Kronos Quartet: Featuring the Hardanger Project

Benedicte Maurseth is a well-established and esteemed performer and composer on Norway’s music scene. She has studied with Hardanger fiddle master Knut Hamre for close to thirty years and is an alumna of the Ole Bull Academy. Maurseth has toured extensively as a soloist and in collaboration with others, both in Norway and internationally. She works closely with many of the leading artists across genres and artistic expressions such as Jon Fosse, Anne Marit Jacobsen, Rolf Lislevand, Mats Eilertsen, Berit Opheim, Merilyn Crispell, and more. Maurseth has written music for theater and film and other commissioned works for festivals and albums. The work Tidekverv, which was premiered in 2017, was awarded NOPA's music prize, and her song «Very Full», which was specially written for the TV series Loki (Marvel Studio), ranked high on the Billboard list.

Maurseth also received many prestigious artist grants from the Norwegian state for cultivating her tradition and creative work. She has recorded albums for Grappa Musikkforlag (Hubro & Heilo) and ECM Records, and has also published books, articles and essays. Her book To be nothing. Conversations with Knut Hamre, Hardanger Fiddle Master, was published at Terra Nova Press / MIT Press fall 2019.  Her latest album Hárr was awarded «Best Nordic album of the year» and received the prestigious Nordic Music Prize for 2022. In 2022 she also released the book Systerspel (Fiddlesisters) about the history of female fiddle players in Norway from 1700 until today. For this work she was awarded the prize «Folk musician of the year» in 2023 and also received the Sff-award for her outstanding contribution to the history and traditional music of Norway. 
 

Kristine Tjøgersen (*1982 in Oslo, Norway)’s compositional practice is characterized by curiosity, imagination, humor and precision. Through her work, she creates unexpected auditory situations through playing with tradition. She has a special interest in the interplay between the visual and the auditory and how they affect each other.

Nature in motion and process is often reflected in her works, and collaboration with researchers and biologists is for her a source of new sound and scenic ideas that allows her to incorporate organic forms into the music.

As Tjøgersen puts it, “By giving nature a voice in the concert hall, I want the audience to get to know valuable forms of life, and to raise awareness of what can be lost if humans continue to change nature.”

She holds an MA in composition from Anton Bruckner Universität in Austria, where she studied with Carola Bauckholt, and an MA in clarinet from the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she studied with Hans Christian Bræin.

Her works have been performed by Ensemble Recherche, Klangforum Wien, Arditti Quartet, Pinquins, SWR and WDR Symphonieorchester, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as at festivals such as ECLAT, Ultraschall, Wien Modern, Tectonics, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, and Ultima.

In 2019–20, Tjøgersen was a fellow at Akademie der Künste in Berlin, and in 2020 she received Norway’s Arne Nordheim Composer Prize, as well as the Pauline Hall Prize for her orchestra piece Bioluminescence. In 2021, she was awarded “Work of the Year” from the Norwegian Society of Composers for her Piano Concerto. In 2022, she won the International Rostrum of Composers in Palermo, and in 2023 she was the winner of Coup de Coeur des Jeunes Mélomanes from Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco for her orchestra work Between Trees.

Image credit: Frederic Boudin
 

Kronos Quartet

David Harrington, violin
Gabriela Díaz, violin
Ayane Kozasa, viola
Paul Wiancko, cello

For 50 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has reimagined what the string quartet experience can be. One of the most celebrated and influential groups of our era, Kronos has given thousands of concerts worldwide, released more than 70 recordings, and collaborated with many of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers across many genres. Kronos has received more than 40 awards, including three Grammys and the Polar Music, Avery Fisher, and Edison Klassiek Oeuvre Prizes.

Through its nonprofit organization, Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA), Kronos has commissioned more than 1,100 works and arrangements for quartet. KPAA also manages Kronos’ concert tours, local performances, recordings, and education programs, and produces an annual Kronos Festival in San Francisco. In its most ambitious commissioning effort to date, KPAA has recently completed Kronos Fifty for the Future. Through this initiative, Kronos has commissioned—and distributed online for free—50 new works for string quartet designed for students and emerging professionals, written by composers from around the world. 

David Harrington is founder, artistic director and violinist of San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet. Since 1973 he has initiated the addition of more than 1,100 works to Kronos' repertoire by composers from far-reaching corners of the musical world. He has planned thousands of concert programs which have injected fresh life and urgency into the live concert experience. He also has curated 76 recordings of bracing variety and scope and selected the composers for Kronos’ Fifty for The Future project which allows the entire field free entry into the Kronos world. Kronos has received many awards including three Grammys, the Polar Music Prize and the Kronos album ‘Pieces of Africa’ was inducted into the National Recording Registry. David was the 2024 Kluge Scholar in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress where he worked closely with the Library’s American Folklife Center to research and plan 'Triptych: US at 250’, set to be the most expansive concert in Kronos history. David looks forward to enlarging his work with Kronos to continually discover and perform inspiring, activating new works from throughout the vast world of music while mentoring next generations of composers and performers.

Gabriela Díaz began her musical training at the age of five, studying piano with her mother, and the next year, violin with her father.  A childhood cancer survivor, Gabriela is committed to supporting cancer research and treatment as a musician. In 2004, she was awarded a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship to organize a series of chamber music concerts in cancer units at various hospitals in Boston; this project is now a part of her chamber music organization and concert series, Winsor Music (winsormusic.org). 

A fierce champion of contemporary music, Gabriela has worked closely with many significant composers, including Pierre Boulez, Joan Tower, Jessie Montgomery, Tania León, and Helmut Lachenmann. Gabriela is a member of The International Contemporary Ensemble, A Far Cry, Castle of Our Skins, Sound Icon, is concertmaster of BMOP, and appears frequently with chamber music ensembles throughout the United States. Gabriela teaches at Wellesley College and the Longy School of Music at Bard College. Critics have acclaimed Gabriela as “a young violin master,” and “one of Boston’s most valuable players.” Lloyd Schwartz of the Boston Phoenix noted, “…Gabriela Diaz in a bewitching performance of Pierre Boulez’s 1991 Anthèmes. The come-hither meow of Diaz’s upward slides and her sustained pianissimo fade-out were miracles of color, texture, and feeling.” Others have remarked on her "indefatigably expressive" playing, “polished technique,” and “vivid and elegant playing.” Gabriela can be heard on New World, Centaur, BMOPSound, Mode, Naxos, and Tzadik records. Her recording of Lou Harrison's Suite for Violin and American Gamelan was highlighted in the New York Times Article, "5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Classical Music." Gabriela is proud to be a core member of the team that created Boston Hope Music, bringing music to patients and frontline workers during the pandemic. 

Hailed for her "magnetic, wide-ranging tone" and her "rock solid technique" (Philadelphia Inquirer), violist Ayane Kozasa is a sought-after chamber musician, collaborator, and educator. Since winning the 2011 Primrose International Viola Competition—where she also captured awards for best chamber music and commissioned work performances—Ayane has appeared on stages across the world, from Carnegie, Wigmore, and Suntory Hall to Ravinia, Aspen, and the Marlboro Music Festival. She is a passionate advocate for the expansion of viola repertoire, and has commissioned multiple new works featuring the viola, including “American Haiku” by Paul Wiancko and “K’Zohar Harakia” by Judd Greenstein.

Ayane has developed a career that revolves around the art of chamber music. She is currently a member of the duo Ayane & Paul with composer and cellist Paul Wiancko, with whom she collaborated on Norah Jones’ album “Pick Me Up Off the Floor.” The duo has appeared at several festivals, including Spoleto Festival USA, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar. Ayane’s most recent passion project Owls is a quartet collective with violinist Alexi Kenney and cellists Gabriel Cabezas and Paul Wiancko. Owls share an uncommonly fierce creative spirit, weaving together new compositions with original arrangements of music ranging from the 1600s to the present, and have played at series such as the Baryshnikov Arts Center in NYC and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. This season, Ayane is the guest violist of the Cavani String Quartet. The quartet boasts several original educational presentations with the string quartet as the catalyst, and they have presented their work at institutions such as the Cleveland State University and the University of Michigan. Beginning fall of 2024, Ayane joins the Kronos Quartet as their new violist.

As a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet for 11 years, she developed her skills of launching a brand new ensemble. The quartet was the 2018 quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum and the grand prize winners of both the Osaka International String Quartet Competition and MPrize Chamber Arts Competition. The Aizuri Quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting—which features the music of 5 American composers, all commissioned by the quartet—was nominated for a Grammy Award and named one of NPR’s top 10 classical albums of 2018. With collaboration being a deep part of their identity, they performed with artists such as Wilco, Marcy Rosen, Jonathan Biss, and Maeve Gilchrist. Their devotion to education brought them to young musicians around the world, and they crafted a unique student composer workshop format that they implemented at institutions such as the University of Southern California, Princeton University, and New York Youth Symphony. In 2020, the quartet launched AizuriKids, an interactive web series for children that explores relationships between music and themes ranging from astrophysics to cooking. Their dedication to the art of the string quartet for 11 years was recognized by Chamber Music America, and in 2022 the quartet received the Cleveland Quartet Award.

Other collaboration highlights include performances with world-renowned artists such as Tessa Lark, Steven Banks, Nobuko Imai, and the Kronos Quartet. As a seasoned orchestral performer, Ayane has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, A Far Cry, Philadelphia Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, where she served as principal violist from 2012 to 2016.

Much of Ayane’s current work involves mentoring aspiring young musicians through programs like the Meadowmount School of Music, Green Lake Chamber Music Camp, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar. She is currently on the viola faculty at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and has been guest faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Northwestern University. Taking inspiration from her mentors the Cavani Quartet, Ayane has developed several education-based music shows curated especially for the youth in a festival’s community including Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts and Spoleto Festival USA. Ayane is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, the Kronberg Academy in Germany, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied viola with Misha Amory, Roberto Díaz, Nobuko Imai, and Kirsten Docter. Aside from music, she enjoys hiking, doodling, and creating animation.

Photo by Shervin Lainez

Paul Wiancko is an acclaimed composer, Director of Chamber Music at Spoleto Festival USA, cellist of the internationally celebrated Kronos Quartet, and founding member of the viola-cello duo Ayane & Paul and quartet-collective “dream group” (NY Times) Owls. The Washington Post calls Wiancko “a restless and multifaceted talent who plays well with others,” a reference to his collaborations with artists ranging from Max Richter, Chick Corea, and Norah Jones—to members of the Guarneri and JACK quartets—to bands like Arcade Fire, Dirty Projectors, and Wye Oak. “Even with this chronically collaborative spirit,” the Post continues, “Wiancko maintains a singular voice as a composer.”

Paul has been composer-in-residence at Spoleto Festival USA, Caramoor, Music from Angel Fire, Portland Chamber Music Festival, and numerous others, and has been commissioned by Alisa Weilerstein, Alexi Kenney, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and the St. Lawrence, Kronos, Aizuri, Calder, and Attacca Quartets. His music has been described as “delicate, harmonically rich,” “joyous, hard-driven” (NY Times),  “dazzling, compelling” (Star Tribune), and “vital pieces that avoid the predictable” (Allan Kozinn). “If Haydn were alive to write a string quartet today,” NPR writes, “ it may sound something like Paul Wiancko's LIFT”—a piece that the NY Times says “teems with understanding of and affection for the string-quartet tradition.”

Scott Fraser is a Grammy-winning recording, mixing, mastering, and concert engineer, producer, and sound designer for acoustic music recordings and live performances. He specializes in classical, jazz, folk, world and avant-garde genres. In a career spanning multiple decades he has engineered over 700 albums, as well as having mixed thousands of concerts worldwide.  

Since 1992 he has toured extensively as sound designer for the Kronos Quartet. Scott has mixed over a thousand concerts for Kronos, in venues including Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Kennedy Center, Disney Hall, La Scala, Concertgebouw, etc.  

Scott co-produced, recorded, and mixed the Laurie Anderson/Kronos Quartet collaboration Landfall, which won the 2018 Grammy for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. He co-produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered You’ve Stolen My Heart, an album of Bollywood classics, interpreted by Kronos, featuring the legendary vocalist Asha Bhosle. In 2005 it was nominated for a Grammy in the World Music category. Scott also engineered The Ten Thousand Things, music of John Cage, as well as the Harry Partch compendium Bitter Music, both of which were Grammy nominees. In 2021, Scott recorded tracks for Opium Moon’s Night + Day CD, and mixed & mastered classical guitarist Mak Grgic’s Mak|Bach CD, both of which received Grammy nominations.

Scott has also worked with artists as diverse as Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, The Residents, Harold Budd, The Klezmatics, Katia & Marielle Lebeque, Tigran Hamasyan, Sandra Tsing-Loh and Mel Tormé.

Scott has taught recording master classes at Tainan University of Technology in Taiwan, New York University in Abu Dhabi, & Scripps College in Claremont, California.