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Music of Mexico inspires quartet

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Day
26
Month
June
Year
2002
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Music of Mexico inspires quartet

"Nuevo" is the title of Kronos Quartet's Summer Festival program

BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT

News Special Writer

For most people, travel is about the sights. But for violinist David Harrington of the experimental, avant-garde Kronos Quartet, it was the sounds of Mexico - the music of life in the city as much as the country’s musical traditions, popular and learned - that made a lasting impression, setting in motion the project that has culminated in the group’s newest album, “Nuevo.”

Thanks to the magic of recorded sound and sound engineering, you don’t have to travel to Mexico to hear Carlos Garcia produce haunting melodies on his musical leaf (a simple ivy leaf on which this one-armed musician produces amazing sound), or to experience an Indian church procession, the delicious raucousness of a brass street band or modern mari-achi. You don’t even have to travel to the nearest record store - unless you crave a permanent record of the Kronos’ explorations, that is.

When the group - which also includes violinist John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Jennifer Culp - arrives Saturday at Power Center for the Performing Arts for an Ann Arbor Summer Festival appearance, it brings most of “Nuevo” along, via a mix of pre-recorded tracks and live performance.

“Nuevo” goes back to Kronos’ first Mexican appearances around a dozen years ago, Harrington said in a recent phone call from the group’s West Coast base.

“Almost everything we do goes back a long time,” he says. “There’s a long gestation period for our work and the ideas that we assemble.

“The thing that struck me the very first time I went to Mexico was the sound. Mexico sounds different than anywhere else that I’ve been. There’s a lot of activity in the street, and I loved the sound of so many people enjoying themselves, using the city as their place. There’s music everywhere, day and night. And I realized that, when came there a second time, a year or so later, this place makes me feel better.”

So Harrington became interested in exploring Mexican music as much as he could - “A lot of what I contribute to Kronos is extensive research,” he says -and a subsequent visit, around seven years ago, at an especially difficult time for his family, convinced him even more he’d found a life-affirming culture whose rituals and music provided solace, comfort and joy.

“Once again,” he says, “there was music day and night,” he says of that stay in Mexico City. “On the Xocalo, which is the largest public square in Mexico, you can hear young Aztec musicians, rock and roll bands, military music when the flag is raised and lowered, the bells of the cathedral.”

It was on that trip, too, that Harrington discovered Garcia, following the mysterious sound of his playing through noisy traffic to sit and listen for hours on end to “this incredibly beautiful music.”

Harrington made a pledge: “Someday, Kronos will play with Carlos Garcia.”

With “Nuevo” - the title means “new,” and the sound is new, though the music recorded covers a period of approximately the last 80 years - Kronos satisfied that pledge and more. The group creates a musical mosaic of Mexico, in arrangements (largely by composer Osvaldo Golijov) that capture the sounds of the streets as well as of Kronos - the string quartet that can sound like any variety of instruments - and numerous guest collaborators. It’s just four people on stage, but it’s the sound of many more.

“In post-production of this recording, we had a lot of fun turning sounds into the sounds we had heard in Mexico, to give the audience a sense of the sophistication and the breadth of cultural information that is part of Mexico,” says Harrington. “It is one of most inspiring cultures. Things are not lost there, but they’re sometimes hidden under a hundred layers. The sense of time and the layering of time there are important; we wanted to give a sense of that. We also wanted people to dance their butts off.”

“There never has been anything where so many of us contributed. It was fun, thrilling and aggravating. In the end, we wanted something that was unlike anything Kronos had ever done. There’s a lot of music Kronos has played over the years, and we try to find to most vivid experiences we can.”

PREVIEW

Kronos Quartet

What: Ann Arbor Summer Festival show.

When: 8 p.m. Saturday.

Where: Power Center for the Performing Arts, 121 Fletcher.

How much: $30-$20. Call (734) 764-2538.