Congratulations to Kronos Quartet on receiving the 2018 WOMEX Artist Award. The group was given the award on Sunday, ahead of its performance at the 24th edition of the world-music showcase, at the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.

"To become a pioneer in one musical stream requires immense dedication, determination and, of course, prodigious skill and creativity," Jim Hickson writes of "the most important string quartet of their generation" in his introductory note for the WOMEX 2018 delegate guide. "To become such a leader in more than one stream must truly signal that there is some intense genius at work—genius that the Kronos Quartet possess in abundance."

Kronos "started with a composition," Bill Bragin, who presented Kronos with the award, noted in his remarks. "Not just any composition. George Crumb's Black Angels, a searing, emotionally intense elegy written during the Vietnam War. A piece of music that exploded genres as it made an argument for the interconnectedness of human beings across geography and culture.

"For 45 years, the award winners have continued this musical pursuit of sounds that can travel across time and space, geography and cultural origin," Bragin continued. "They've done so, not as a way to blur the edges of genre and culture, but to celebrate the edges ... [I have] witnessed their commitment to teaching the next generation; to learning from the community to which they travel; and to sharing an expansive musical vision which I've never seen matched, with a humanistic curiosity and love."

Past winners of the Womex Artist Award include Mariza, Oumou Sangaré, Cheikh Lô, Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, and Nick Gold, among others. For more information on the award, visit womex.com.