Kronos Quartet helped close out the opening day of the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Friday night with a flourish: first performing with The National (pictured here with Bob Weir, who joined for a song), then returning to the stage for the closing act, Sir Paul McCartney, for his encore, a performance of "Yesterday." Rolling Stone reports the performance "moved virtually every single person in the field, including security guards and food vendors." Watch it here.

The 2013 Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival gets under way today, and featured among the festival's 100 free performances taking place across the plazas of New York's Lincoln Center this summer are the events of Kronos at 40, curated in collaboration with Kronos Quartet to mark its 40th anniversary. This "festival within a festival" unfolds during the first five days of the larger festival and includes 28 concerts and events with daily appearances by Kronos plus performances by other artists. Check out the complete schedule of events and watch an interview with Kronos Quartet's David Harrington here.

Kronos Quartet, as part of its 40th Anniversary Season, is the subject of a special exhibition at the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center titled For the Record: The World of Kronos on Nonesuch Records, which opened last night and runs through August 30. For the Record features original album artwork, composers' manuscripts and materials, historic performance photos, audio samples, tour memorabilia, and posters; the exhibition is presented in conjunction with KRONOS at 40, a five-day program starting July 24 and comprising 28 free performances on Lincoln Center’s plazas during the opening week of this year’s Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival.

Kronos Quartet celebrates its 40th anniversary and launches a fifth decade with an array of projects and special events during its 2013–14 season. The milestone will be marked by a weeklong residency at Lincoln Center, coast-to-coast birthday concerts, a host of premieres, a Nonesuch CD boxed set, and performances around the globe. The Quartet will unveil more than a dozen commissioned works, plus two film scores and a volume of commissioned works published by Boosey & Hawkes. The anniversary season opens with a free outdoor concert this Saturday in New Haven that introduces the group's new cellist, Sunny Yang.

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.

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.

The Kronos Performing Arts Association has announced that Kronos Quartet will welcome a new cellist, Sunny Jungin Yang, to the ensemble this June. Yang will succeed Jeffrey Zeigler, who has performed with the quartet for the past eight seasons and will step down from the group this May to work on solo projects and new collaborations and to begin teaching at Mannes College The New School For Music. 

Kronos Quartet launches a two-week tour of Australia and New Zealand at the Perth Festival, joined by Laurie Anderson for the Australian premiere of Landfall, a new work by Anderson. They perform the piece at the Adelaide Festival this Saturday. The Kronos tour includes additional performances at the Perth and Adelaide festivals and a show in Melbourne, as well as a four-city New Zealand tour. Laurie Anderson performs her piece Dirtday! at the Adelaide Festival before heading to Paris, where she will be the focus of a Domaine Privé at Cité de la Musique next week.

Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson come together for the world premiere of Scenes From My New Novel, a new work composed by Anderson, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park, Maryland, this weekend. “These are stories with tempos,” says Anderson. "Much of the music is generated from software we designed for the viola. It creates harmonies and delays that are then interpreted and expanded by Kronos." Additional performances are scheduled for the coming months in Australia, California, New Jersey, and London.

Carnegie Hall has announced its 2013–14 season, and featured among the performers taking the esteemed hall's stages are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal, including Chris Thile, Bombino, Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant, and Richard Goode, as well as performances of works by John Adams, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, and more.

Kronos Quartet will be honored by MATA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to commissioning and presenting works by young composers from around the world, in the organization's 15th Annual Benefit Gala at the Tibet House in New York City Tuesday night. The evening will feature remarks by Philip Glass and Steve Reich and by Jennifer Bilfield of Stanford Live, as well as performances by Pannonia Quartet and Jacob Garchik's The Heavens. Kronos performs in Iowa City this week, then launches a tour of Europe that features several performances of Reich's WTC 9/11.

After a European tour which included four Cultural Olympiad performances in the UK, Kronos Quartet has returned home to San Francisco and announced a new set of tour dates for the 2012–13 season. The group will perform across the US, Europe, and Australia, including the premiere of a new collaboration with Laurie Anderson, the conclusion of Kronos' multi-year partnership with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a return to the UK for the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival curated by The National, and much more.