On October 25 and 26, Glenn Kotche and Kronos Quartet premiered Glenn's new piece for quartet and percussion, Anomaly, at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. Last month, we brought you the notes Glenn wrote for the program, in which he describes the very personal inspiration for the new work. Here, in a note he's written exclusively for the Nonesuch Journal, Glenn shares some insights into the process of composing, rehearsing, and performing a brand new piece during what was already a year of non-stop touring for Wilco, and for Kronos as well.

This Saturday, November 10, Kronos Quartet will perform all three of Górecki's string quartets in the course of one evening in Górecki's hometown of Katowice, Poland, with the composer in attendance. The event is part of the 16th Annual Upper Silesian Art Festival. All three of Górecki's string quartets—Already It Is Dusk (Quartet No. 1), Quasi una Fantasia (Quartet No. 2), and Piesni Spiewaja ("...songs are sung") (Quartet No. 3)—were written especially for Kronos. The three quartets have never been performed like this before.

As we reported last week, the phenomenal collaboration between Tom Waits and Kronos Quartet at this year's Bridge School Benefit concerts proved to be the highlight of the weekend's events. Now you can catch a glimpse of the spectacular set on this video released by The Bridge School. In this clip, Waits and Kronos perform the song "God's Away on Business," which they last played together at a benefit concert in 2003.

InisdeBayArea.com examines the many ways in which Kronos Quartet has gone well beyond the confines of the traditional string quartet. "We haven't called ourselves a string quartet, I think, in the last 34 years," Kronos violinist David Harrington says. "I remember as a kid looking at the map—and at that point I had only played Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—and thinking, 'God, what does the rest of the world sound like? I'm going to find out.'"

On October 20, at the seventh annual World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, Belgium, composer Clint Mansell picked up two awards for his score to The Fountain, performed by Kronos Quartet and Mogwai. Mansell received both the award for the year's Best Original Soundtrack and the Public Choice Award. 

Glenn Kotche and Kronos Quartet sent in some photos from a recent rehearsal for their October 25 and 26 performances at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, where they'll premiere Glenn's piece Anomaly. To view the pictures, visit the photo gallery at nonesuch.com/media.

Clint Mansell's score to the Darren Aronofsky film The Fountain was nominated for Best Original Score at the 64th Golden Globe Awards, to be announced live on January 15, 2007. The Nonesuch release of the film's soundtrack features performances by Kronos Quartet and Mogwai.

By David Harrington of Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet's founder and artistic director David Harrington shares a baker's dozen's worth of things he's listening to now. It's an expectedly eclectic list, to say the least.