Sept 16.)

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the fall schedule also includes several performances of Awakening: A Musical Meditation on the Anniversary of 9/11, featuring music from 11 countries, including works by Terry Riley, Michael Gordon, and John Oswald. The evening-length work receives its New York premiere as the opening of the BAM NEXT WAVE Festival (Sept 21-24). Kronos has a long history with BAM, dating all the way back to 1986. Awakening will also be performed at the University of Utah's Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake City (Sept 13) and at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Connecticut in Storrs (Sept 27.

Learn more and see our full list of upcoming tour dates on our website.

Kronos will be honored as the 2011 Avery Fisher Prize recipient on June 8 at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. On a marble plaque in Avery Fisher Hall, Kronos Quartet’s name will join the twenty previous Prize recipients, among them Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Richard Goode, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Midori, André Watts, and other iconic figures.

The Polar Music Prize laureates were announced today in Stockholm, and the ceremony takes place on August 30, with King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden handing out the awards. Receiving this year’s prize along with Kronos is singer/ songwriter/poet Patti Smith. The Polar Music Prize was founded in 1989 by the late Stig Anderson, publisher, lyricist and manager of the legendary pop group ABBA. Previous Laureates include Björk, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Sir Paul McCartney, and Ravi Shankar, as well as Kronos collaborators Steve Reich, György Ligeti and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Kronos Quartet is part of the Kronos Performing Arts Association, a not-for-profit organization based in San Francisco. Since KPAA’s founding in 1973, the organization has commissioned more than 700 new works and arrangements for string quartet. The proceeds from the two prizes will be used to further the mission of KPAA, including commissioning and mentoring programs.

Learn more about the Avery Fisher Prize and the Polar Music Prize on their websites.