Kronos Quartet is shown here, celebrating its 50th anniversary with a free concert in Golden Gate Park on Saturday, August 26, 2023. When I took this photo, they had just begun a humorous piece by John Oswald. Earlier they had done works by Angelique Kidjo, Michael Gordon, Clint Mansell (one each from Requiem for a Dream and, later, The Fountain), and Sigur Rós, among others. Still to come were a “Summertime” that eerily channeled Janis Joplin’s ragged vocals, and an “All Along the Watchtower” that was indelibly Jimi Hendrix’s — and much more. We even got an encore. Fantastic afternoon.
That’s cellist Paul Wiancko, who joined Kronos this year (filling the seat vacated by Sunny Yang, who had been with the quartet for a decade), on the right, along with, from left to right, David Harrington, Hank Dutt, and John Sherba. Those three are on, respectively, violin, violin, and viola, but they all played other instruments over the course of the concert, including drums, voice, and additional percussion, and they employed some unusual bows for one theatrical piece. Born in 1983, Wiancko drew his first breath the year Kronos itself turned 10. Harrington noted that the group had lived in San Francisco for 46 years, and over the course of the afternoon mentioned numerous collaborators from the city — and also how he’d first heard one of the composers they later worked with thanks to the retail resource that is nearby Amoeba Records.