Kronos Quartet and Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) have announced Kronos Festival, Kronos’ seventh-annual music festival, to take place at SFJAZZ Center on April 7–9, 2022.

This year’s festival highlights Kronos’ commitment to creative collaboration, an inclusive repertoire, and to deep, longstanding relationships with artists from around the globe. The three-day celebration features five world premieres; signature works from Kronos’ far-reaching repertoire; an anniversary celebration; and three compositions commissioned as part of Kronos’ groundbreaking Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire project. Composer, arranger, and trombonist Jacob Garchik, who has a long and fruitful artistic relationship with the ensemble, is this year’s Artist-in-Residence.

This year’s world premiere works are by Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, Jonathan Berger, intifiggis-vizueta, Mahsa Vahdat, and Soo Yeon Lyuh. Special guests include writer and performer Rinde Eckert, multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, haegeum master Lyuh, vocalist Vahdat, and pipa virtuoso Wu Man.

“Kronos Festival celebrates expanding creativity,” says Kronos’ Founder and Artistic Director David Harrington. “We honor those who have a strengthened resolve to help shape our musical future in spite of any odds. Surrounded by friends, we hope the festival energizes our audience.Live music can be a microcosm as we listen to the future unfolding.”

“I’ve had the tremendous privilege to work with Kronos Quartet for the last 16 years,” said Garchik. “Together we’ve created over 110 works of music from all over the world. I’ve always loved working behind the scenes and collaborating with a huge range of artists but am thrilled to have my own chance to step into the spotlight with Kronos Festival.”

Ellen Reid's SOUNDWALK, a free, GPS-enabled work of public art in Golden Gate Park that launched in 2021 as part of Kronos Festival, will also be ongoing at Golden Gate Park. And the festival’s intimate series Kronos Labs returns on Saturday afternoon.

Kronos Festival 2022 kicks off on Thursday, April 7, with the world premiere of Janety, a joyful work by Malian Griot singer Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté writtenfor the 40th Anniversary of KPAA Executive Director and Kronos Manager Janet Cowperthwaite. A member of renowned ensemble Trio Da Kali, Diabaté’s work is inspired by the tegere tulon—a tradition of handclapping songs and dances created spontaneously by girls in country villages of southern Mali. Janety features a guest group of young musicians, and pays tribute to Kronos’ steadfast leader and advocate. Artist-in-Residence Jacob Garchik joins the quartet on trombone and tuba for Upon a Star, a suite arranged by Garchik based on the music of Steven Spielberg films. The program concludes with Cadenza on the Night Plain, a 13-movement work written for Kronos by one of the ensemble’s most prolific and creative collaborators, Terry Riley. Music critic Kyle Gann called Cadenza on the Night Plain “the archetypal Kronos piece.”

On Friday, April 8, Kronos unveils two of the latest works released as part of Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, a string quartet commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project that has been designed and developed under Cowperthwaite’s leadership. The works include Indonesian Gamelan composer and vocalist Peni Candra Rini’s Maduswara, and Beninese singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo’s YanYanKliYan Senamido #2. Also on the program are Oasis, a one-movement composition by Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh and one of Kronos’ signature works, and Flow, a haunting work by Laurie Anderson arranged by Garchik.

Concluding Friday's program is the world premiere of My Lai Suite, adapted from composer Jonathan Berger and librettist Harriet Scott Chessman’s opera about Hugh Thompson, the Army helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War who courageously intervened in the US Army massacre of unarmed Vietnamese civilians. Special guest vocalist Rinde Eckert and instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Võ perform.

On Saturday evening, Kronos Festival 2022 concludes with three world premieres written for Kronos. inti figgis-vizueta’s music by yourself is a piece about “connecting to people who are and aren’t still here.” Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat performs in Where Is Your Voice, a new, original song arranged by Aftab Darvishi. Korean-American composer and master of the haegeum Soo Yeon Lyuh takes the stage in Tattoo (Extended Version), the artist’s response to a harrowing incident in Berkeley, California, in which someone fired a gun at her car. Philip Glass’ Orion: China, written on the occasion of the Athens Cultural Olympiad in Summer 2004, contemplates the Earth's relationship to the constellations as interpreted by the world's many cultures, and features pipa virtuoso Wu Man.

Saturday night's program also includes Russian nonagenarian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s Quartet No. 4, one of Kronos’ signature works its vast body of commissions; and Jacob Garchik’s Storyteller, a 16-minutework featuring archival recordings of Pete Seeger singing, speaking, and playing his banjo.

Earlier on Saturday, Kronos Labs features a free performance at 2pm with student musicians from around the Bay Area performing works from Fifty for the Future, including several of Garchik’s arrangements. At 5pm, Garchik is joined by an all-star group composed of the Bay Area's premier brass players for The Heavens: The Atheist Gospel Trombone Choir, a nine-part suite for trombones, tuba, and drums.

For all the details on Kronos Festival 2022 and tickets, visit kronosquartet.org.