Cal Performances presents Fifty for the Future featuring Kronos Quartet
2016-12-03
Zellerbach Hall Auditorium
U.C. Berkeley, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA 94305 USA
8:00 PM, Saturday, December 3, 2016

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2016 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2016 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

• Garth Knox: Satellites
• Aleksandra Vrebalov: My Desert, My Rose
• Yotam Haber: break_break_break
• Mary Kouyoumdjian: Silent Cranes (Bay Area Premiere)

[8:00 PM lights down, announcements, pause, band out]

1. [8:02 PM] Aleksandra Vrebalov (b. 1970): My Desert, My Rose (2015)
2. [8:11 PM] Garth Knox (b. 1956): Satellites: III. Dimensions (2015)
3. [8:17 PM] N. Rajam (b. 1938), (arr. Reena Esmail): Dadra in Raga Bhairavi † (arr. 2015)
4. [8:29 PM] Anna Meredith (b. 1978): Tuggemo (2016) (World Premiere)
5. [8:36 PM] Philip Glass (b. 1937): String Quartet no. 7 (2014)
   [set ends 8:52 PM; all off after a minute or so; R heads outside to cool off]

[9:13 PM lights down, waiting; band out]

1. [9:17 PM] Abel Meeropol (1903–1986), (arr. Jacob Garchik): Strange Fruit (1939) (West Coast Premiere)
   [work ends 9:21 PM]

Mary Kouyoumdjian (b. 1983): Silent Cranes (2015) (Bay Area Premiere)

1. [9:23 PM] i. slave to your voice
2. [9:32 PM] ii. you did not answer
3. [9:38 PM] iii. [with blood-soaked feathers]
4. [9:49 PM] iv. you flew away
   [show ends 9:53 PM; curtain call with Mary Kouyoumdjian, no encore; all off 9:56 PM]

Kronos Quartet

• Hank Dutt: viola;
• David Harrington: violin;
• John Sherba: violin;
• Sunny Jungin Yang: cello, † cello-percussion.

• David Barsamian: poetry used in Silent Cranes, excerpts from “A Century…”
• Scott Fraser: sound design;
• Brian Mohr: sound design, Silent Cranes;
• Laurie Olinder: projection design, Silent Cranes;
• Brian H. Scott: lighting design.

It took me awhile to get around to writing anything for this show because the experience was overwhelmingly moving. And in the end, I feel that there's little I can write to share the profound feelings that the experience of the show generated in me. Sure, I could go on for a bit on the usual trivialities, sharing my thoughts about merits of the various part of the program and Kronos' performance, but that would really miss the point – it would detract from the impact of being there to hear the amazing composition of Mary Kouyoumdjian and to witness the multimedia spectacle that the Kronos team put together. Go see Silent Cranes!

Program Notes

Partial (or full?) text of Barsamian's poetry posted last year in the Armenian Weekly.

A Show review by Lou Fancher for SFCV.

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2016 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2016 event list! ☸ On to the next event!