Kronos Quartet
Plays Sigur Rós (MP3s)

307452

Track Listing

Click tracks with speaker icon to listen

1	Flugufrelsarinn (Sigur Rós, arr. S. Prutsman)	8:22
2	The Star-Spangled Banner (Trad., arr. S. Prutsman after Jimi Hendrix)	3:41

News & Reviews

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Lincoln Center Out of Doors to Feature Kronos at 40, Kronos Quartet "Festival Within a Festival," Starting July 24

The schedule for this summer’s Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival has been announced. Featured among its 100 free performances in the plazas of NYC's Lincoln Center is Kronos at 40, curated in collaboration with Kronos Quartet to mark its 40th anniversary. This five-day "festival within a festival" launches the larger festival on July 24 and includes 28 concerts and events with daily appearances by Kronos plus performances by other artists. Kronos Quartet performs at Carnegie Hall this Friday, May 3, and will receive an honorary degree from Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts later this month.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Cal Performances 2013–14 Season to Include Kronos Quartet, Joshua Redman, Richard Goode; Jeremy Denk to Curate Ojai North!

Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, has announced its 2013–14 concert season, which will feature performances from a number of Nonesuch artists: Kronos Quartet, which celebrates its 40th anniversary with two concerts at Zellerbach Hall; Joshua Redman, whose Quartet performs songs from his new album, Walking Shadows; and Richard Goode, performing music by Janáček, Schubert, and Debussy. Additionally, Cal Performances and the Ojai Music Festival present Ojai North!, of which pianist Jeremy Denk is this season's music director.

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About this Album

The two pieces included on Kronos Quartet Plays Sigur Rós have both been staples of Kronos’ live concerts for several years: an arrangement of Icelandic experimental rock group Sigur Rós’s “Flugufrelsarinn” (“The Fly Freer”) and an arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“I first heard Sigur Rós in 2000 and it was thrilling,” said David Harrington, Kronos founder and artistic director. “I could not stop listening to them. Kronos had to play their music. Sigur Rós create entire universes with their sound: imaginary places populated by desires and colors and feelings that belong solely to the fleetingly understood realm of music.”

Kronos commissioned an arrangement of Sigur Rós' composition “Flugufrelsarinn” (Icelandic for “The Fly Freer”), from the Ágætis Byrjun album in 2002. In its original, sung version, “Flugufrelsarinn” relates a parable of salvation and sacrifice, in which an unnamed narrator tries to rescue helpless flies in a lake from the jaws of the approaching salmon. In Stephen Prutsman’s arrangement for Kronos, the work takes on a new delicacy while losing none of its essential mystery.

The Quartet has been playing its Prutsman/Kronos version of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s famous Woodstock interpretation—in concert since 2003. The Los Angeles Times called a recent performance of the piece, “a fiery political protest that recalled [Kronos’] roots exploring classic rock.” Although it has always been an audience favorite, the group had never released a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before this digital-only release.