Kronos Quartet joined legendary Azerbaijani singer Alim Qasimov and his ensemble at the Barbican in London this past Friday for the opening event of the center's annual Ramadan Nights celebration of Sufi music. The Guardian's Robin Denselow says the pairing produced an "outstanding" concert.

Denselow calls Qasimov "certainly one of the most thrilling, unashamedly emotional performers on the planet, and the finest exponent of mughams, the dramatic, ancient poetic works of Azerbaijan." He sees the singer's "intriguing collaboration" with Kronos as evidence of his interest in experimenting with that traditional style of music.

Kronos began the concert with a program that showed the group's "range with a virtuoso set of pieces from Iraq, Serbia and Palestine, and daring to make use of voices, effects and percussion on the compelling, trance-like shuffle of Tashweesh, by Ramallah Underground."

"There was high emotion from the start," says Denselow, in the "extraordinary set" by Qasimov's ensemble. And then, Kronos returned to add their own contribution: "Their sensitive and respectful arrangements augmented the ancient Asian instruments," concludes the reviewer, "but still left space for the all-important vocals."

Read the complete concert review at guardian.co.uk.

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Up next for Kronos is a multinational program titled Awakening: A Musical Meditation on the Anniversary of 9/11, to be performed this Friday at UCLA's Royce Theatre. The program includes works by Osvaldo Golijov and Gustavo Santaolla, Michael Gordon, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Terry Riley, among others. The Quartet will be joined by the Paulist Choristers of California, led by by Luke McEndarfer, for a performance of Aulis Sallinen's Winter Was Hard, which the Quartet recorded for the album of the same name in 1988.