Kronos Quartet’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels will be released on vinyl on February 16, 2024, to coincide with Kronos Quartet: Five Decades, a year-long celebration of the quartet’s 50th anniversary. First released in 1990, the album features George Crumb’s title piece, which inspired David Harrington to found the quartet in 1973, and works by Charles Ives, István Márta, Thomas Tallis, and Dmitri Shostakovich. The fourth side of the vinyl is an etching of an illustration created especially for this purpose by Matt Mahurin, whose work is featured on the original album cover. The Evening Standard included Black Angels among its “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.”

American composer George Crumb died at his home in Pennsylvania on Sunday at the age of 92. The Nonesuch recording of his Ancient Voices of Children, a song-cycle based on texts by Garcia Lorca, performed by Jan DeGaetani and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, become a defining album of the label’s early years. Kronos Quartet's recording of his Vietnam War protest piece Black Angels, which Kronos founder David Harrington has credited with helping to inspire the group's formation, was included among the Evening Standard's 100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.