To celebrate its 125-year anniversary, Carnegie Hall is commissioning 125 new works. The Kronos Quartet is an important piece of the project, providing 50 of the commissions as part of the quartet’s 50 for the Future project. 50 pieces (25 by women composers) written by composers throughout the world will be premiered by Kronos and the music provided for free through its website.
In this video, Kronos founder and 1st violinist David Harrington, along with Kronos Managing Director Janet Cowperthwaite, talk about the Fifty for the Future project, detailing the process from inception to realization.
David Harrington founded the Kronos Quartet in 1973. The quartet has since gone on to become one of history’s most important new music ensembles, having commissioned over 850 works.
As the found of a successful record label (Oxingale), cellist Matt Haimovitz is intimately familiar with the problems posed by streaming music services. In this segment with Noted Endeavors founders, Eugenia Zukerman and Emily Ondracek-Peterson, Matt posits that music should NOT be free as it degrades cultural appreciation. Music and art should be valued as much as “putting food on the table.”
Haimovitz made his debut in 1984, at the age of 13, as soloist with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic. At 17 he made his first recording with James Levine and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for Deutsche Grammophon. Haimovitz has since gone on to perform on the world’s most esteemed stages, with such orchestras and conductors as the Berlin Philharmonic with Levine, the New York Philharmonic with Mehta, the English Chamber Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim, the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Leonard Slatkin and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra with Kent Nagano. Haimovitz made his Carnegie Hall debut when he substituted for his teacher, the legendary Leonard Rose, in Schubert’s String Quintet in C, alongside Isaac Stern, Shlomo Mintz, Pinchas Zukerman and Mstislav Rostropovich.
In 2000, he made waves with his Bach “Listening-Room” Tour, for which, to great acclaim, Haimovitz took Bach’s beloved cello suites out of the concert hall and into clubs across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. Haimovitz’s 50-state Anthem tour in 2003 celebrated living American composers, and featured his own arrangement of Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner.” He was the first classical artist to play at New York’s infamous CBGB club, in a performance filmed by ABC News for “Nightline UpClose.” Soon thereafter, Haimovitz launched Oxingale Records with his wife, composer Luna Pearl Woolf. Oxingale records have since received wide acclaim for its stunning recordings.
Nathalie Joachim and Allison Loggins-Hull are two remarkable flutists who have created Flutronix. The duo has been described by the Wall Street Journal as “a unique blend of classical music, hip-hop, electronic programming and soulful vocals.” Both are composers, producers and performers and have collaborated with an impressive range of artists. Flutronix music has been broadcast on popular radio stations around the world. They are regularly sought after as clinicians and educators by institutions like The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, and The University of Michigan. They’ve also been featured in TV segments on Telemundo, BK Live, The Daily Buzz and an internationally broadcast ESPN super bowl commercial as well as in a leading Japanese fashion magazine.
