The Kronos Quartet has a long history of liberally tapping composers from regions beyond Europe and America. With the ambitious multimedia, three-hour concert in three sections called “Three Bones,” Kronos comes home for the 250th birthday year of the United States.
But this programmatic homecoming has an intentionally diverse cast: Co-commissioned by UCSB’s Arts and Lectures program, it celebrates and explores narratives of Native, Black and Chinese American lives. As heard in its West Coast premiere at UCSB’s Campbell Hall on May 2, a week after the world premiere at Carnegie Hall, “Three Bones” is a moving and educational experience of hidden histories. It’s another coup in ever-curious Kronos founder David Harrington’s epic adventure in music.
The new core quartet, with Harrington and cellist Paul Wiancko now joined by violinist Gabriela Diaz and violist Ayane Kozasa, had help from special guests — White Mountain Apache Laura Ortman on Apache violin, amplified violin and voice in the first segment, Gullah percussionist Quentin E. Baxter in the second, and seasoned Kronos collaborator and pipa master Wu Man in the third. Indigenous video artist Jeffrey Gibson and young graphic designer Zach Reich provided the visuals, Kronos veteran Scott Fraser was on sound design.
The concert’s sections are dubbed “Ground,” detailing Indigenous American culture and alienation, “At the Sea Islands,” celebrating the vivid West African heritage of the Gullah Islands off of America’s Southeast coast, and “Beyond the Golden Gate,” addressing the rich and complex history of San Francisco’s Chinatown and Chinese immigration, with tensions that resonate all too vividly in the present state of things in America. Each of these cultural zones are represented with arrangements of folk music, new compositions, and archival field recordings, weaving sometimes revelatory history lessons into a socially aware tapestry.
Among the highlights along the journey: the opening — and 1890 wax cylinder recording of Noel Joseph singing “Song of Salutation;” Jacob Garchik’s arrangements of music by blues pioneer Charley Patton and early rock guitar hero Link Wray; Ortman’s Waves Carve the Sound; Trevor Weston’s vibrant Juba and arrangement redux of “Kumbaya” (a song of Gullah origin); and Charlton Singleton’s smartly-fashioned lament, Mende Funeral Suite; and Dai Wei’s engaging Through the Paper Gate and excerpts from Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera, showcasing the taut, empathetic relationship of Kronos and Wu Man.
Although the sum fabric and larger program of “Three Bones” is a fresh concept in its totality, some component parts have been part of other facets of Kronos’s vast and expanding library. Parts of “Beyond the Golden Gate” were heard at Zellerbach Hall last year, and some pieces — Raven Chacon’s The Journey of the Horizontal People and Wu Man’s evocative Two Chinese Paintings — were composed as part of the quartet’s “Fifty for the Future” commissioning project, created for the group’s 50th season.
Stacy Garrop’s soulful arrangement of “Sometime I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” featuring the recorded voice of gospel goddess Mahalia Jackson, figured on the program. It’s a song from quartet’s new album Glorius Mahalia, which ties in with a recent renewed interest in weaving aspects of cultural history directly into the group’s musical agenda.
On some level, Kronos’s “Three Bones” continues the train of thought and inclusive historical perspective of Howard Zinn’s classic history A People’s History of the United States, with copious musical evidence in the mix. The concert is a birthday greeting to all Americans.
