Kronos Quartet launches a three-year partnership with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in its hometown of San Francisco, with the first of two consecutive nights of concerts at YBCA's Novellus Theater tonight. The collaboration between Kronos and YBCA aims to further the Quartet's nearly four decades-long effort to create a diverse repertoire of new music beyond geographic borders and genre constraints.

Fittingly, the program for tonight and tomorrow features the San Francisco premiere of a new staging of George Crumb's Black Angels, the highly unorthodox, Vietnam War–inspired work that first inspired Kronos artist director and violinist David Harrington to form the group. Also on the program are Bob Ostertag's All the Rage, Ingram Marshall's Fog Tropes II, the San Francisco premiere of Aleksandra Vrebalov's spell no. 4, for a changing world, and the world premiere of San Francisco-based Iranian composer/pianist Sahba Aminikia's Third String Quartet.

"Kronos Quartet brings together an extraordinary legacy of evoking powerful expression with an unflagging commitment to supporting new artists and global perspectives," says YBCA's Performing Arts Curator Angela Mattox in a statement on the new partnership. "What an amazing opportunity to explore some of the most adventurous and potent composers of our times, through the eye of the visionary David Harrington. Tonight's program is emblematic of that commitment to support bold expression and profound human response."

Tonight's event includes a pre-concert talk with Ostertag and Aminikia moderated by composer Luciano Chessa. Ostertag recently spoke with filmmaker Steve Elkins about his 1993 piece All the Rage—which he wrote for Kronos in response to then-California Governor Pete Wilson's veto of a bill designed to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, and the riot that followed—for a documentary titled Reach of Resonance; you can watch an excerpt from the film here. Aminikia discusses his new work for Kronos in a video you can watch on the Kronos Facebook page.

Ticket holders for Friday night's show are invited to a pre-concert party in the YBCA galleries to celebrate the opening of two new exhibitions there.

For more information and tickets to these events, visit ybca.org. To purchase the Kronos recordings of Black Angels, All the Rage, and Fog Tropes II, visit the Nonesuch Store.

Hear what David Harrington has to say about tonight's program in the video below: