Kronos Quartet: Caravan

Just about the time that I got into the amazing Kronos Quartet in 1990, the group was beginning to branch out into collborations with composers and performers from around the world and expanding their horizons beyond the so-called Classical world.  Similarly, at that period, I was moving beyond a concentration on alternative rock to listening to more jazz, classical and world music.  So, the circumstances worked well for my hearing where Kronos was going as I was heading that general direction, too!

The first of these endeavors was 1991's Pieces of Africa and subsequent recordings like 1994's Night Prayers. 2002's Nuevo and 2009's Floodplain continued to show their furthered interest and deep engagement with music from around the world.  In fact, these four albums and today's highlighted disc, Caravan, released in 2000, were packaged by Nonesuch Records under the title of Kronos Explorer Series, a nod to the label's Nonesuch Explorer catalog of amazing world music recordings.

Caravan is an excellent musical travelogue across the planet, with commissions from composers from the former Yugoslavia, Portugal, India, Lebanon, Iran, Mexico and elsewhere with a very diverse program of pieces.  They also demonstrate a tremendous range of approaches to how a string quartet works in environments outside "serious music."

This includes working with those who write or play music that isn't Western classical music, such as the fantastic Ali Jihad Racy, who demonstrated his expertise on the ney on his phenomenal "Ecstasy," the Bollywood piece "Aaj Ki Raat," which benefits tremendously from the unparalleled tabla player Zakir Hussain, the fascinating Misirou Twist from Nicholas Roubanis but which was best known from a version from surf guitar legend Dick Dale (who is Lebanese from his father and Polish and Belorussian through his mother) and which has drums by Martyn Jones, and the really cool,Turceasca, with Gypsy musicians.

Caravan is one of those great examples of how fusing Western music, in this case string quartet, with other musics from around the world can do justice to both and provide an exciting hybrid that plays on the strengths of each.