As part of Kronos: Five Decades, the year-long celebration of Kronos Quartet’s 50th anniversary, the group is publishing five decade-spanning playlists curated by its founder and violinist David Harrington. The first, featuring music Kronos performed in its first decade, 1973–1982, is out now. It includes works the quartet would later record on Nonesuch by George Crumb, Ken Benshoof, Terry Riley, Anton Webern, Peter Sculthorpe, Dmitri Shostakovich, Jimi Hendrix, Aulis Sallinen, Alban Berg, Witold Lutosławski, and Samuel Barber. You can hear it here.

Kronos Quartet’s acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass gets its first-ever vinyl release on November 3, available to pre-order now, to coincide with Kronos Quartet: Five Decades, a year-long celebration of the quartet’s 50th anniversary. The two-LP set, produced by the composer, Judith Sherman, and Kurt Munkacsi, features violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud performing quartets No. 2 (Company) (1983), No. 3 (Mishima) (1985), No. 4 (Buczak) (1990), and No. 5 (1991), the first piece Glass wrote for Kronos. “It contains some of Glass's best music since Koyaanisqatsi,” said the New York Times. “His ear for sumptuous string sonorities is undeniable.” The Washington Post called it “an ideal combination of composer and performers.”

The Royal Conservatory of Music’s Koerner Hall in Toronto has announced its 2023–24 concert season—the venue’s fifteenth anniversary season—including performances from Rhiannon Giddens, Brad Mehldau, Laurie Anderson, Kronos Quartet, and Richard Goode.

The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (CAP UCLA) has announced its 2023–24 season, including Gabriel Kahane & Attacca Quartet performing from his album Magnificent Bird in the new UCLA Nimoy Theater on October 22 and Kronos Quartet celebrating its fiftieth anniversary season in Royce Hall on April 28, as well as several other artists who can be hear on Nonesuch recordings.

Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, has announced its 2023–24 concert season, including performances by Brad Mehldau (both solo and with his Trio), Cécile McLorin Salvant, Kronos Quartet, Rhiannon Giddens with Silkroad Ensemble, and Attacca Quartet.

Kronos Quartet has announced its eighth-annual Kronos Festival, to take place at SFJAZZ Center, June 22–24, 2023. This year's festival celebrates works created for Kronos Fifty for the Future, a commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project. Featuring pieces by Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Zakir Hussain, Angélique Kidjo, Terry Riley, Wu Man, and more, the festival is hosted by Kronos in multiple performances over three days; the group is joined by Aizuri Quartet, Attacca Quartet, and Friction Quartet plus special guests Rafiq Bhatia (guitar), Soo Yeon Lyuh (haegeum), sound artist and instrument-maker Victoria Shen, and student ensembles from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Carnegie Hall has announced its 2023–24 concert season, and among the performers taking the esteemed hall's stages are Timo Andres, Julia Bullock, Gabriel Kahane, Kronos Quartet (joined by Laurie Anderson, Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and others), Brad Mehldau, and Chris Thile.

“The Kronos Quartet in the world of classical music are like The Beatles,” says Tom Power, host of CBC’s Q. “They pack rooms all around the world. They’ve been doing it for 50 years now. And those rooms are filled with people who don’t typically listen to classical music. So ... what have they figured out?” Kronos Quartet artistic director, founder, and violinist David Harrington spoke with Power and tries to answer that question, among others. You can hear their conversation here.

Kronos Quartet will tour Australia for the final time in March 2023, in celebration of its 50th anniversary. The KRONOS Five Decades Tour—the eighth Australian tour for the ensemble produced by Arts Projects Australia—will take in Perth Festival, Arts Centre Melbourne, Tasmania’s Ten Days On The Island, WOMADelaide, and Adelaide Festival, culminating at the Sydney Opera House on March 14. Kronos will perform music spanning brand new works and signature pieces from composers around the world.

The forty-disc John Adams Collected Works, a box set of recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with the label, is out now on Nonesuch. It includes two extensive booklets with new essays and notes by Timo Andres, Julia Bullock, Robert Hurwitz, Nico Muhly, and Jake Wilder-Smith. You can take a look inside in an unboxing video here. Since 1985, when Adams signed exclusively to Nonesuch, the label has released forty-two first recordings and thirty-one all-Adams albums. Collected Works includes thirty-five discs of Nonesuch recordings and five from other labels.

The Royal Conservatory of Music’s Koerner Hall in Toronto has announced its 2022–23 concert season, including performances from Nonesuch artists Tigran Hamasyan, Kronos Quartet, Punch Brothers, Jeremy Denk, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Joshua Redman.

Composer Steve Reich is on the Song Exploder podcast to talk with host Hrishikesh Hirway about the first movement of his groundbreaking 1988 piece Different Trains and the childhood experiences that inspired it. The New York Times declared the piece, which Kronos Quartet performed on the Grammy Award–winning first recording, “a work of such originality that ‘breakthrough’ seems the only possible description.” You can hear what he had to say here.