When David Krakauer and the Kronos Quartet first met in San Francisco in 1996, they cemented their friendship while recording Osvaldo Golijov’s “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind.” The blending of the avant garde strings and the klezmer-flavored clarinet elicited rave reviews. The partnership thrives anew as Krakauer joins the Kronos Quartet for the premiere of “Babylon, Our Own” by Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. The work is a commission by the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center where the chamber quartet are artists-in-residence this season.
“I had heard some of Aleksandra’s music played by a student quartet attending a Kronos workshop at Carnegie Hall,” Krakauer said. “Shortly after that, David Harrington (Kronos violinist) called to say they’d like to work together again. I immediately suggested collaborating with Aleksandra.
| Onstage |
| David Krakauer and the Kronos Quartet |
| Where: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park |
| When: 8 p.m. Friday |
| Info: $9 student, $36-$45 regular at 301-405-ARTS or claricesmithcenter.umd.edu |
“She has created an incredibly brilliant, complex work that is on many abstract planes and levels. She soaked it in reflections of the visceral quality of world music. It’s a powerful work that moves through different emotions.”
Composer Vrebalov describes her 35 minute work of a single movement as a journey that moves dramatically without stopping.
“I treat all five instruments equally with none dominant, like a quintet,” she said. “In many cultures, the instruments are substituted for one another, so I chose to merge and blend them rather than have them co-exist. When their playing is combined with a pre-recorded electronic segment, the effect is of a whole other world.”
Krakauer’s showy clarinet is ideal for a work of this nature. While a teenager, he studied both classical music and jazz. Unable to decide which to pursue, he finally concluded that he could not surpass his heroes, Armstrong, Coltrane, Ellington and their peers.
He settled on performing classical music with major symphony orchestras, collaborating with various composers and touring with distinguished chamber groups like the Emerson String Quartet, Aspen Wind Quintet and Music from Marlboro. Despite being a successful soloist, it was not until he joined the Grammy award-winning Klezmatics that he discovered a new dimension within himself.
“I knew I needed to be a leader of my own group featuring my own concepts, so I founded Klezmer Madness,” he said. “It was immediately gratifying to be invited to play all over the world. Klezmer music touches hearts because it comes from the Eastern European Jewish community that was eradicated by the Nazis. It’s the Holocaust survival story.”
