iFest Time/Date
Bud Light World Music Stage
Friday, April 29
Gates open at 6pm; Concert begins at 7pm (see performance below)
Performance Information
7:00pm - Houston Grand Opera
8:00pm - Kronos Quartet
8:50pm - Homayun Sakhi Trio
9:20pm - Kronos Quartet and Homayun Sakhi Trio
Kronos Quartet shares the billing with Afghan rubab player Homayun Sakhi - the rubab is an Afghan cousin to the Indian sitar and the Middle Eastern oud - and his virtuoso trio featuring Afghan table drummer Salar Nader and Uzebk percussionist Abbos Kosimov. The groups will perform separately and together, only the third time this collaboration has been presented live!
The evening's final piece, "Rangin Kaman", is a spectacular 30-minute raga composed by Sakhi and recorded by his trio and Kronos Quartet for the album Rainbow, released in 2010 on the Smithsonian Folkways Label in cooperation with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
The Houston Grand Opera's community collaboration division, HGOco, opens the evening at 7pm presenting selections from a new chamber opera—a Chinese-themed piece called “Courtside” by Jack Perla and Eugenie Chan. The piece is part of a new series, East + West, which celebrates Houston as a meeting place for eastern and western cultures.
Co-presenters: Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Aga Khan Council for the USA, the Houston Arts Alliance, and the Houston Grand Opera.
Genre
Contemporary classical incorporating world music traditions
Bio
Kronos Quartet is one of the premier avant-garde string ensembles in the United States comprised of David Harrington and John Sherba on violins, Hank Dutt on viola and Jeffrey Zeigler. They have spent the past 30 years broadening the scope of contemporary chamber music to include musical traditions from around the globe while at the same time upholding the highest standards of the European classical repertoire. Kronos has worked with a huge range of modern composers, poets, and multi-media artists, and have played such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and the Vienna Opera House. They have become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 45 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning more than 700 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos' work has also garnered numerous awards, including a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and "Musicians of the Year" (2003) from Musical America.
Listen
View
Watch a 7 minute excerpt from the 24-minute documentary film included in the CD/DVD “Music of Central Asia Vol. 8: Rainbow”, featuring the Kronos Quartet with Alim & Fargana Qasimov and Homayun Sakhi.
Website
Co-presented by
