Below is a transcription of the above interview that originally aired over the KALX airwaves on April 25, 2025.
Velvet Einstein: Welcome. You’re listening to KALX Berkeley, my name is Velvet Einstein, joined here by David Harrington and Paul Wiancko from the Kronos Quartet. And they are gonna be back in town performing at SF Jazz as part of the Kronos Festival, April 25th to April 27th. Yeah, I guess we can get started talking about that. And actually, before we get into that, I did wanna ask about the location of the group now. Do you guys still consider yourself to be a San Francisco based quartet?
Paul Wiancko: Yes. Yeah, most definitely. Um, we are, at the moment, Ayane and I are living in Cincinnati, where she is the viola professor, um, at the Conservatory. But this is gonna be her last year teaching there. And we are both currently house hunting in the Bay Area.
Velvet Einstein: Ooh. Good luck with that.
Paul Wiancko: Fun and terrifying. [Both laugh.] Yeah. Thank you. Um, but very excited to live here and for a majority of Kronos to be back in town again. And, um, yeah, I’ve been wanting to live in San Francisco since I was 13 years old. And my older sister, uh, was a student at San Francisco State, and I visited her here and went record shopping, had my first Ethiopian meal, listened to some jazz– It’s just, I love it here so much. Anyway, long answer to a short question.
Velvet Einstein: Oh. And yeah, I’m of course biased myself, but yeah, you’ll love it here.
Paul Wiancko: I can’t wait.
Velvet Einstein: Wonderful. Yeah. So the festival’s coming up and do you guys want to start with a little bit of introduction around the themes of “good medicine” and what audiences can expect this year?
David Harrington: Well, Good Medicine is the title of one of Terry Riley’s quartets. There are five quartets in Salome Dances For Peace, which is Terry’s mega quartet, about two and a half hours in length, that he wrote for us in the ’80s. And the final movement is called Good Medicine. And when we had our first Kronos Festival 10 years ago, the whole festival ended with Salome Dances for Peace and Good Medicine, and now it’s Terry’s 90th year. We were celebrating his 80th year at our first festival 10 years ago, now we get to celebrate his 90th year and we thought, let’s start with Good Medicine, and if there’s ever been a time when everyone needs some good medicine, I would say it’s now.
Velvet Einstein: For sure. Yes. And then, going on, I guess that first day you’ve also got a piece from Peni Candra Rini. I was curious, uh, how you selected this particular piece from her. Paul, if you wanna talk a little bit about the curatorial process of how the pieces were selected and then the one piece from Peni, like, how was that one selected?
Paul Wiancko: Well, the festival is Kronos’ chance to kind of do everything, share everything we’ve been up to, all of the repertoire that has been in development recently, our collaborations from this past season, um, things from recordings that have just happened– and it’s a chance to sort of experiment on home territory, and really explore, knowing that, you know, people who come to the festival, uh, generally tend to really enjoy participating in that side of what Kronos does and to witness the sort of like incubator side of how our music comes into being, and this piece by Peni Candra Rini– it’s one of her recent works for Kronos. It’s a larger– it’s like a 30 minute work, called Segara Gunung, that sort of explores the natural environment in Indonesia and Java, where she’s from. And so she has collected a lot of sounds, natural sounds from Java, um, forestscapes, naturescapes, animal scapes, including, you know, the sounds of destruction as well, and some sounds of modern society interacting with nature. And so each movement is based on a different part of the climate there and how things are changing. There’s drought, there’s fire, there’s rain, and we’ll be playing Hujan from that suite. It’s about rain, and it– it just really captures Peni’s essence and it’s a total banger too. [Velvet Einstein laughs.] It’s based on this sort of super groovy gamelan. I say groovy, but it’s so much more than that. It’s beautiful and it’s rich and it’s just– danceable, and it really kind of captures Peni’s wonderful spirit as well. But I would say that’s– when you ask how the festival is programmed and curated, there’s so many different aspects to how we decide what to play and who needs to have their voice, their music, their opinions heard by our society this year, now, what music we have that we just, you know, are aching to share, and what we think will be just a well-rounded, you know, beautiful concert experience for people.
Velvet Einstein: Wonderful. Thanks for the explanation. And then in terms of the other pieces over the weekend, what are some of your personal favorites, Paul?
Paul Wiancko: Oh gosh. I mean, Good Medicine is– it’s a really special piece. And what David just mentioned about it actually being good medicine, it really feels like that to play, too, there’s something therapeutic and cathartic about the act of playing this piece. It’s just 13 minutes of pure exuberance, and there is a– there’s a sort of healing, I can only describe it as like a healing feeling when you play this music. And so– just really excited to play that. It’s basically all acoustic, just interlocking rhythms. It’s like notes and rhythms in the most joyous combinations a person could manifest. But that I’m really looking forward to– uh, this new piece by Soo Yeon Lyuh, um, called Sumbisori, about the– sort of inspired by the female divers on Jeju Island in Korea, this kind of old tradition of diving as a way of life that’s sort of in danger. But that will be a world premier. Also very excited to share with our San Francisco audience our new version of Next Week’s Trees, which is a piece by Viet Cuong– totally beautiful and uplifting and amazing. He just came up with a new version of it for us, sort of in the similar conceptual vein as, um, Different Trains where we will– we have pre-recorded one quartet of ourselves and we will accompany that pre-recorded quartet live with another quartet. And that’s, uh, Gabriela and Ayane, that’s their first sort of pre-recorded, uh, Kronos track too, which is– feels like a kind of historic moment because we all grew up listening to the Kronos version of Different Trains and playing Different Trains to the, you know, original backing tracks for that. So to have created a new backing track that I think future generations will be really excited about, um, I think it really resonates with the piece itself and with what Viet Cuong stands for. And yeah, that’s gonna be a really fun West Coast premier.
Velvet Einstein: And you mentioned that as a new version, is it– did Viet Cuong then– what are the changes from the original, other than having a new backing track (obviously)?
Paul Wiancko: The original was for chamber orchestra.
Velvet Einstein: Oh, okay.
Paul Wiancko: Yeah. And it’s just such a great piece that someone asked him to do a version for percussion quartet. I discovered it as a percussion cello and effects piece, uh, with sort of like delay effects and things. It’s just there’s something universal about it and something so beautiful about it that we just– we had to make a Kronos version. Um, yeah.
Velvet Einstein: Wonderful. And then Paul, for you personally, I was curious, like, how are you balancing your time between Kronos and your work with Owls, your other quartet, and in particular, I’m also curious about the arrangements there with Owls being very unique and having the two cellos?
Paul Wiancko: Yeah. The thing is, Owls is just– it’s kind of just four friends hanging out. We like to play together. We’re not really going for it in a career space or, you know, trying to– you know, everybody has their sort of main– the main work that they sink their lives into that they, you know, are really passionate about. And we just get together a couple times a year just to sort of hang out and cook and play music. The funny thing is, that group existed before I joined Kronos, and a lot of the music we play was my sort of– well, let me back up just a little bit to, uh, 2019 when I was subbing for Sunny, the previous cellist in Kronos. Um, my first experience playing with the Kronos Quartet was as a cello substitute, uh, for about six months, and I couldn’t believe it. I– it was just like a total dream come true, to get to have that time with the quartet. And that– the last tour was cut short by Covid. And, you know, I also– I just thought, well, that’s, you know– I’m gonna enjoy this tour for the rest of my life, and having to gotten to play with Kronos. So when I went back to Gabe and Ayane and Alexi in Owls, I said, “Hey, you guys, there’s some really great Kronos pieces that I’m never gonna get to play again. Would you mind if we read through a couple of them? Because they’re so, so great [laughs] and one of them is Good Medicine.” Um, that, uh, and that’s kind of why Owls– there’s a little bit of cross– there’s a little bit of a shared repertoire because it was at that particular moment where I was just completely in love and still in love with these, you know, this Kronos repertoire that I didn’t think I would have any other opportunity to play. But yeah, I would say Kronos is– that’s the commitment, that’s the main commitment in my life, um, as a performer. The composing is still a big commitment, um, in terms of my creative output. But as a performer, it’s Kronos. Owls is kind of just for fun. I know they wouldn’t mind me saying that. And then Spoleto is– I get to curate those– that festival as the Director of Chamber Music there, which is also very much influenced by my role in Kronos.
Velvet Einstein: And then bringing it back, then, to this notion of “good medicine,” I was recently talking with others at the radio station about the current political turmoil. And one suggestion was just that the best– the way to fight back of it is just to continue to not let it get you down, right, to continue to be joyful and to experience, like, that “good medicine.” So I’m very excited to see that on the program. And, David, a question for you then. I was just re-reading the New York Times article, I think it was from 2016, where you commented that you wanted to be in the string quartet that had the largest FBI file, and curious, like, how successful you’ve been on that– if you’ve been able to measure it or not.
David Harrington: You know, I haven’t checked my FBI file lately, but I do wanna say that, uh, this festival is, uh, dealing with all sorts of issues. So for example, Aleksander Vrebalov’s new piece called Cardinal Directions – we’re being joined by Vân-Ánh Võ who lives in the East Bay and she’s a Vietnamese American, and what we’re marking is 50 years since the end of the war in Vietnam, or as it’s known in Vietnam, the American War in Vietnam. And, um, we were just working through this piece this morning with Aleksander and what’s clear to me, and I can’t wait to perform this for our audience, is kind of what you said about, uh, things– we’re being pulled down, and it’s very tempting to allow yourself to just get pulled and– and get more and more down. Well, I think that Aleksander Vrebalov’s Cardinal Directions is doing exactly the opposite of that. And I would say that really about all of the music that we’re going to be playing. And so, Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tjøgersen’s Elja– I can’t wait for the audience to hear this. Uh, so Benedicte is, um, a fabulous hardanger fiddle player, and when we were talking about a new piece, um, it suddenly occurred to me, well, you know what? I wanna play the hardanger fiddle. How would it be if we turned Kronos into a hardanger quartet? Well, that’s what’s happened. And so the audience will hear, uh, Kronos in a way that we’ve never sounded in public before. And, you know, I think finding new ways of doing one’s work is an important thing right now. And, uh, we’re gonna be playing with Laura Ortman, who is, uh, a musician that I’ve known for over 30 years. And when she was a student at the University of Kansas, she came up to me. Um, we were playing a piece that– where I had– I was performing on an Apache violin. And what Laura said to me 30 years ago was, “Well, my family is– my tribe is the White Mountain Apache Tribe, I’m a violinist. Can I play your Apache violin?” [Chuckles.] I thought, well, of course. And so I basically handed her the Apache violin, and then she’s taken it to a whole other dimension. And also in the last 30 years, Laura has become a composer and she has written this new piece for us called Scended Sparks. And she will be joining Kronos. And you know, I’m really looking forward to this festival and it was Wu Man, the great pipa player whom we’ve worked with since 1992, who introduced me to Tsering Wangmo Satho. And Tsering is, um, from Tibet. She’s an opera singer and does all kinds of folk songs as well. And we’re going to be premiering a set of songs called Wisdom Eyes, uh, and Tsering will be joining us, along with the San Francisco Girls Chorus. And we have these arrangements that we’ve just been working on, um, that Greg Saunier has made for us. And I feel a real smile inside because of this music. It’s going to be amazing. And the San Francisco Girls Chorus for the first time in its history, um, has learned some Tibetan, so the songs will be sung in Tibetan. So there’s a lot of things like that. And so our response to repression, oppression, violence, um, the kinds of things that we’re reading about and hearing about, I think are countered in our festival, Good Medicine.
Velvet Einstein: Great. It sounds wonderful. Well, thank you so much for the uplifting, um, spirit of the festival and in– and everything that you do. Again, the festival is gonna be April 25th through the 27th over at SF Jazz. Um, is there anything that the two of you would like to add for the listeners?
David Harrington: Yes! [Everyone laughs.] Yeah. I hope everybody checks out the Saturday night show where, uh, Ariel Aberg-Riger is joining us. And some of you may know her book called America Redux and Ariel, um, added a chapter to her book that had already been published. I called her and, and said, “Ariel, you know, there’s something missing in America Redux?” And she said, “Well, I’m sure there’s a lot of things missing.” And I said, “Well, how would it be if you wrote a chapter about Rachel Carson?” And some of you know that Rachel Carson basically started our environmental movement. And so Ariel made a new chapter, and she will be performing live with us on the 26th of April. And we’re playing music, uh, underscoring her story – music of Hamza El Din, and, uh, we’ve only done it one other time, and that was at Carnegie Hall. So the second performance is at SF Jazz.
