Romanian Artists Bring Out the Gypsy in Kronos
Quartet teams with Taraf for Stanford show
Jeff Kaliss, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, March 9, 2001
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/03/09/PN119249.DTL

David Harrington, violinist and founder of San Francisco's Kronos Quartet,

was enchanted when his classically trained ensemble first got to record with Taraf de Haidouks, a cross-generational band of Romanian Gypsies, in Germany in 1999.

Chatting in Kronos' rehearsal space near Golden Gate Park, Harrington describes a solo performed by the Romanian group's "wild man violin player," Anghel "Caliu" Gheorghe, preserved for posterity on the Quartet's Nonesuch Records album "Caravan."

"His chin rest fell off -- it went flying -- and he just kept playing. He didn't care," recalls Harrington, with boyish delight that belies his 51 years.

"It really taught me something about music, about playing. Because I think that guy would keep playing if he didn't have any hairs left on his bow, he would find a way to make a sound. That willpower, to make the music alive at that moment, is just so strong in him, and in that entire group."

The power, propelled through Gypsy and other exotic-sounding melodies and rhythms, is also manifest in an eponymous 1999 recording by Taraf de Haidouks, whose name is translated as "Band of Generous Outlaws."

Taraf is currently caravaning with Kronos on their first joint American tour, which stops at Stanford tomorrow.

The melding of these two magical groups has been engendered by audiences' transcendence of the geographical and cultural boundaries, which Gypsies have been crossing for 1,000 years.

In the 1990s, Kronos placed near the top of classical and world music charts with albums featuring compositions and musicians from Argentina, Africa,

Australia, Japan, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

During the same period, Belgians Michel Winter and Stephane Karo "discovered" Taraf on a field trip to the small Romanian village of Clejani, and then connected them with their first performances outside their region and a Belgian recording contract.

In 1992, the Taraf enlivened an important scene in French director Tony Gatlif's "Latcho Drom," a musically redolent documentary that followed the migration, and the existing settlements, of Gypsies from their historic origins in India across northern Africa and Europe. Both the film and the Taraf's recordings drew critical acclaim.

An English friend of Harrington gave him a tape of Taraf performing an original composition, "The Ballad of the Dictator," heard also on their Nonesuch release. The song, mournful and accompanied by furtive fiddle and accordion and the thrumming of the cymbalum (hammered dulcimer) and double bass, laments the mistreatment of Romania by its longtime leader, Nicolae Ceausescu.

"I thought it was exquisite, incredible, mind-altering, life-altering, fantastic," Harrington enthuses. "And I thought it was very daring of a group to be talking about that sort of thing. . . . And I just thought, we've got to figure out a way to meet these people and hopefully make some music together."

It took seven years and a fortuitous circumstance. In 1998, celebrating their 25th anniversary, Kronos planned to play their own version of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" at London's Royal Festival Hall, but the late composer's estate barred the performance.

Harrington decided at the last minute to try to connect with Taraf, who happened to be in London at the same time. Michel Winter, who'd become the Romanians' manager, agreed to the idea, and Harrington brought in Osvaldo Golijov, a composer born in Argentina of Russian-Jewish decent, to act as arranger and as one of the two translators from English to French to Romanian.

"It was very confusing," Harrington admits, "but after a couple of days, we had some music together, including 'The Ballad of the Dictator.' And it was a really exciting experience to be on stage with them. . . . Their music is composed, but it's learned by ear. And every note and every ornament is very specific. They showed us how to do the ornaments, very slowly, though they're supposed to go by very fast. It wasn't a whole lot different, in my mind, than when we'd worked closely with (classical and New Music composers) Morton Feldman, Terry Riley and Henryk Gorecki. Collectively, the Taraf were like a composer."

Through Winter, Taraf accordionist Ionel Manole expresses his own reaction to the meeting.

"To work with musicians from a completely other musical world is great when it works, and with Kronos it really worked," he says.

It worked so well, in fact, that English director Sally Potter recruited the groups and Golijov for the soundtrack to "The Man Who Cried," which stars Johnny Depp as a Gypsy and Christina Ricci as a Jew escaping Nazi Germany. The film, which will also feature Taraf on screen, will be released in June.

Manole's colleague, "wild" violinist Gheorghe, had his own take on Harrington's instrumental technique.

"It's different, of course," says Gheorghe. "He learned at school, probably,

and I learned with my father and mostly on my own. But it's also similar, in the energy he's putting out sometimes when he's playing, like his own life is depending on his violin."

Although Kronos had already bent the pitch-perfect conventions of Western classical music, their Gypsy adventure stretched them further.

"For Taraf de Haidouks, the spectrum of pitch is wider than you would find on a piano," notes Harrington. "For one thing, the cymbalum is the main instrument in the group, and it very quickly goes out of tune. But the more out of tune it goes, the better it gets. There are plenty of spaces between the notes for people to explore."

Kronos' eclectic Stanford program will include several selections from "Caravan," including the Gypsyish "Pannonia Boundless" by Aleksandra Vrebalov and "Gloomy Sunday" by Rezso Seress, a dramatic invocation of Indian film music by Rahul Dev Burman, and a tango-tinged "Reponso" by Anibal Carmelo Troilo of Argentina. There will also be pieces by Golijov, the arranger for most of "Caravan," and by New Music wizard and longtime Kronos collaborator Steve Reich.

Aside from their separate sets at Stanford, shouldn't the two ensembles share the stage?

"We hope that people are going to respond in such a way that we might end up playing together," offers Harrington, somewhat cryptically.

"Together with Kronos, we will probably play 'Turceasca' and maybe some others, if we have time for rehearsal," adds Taraf's Manole.

The time demands of touring and recording, very familiar to Kronos, have inevitably loosened Taraf's ties to Romanian village life.

"It's difficult for people to be sure that we will be available for a wedding six months later," Manole points out. "And since people have not much money, it's easier to engage two or three musicians with a synthesizer, playing modern stuff. People in Romania are thirsty for Western music because it symbolizes (post-dictatorship) freedom, so the country is losing some of its rich culture. But in the meantime, Western audiences are keeping our tradition alive, by the interest you show in our music."

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©2001 San Francisco Chronicle