Kronos Quartet will present the first San Francisco Performances "family matinee" concert of the year this Saturday at the city's Herbst Theatre. And as the San Jose Mercury News reports, it's sure to offer children and their families a broad sampling of the groundbreaking quartet's expansive repertoire.

Kronos founder and violinist David Harrington tells Yoshi Kato of the Mercury News that the specially geared program should give the all-age crowd "a good sense of some of the vocabulary that we use ... There'll be some electronic things and ... music from China and Mexico and India and several places in Africa. So it's going to go around the world, too."

That sort of sonically diverse, multicultural exploration is also present on Kronos' forthcoming CD, The Cusp of Magic, featuring music composer Terry Riley wrote for the group. Featured in the piece are musical sources as varied as Chinese lullabies from pipa virtuoso Wu Man and digital samples of musical toys from Harrington's own collection, which he's often used to entertain his now five-year-old granddaughter.

She, too, has indirectly helped her grandfather program family concerts like this Saturday's, providing a good gauge for what the younger audiences might enjoy and be able to absorb. The Quartet was also inspired by a recent visit to one of their rehearsals from the first-grade class taught by Harrington's daughter. He tells Kato:

Every one of the kids got to touch our instruments and make a sound on them. That's something that just seems to be more and more exclusive and hidden away. You can experience it on television or whatnot, but to actually be able to see and hear and even touch an instrument is increasingly rare.

For more information on this Saturday's concert, you can read Kato's article at mercurynews.com. To learn more about The Cusp of Magic, click here.