Kronos Quartet was joined by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles last Saturday for a night of premieres, not least Tagaq's own LA debut. Mark Swed, the Los Angeles Times music critic, writes: "The playing all evening was passionate and superb. If ever an ensemble has found a fountain of youth, it is this one."

Two highlights of the event included the Los Angeles premiere of Nunavut, an improvised collaboration between the vocalist and the Quartet, and the world premiere of Tundra Songs, composed by Canadian composer Derek Charke. In the former, says Swed, Tagaq's "erotic energy is unmistakable" with each of the Quartet members contributing "increasingly complex interlocking textures."

The latter, reads the review, is an "extraordinary" piece that proved a "mesmerizing" showcase of "Tagaq's ability to inject a life force into sound" and allowed her to become "one with the strings and the prerecorded soundscape." Swed calls Tundra Songs "another keeper" in Kronos's large and ever-growing catalog of works written for it.

Among the "engaging pieces" performed by Kronos on the rest of the program was the Los Angeles premiere of "Tusen Tankar," a Scandinavian folk song arranged by the group that the Times calls "as haunting as a Bergman film"; it is the Nonesuch Store-exclusive bonus download on Kronos's latest recording, Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic.

To read the concert review, visit latimes.com.

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Variety's Richard S. Ginell, in his review of the performance, says that "even after three decades of continuous activity, the Kronos Quartet continues to come up with fresh ideas from out of the blue." As examples, he points both to the Disney Hall boundary-pushing program and to the group's recording of The Cusp of Magic. To read that review, visit variety.com.