Kronos Explores the World : Quartet Plays Works by African Composers Tonight in Costa Mesa

The Kronos Quartet’s new CD, to be released next month, is called “Pieces of Africa” and will feature drums and rattles as well as more conventional concert hall instruments. But quartet founder David Harrington takes umbrage at any suggestion that whites are once again ripping off black musicians.

Such a conclusion “would be, to say the least, quite shortsighted,” he snorted during a phone interview from Marquette, Mich., where the quartet was playing earlier this week. It plays at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa tonight.

“Up until that record,” he asserted, “no (composition for) string quartet from that part of the world--from that continent at all--has been recorded. Which is shocking.”

This venture into world music is nothing new for the adventurous, San Francisco-based musicians--violinists Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud--whose trendy dress and repertory once led Rolling Stone to dub them the “Fab Four of classical music.”

The Kronos has been working “without apology,” Harrington said, for more than 12 years to advance quartet literature. It plays nothing earlier than Ives and Bartok and has introduced more than 400 new works, many of which were written for the group.

Its repertoire also includes pieces by Jimi Hendrix, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, among other non-classical composers; draws on the latest technology to expand musical possibilities, and uses lighting and props in an effort to find visual equivalents for sound.

All of this has jarred the staid classical music establishment, which considers quartet compositions to be the most austere, difficult and advanced works. But Harrington sees it differently.

“It’s not a question of it being difficult,” he said. “I see it as one of the most human kinds of music that there is.

“Just about every composer who’s written for us has said that his or her biggest challenge is that this form is very revealing of musical essence and inner personality, not only of the composers but of the people who play the music.

“And just because Beethoven wrote some of his greatest works--and Bartok wrote some of his greatest works--for quartets doesn’t mean we should be afraid of the future. What I would want to do is build on the power of that tradition.”

Harrington said that about 25 composers “from all over the world” are writing new pieces for the Kronos, including one that uses “the words and wisdom of I.F. Stone on tape” and another, an AIDS piece, that is “full of intense anger” over “the lack of response to the crisis from public officials.”

That work, by Bob Ostertag, is “probably the angriest piece I’ve ever heard in my life,” Harrington continued. “We see it as a big challenge to find ways to integrate those types of experiences into our concerts.”

Indeed, Kronos concerts are known for a certain edge of confrontation, risk and danger.

“We feel that a concert is a kind of meeting place for people interested in music and excited by its possibilities. So we try to put every possible emotion into a musical experience that we possibly can.”

The quartet is on the road almost 200 days a year. “It’s definitely tough keeping a personal life going, but everyone in Kronos is very committed to what we’re doing.”

Harrington said none of the musicians are getting rich but do have the satisfaction of knowing that they are constantly commissioning and performing new works, as well as drawing new audiences into classical music.

But it’s been an uphill battle.

“We’ve been charged with a whole litany of things from the very beginning. The fact that our concerts are amplified has tended to upset some people who are not used to hearing us. But amplified is not really the right word. I would more say magnified.

“We began to feel that playing in large concert halls was just not the way to really (let people) hear our music. An acoustic sound just doesn’t carry with the emotional impact we wanted to make in that kind of environment.

“But, in fact, we decided in almost any environment now we want that extra magnification from being miked.”

Harrington also knows that the kind and range of music the Kronos plays will challenge an audience.

“It’s hardly possible for most people to love all of the music we play,” he said. “That’s asking quite a lot. We tend to be interested in a huge variety of things. For us that’s what a concert is, a celebration of diversity and different musical textures, and feelings that you can’t get any other way.”

The Kronos Quartet will play works by African composers Dumisani Maraire and Hamza El Din, and other pieces written for the ensemble, tonight at 8 at the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. Tickets: $11.50 to $14. Information: (714) 432-5880.