After a year’s hiatus, Kronos Performing Arts Association’s Kronos Festival returns June 11–18, expanding the annual San Francisco–based event into the virtual sphere with free online presentations: world premieres; many of Kronos’ signature works, including music by Clint Mansell, George Crumb, Frank Zappa, Terry Riley, and Vladimir Martynov; and pieces commissioned for Kronos’ Fifty for the Future project. The festival also features an all-ages program and a series of short films. Kronos will also headline composer Ellen Reid’s Soundwalk, a self-guided, GPS-enabled public art work, in Golden Gate Park.

Kronos Quartet and Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi will perform free for Carnegie Hall's first-ever online festival, Voices of Hope, April 16–30. The two-week festival examines the life-affirming power of music and the arts during times of crisis through more than 100 events, including programming presented by Carnegie Hall and more than 40 cultural and academic institutions across New York City and beyond. Kronos Quartet performs works by Terry Riley and others on April 24, and Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turris perform from their new album, They're Calling Me Home, on April 28.

Clint Mansell's haunting score to director Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film Requiem for a Dream, performed by Kronos Quartet, has returned to vinyl for the film's twentieth anniversary year, out now. The soundtrack was originally released on Nonesuch in 2000; the first vinyl edition was released for Record Store Day in 2016 with new artwork and two previously unreleased bonus tracks. The new 2-LP vinyl edition, which also includes the bonus tracks, features the original 2000 soundtrack cover art for the anniversary. "Brilliant stuff," says Classic FM.

Kronos Quartet filmed a socially distanced performance of "Lux Aeterna," from composer Clint Mansell's score to Darren Arronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, to mark the film's 20th anniversary, at Stanford's Bing Concert Hall. You can watch it here. Nonesuch Records will reissue the soundtrack on vinyl December 4.

Clint Mansell's haunting score to director Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film Requiem for a Dream, performed by Kronos Quartet, returns to vinyl for the film's twentieth anniversary year, on December 4, 2020. The soundtrack was originally released on Nonesuch in 2000; the first vinyl edition was released for Record Store Day in 2016 with new artwork and two previously unreleased bonus tracks. The new 2-LP vinyl edition, which also includes the bonus tracks, features the original 2000 soundtrack cover art for the anniversary. "Brilliant stuff," says Classic FM.

It was thirty years ago today: Kronos Quartet's album Black Angels, featuring composer George Crumb’s title piece, was released on Nonesuch. Kronos's connection to the piece dates back to the ensemble's origins when, in 1973, violinist David Harrington was inspired to form the group after hearing the work. Crumb's piece sets a powerful tone for the collection, which addresses the political, physical, and spiritual consequences of war, and includes works by Tallis, Ives, Shostakovich, and Istvan Marta. "As a piece of music, George Crumb's Black Angels remains at the heart of Kronos," Harrington says in a new short film about the album you can watch here. "It seems as relevant today as it did in 1973. As an album, Black Angels set our course for the next thirty years and beyond."

Kronos Quartet has released a short film edited by Evan Neff scored to its performance of an excerpt of Peace Be Till, which composer Zachary Watkins wrote for the group in 2018. In the piece, Dr. Clarence B. Jones, the former personal counsel, speechwriter, and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., reads King's defense of nonviolent direct action in his famed Letter from Birmingham Jail, which Jones calls "the symphony of social justice." In 1963, Jones had smuggled King's words from the Birmingham, Alabama, jail cell in which he was being held for his participation in a peaceful demonstration.

Kronos Quartet gave a concert and Q&A in celebration of its 40th anniversary at WNYC/WQXR's The Greene Space in NYC on March 24, 2014. The venue revisited the special event with an encore stream. "For forty years, the Kronos Quartet has been reimagining the string quartet experience," said host Helga Davis. "They've performed thousands of concerts worldwide, and their list of collaborators is a who's who of twentieth and twenty-first century music." You can watch it here.

Laurie Anderson and Terry Riley will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters when it holds its annual induction and award ceremony in mid-May, joining eleven other new members, including Carroll Dunham, Julian Schnabel, Edwidge Danticat, Mary Gaitskill, and Colson Whitehead. An exhibition of art, architecture, books, and manuscripts by new members and recipients of awards will be on view in the Academy's galleries in NYC from May 21 to June 21.

Carnegie Hall has announced its 2020–21 concert season, and featured among the performers taking the esteemed hall's stages are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal, including Rhiannon Giddens, who is a Perspectives artist for the season, John Adams, Chris Thile, Caroline Shaw, and Kronos Quartet.

Congratulations to Brad Mehldau, Attacca Quartet, and Kronos Quartet, who won Grammy Awards on Sunday, and to Yola, who performed at the Premiere Ceremony in Los Angeles at which those awards were presented. Mehldau earned his first Grammy when Finding Gabriel won for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Attacca Quartet received the Grammy for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for Caroline Shaw's Orange. Kronos Quartet's recording of Terry Riley's Sun Rings won the Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Classical; it was engineered by Leslie Ann Jones; mixed by John Kilgore, Judy Sherman, and David Harrington; and mastered by Robert C. Ludwig.

Congratulations to all of the Nonesuch nominees for the 62nd Grammy Awards: Yola with four nominations, including Best New Artist and her album Walk Through Fire; Dan Auerbach for Producer of the Year; Rhiannon Giddens for "I'm on My Way" from her album with Francesco Turrisi, there is no Other; Brad Mehldau's Finding Gabriel, Joshua Redman Quartet's Come What May, Caroline Shaw and Attacca Quartet's Orange; and Kronos Quartet for Terry Riley's Sun Rings.