Show moves from weird to winning
San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet may be in its 45th year, but its musical personality is forever young, as its members demonstrated at the opening of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s fifth annual 21C Music Festival on Wednesday night.
Koerner Hall was not sold out for the first of eight concerts being presented to May 27, but the eclectic crowd was enthusiastic for the Kronos’s mix of avant-classical and art-pop. With their amplified — and often digitally processed — sound and kaleidoscopic stage lighting, violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cello player Sunny Yang presented brand-new music interspersed with American classics reimagined in their signature, high-energy playing.
It was not an evenly satisfying evening, though. The opening pieces, especially recent works by Montreal composer Nicole Lizée and Russian expat Yevgeniy Sharlat — both commissioned by the Kronos — were self-consciously weird. Both pieces relied on usual effects and playing methods rather than on an engaging structure or musical development.
But this all changed when the Kronos dug into the meat of their musical mandate, which is to use their deft fingers to blur the line between art and popular music.
We heard Kronos’ alwaysprovocative takes on classics by George Gershwin (“Summertime”), John Coltrane (the deeply moving “Alabama”) and Pete Townsend (“Baba O’Riley”), joined by a magnetic take on Sigur Ros’s “Flugufrelsarinn.”
This may not have been music of the 21st century, but it was wrapped in imagination as well as virtuosic playing.
The second half of the concert was further buoyed by Los Angeles-based Jherek Bischoff, who has written and arranged for the Kronos — and who came out on stage to join them on the electric bass. All four songs we heard were premieres — three for Canada, and one for the world.
Bischoff the composer relies on layered patters for engaging textures, interwoven with melodic riffs. He has a great sense of pacing, form and the gather- ing and releasing of tension. He was also impressive on the guitar, seamlessly blending in with the quartet of strings.
The five players rewarded the audience’s standing ovation with a searing rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.”
This high-energy opening concert was a promising start to the 21C Festival, which has been given five more years of life, thanks to generous financial underwriting by Michael and Sonia Koerner — both stalwart supporters of the Royal Conservatory and its concert presentations.
The rest of this year’s festival has many more treats in store, including New York pianist Simone Dinnerstein presenting music from her latest album featuring music by Philip Glass interspersed with J.S. Bach, on Friday.
For fans of genre-crossing music that is easy on the ears, there’s works by Canadian composer and performer Dinuk Wijeratne on Saturday, followed by a concert of Estonian choral music (including pieces by Arvo Part) later in the evening.
The festival closes with French piano duo Katia and Marielle Labèque on Sunday afternoon.
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