Reporting for InisdeBayArea.com, staff writer Jim Harrington examines the many ways in which Kronos Quartet has gone well beyond the confines of the traditional string quartet. "We haven't called ourselves a string quartet, I think, in the last 34 years," Kronos violinist David Harrington says. "I remember as a kid looking at the map—and at that point I had only played Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—and thinking, 'God, what does the rest of the world sound like? I'm going to find out.'"

And find out he has. In the article, writer Harrington lauds Kronos as "a relentless champion of new works ... [that] has further separated itself from the pack by engaging in adventurous collaborations with forward-thinking musicians and composers."

One such recent collaborator is Glenn Kotche, Wilco's drummer and an accomplished composer. Glenn's solo CD Mobile so impressed David Harrington that he asked the drummer to write a piece for the Quartet. The resulting work, Anomaly, for strings plus percussion, received its world premiere last week at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. (You can see pictures of Glenn and Kronos rehearsing here and read Glenn's notes on the piece here.)

And Kronos continues to explore new musical opportunities in any number of unexpected places. As David Harrington tells InsideBayArea: "For me, the world of music is a huge place and ... there are really no boundaries ... There is just so much fascinating music to learn about and be a part of. It's such a great time to be a listener, to be a performer, to just be included in the world of music."

To read the complete article, visit InsideBayArea.com.