Summer is a long way off, but not for Hannah Wiley, who directs the UW鈥檚 Summer Arts Festival. Wiley is thrilled to have already booked the festival鈥檚 closing act, one that should be familiar to the 91探花audience. Kronos Quartet, who headlined the very first arts festival in 2000, will be returning with a special performance called 鈥淪un Rings.鈥�
That鈥檚 appropriate, because the theme of this summer鈥檚 festival is 鈥淪pheres.鈥�
鈥淜ronos was a huge success the first year, both in terms of ticket sales and spirit,鈥� Wiley said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e happy to have them back.鈥�
Wiley describes 鈥淪un Rings鈥� as a 90-minute staged work in 12 movements for Kronos Quartet, chorus and tape. The piece was composed by Terry Riley and is based upon sounds of space collected for more than 35 years by physicist and astronomer Donald Gurnett. Recorded sounds of solar winds, lightning discharges, and other emissions detected on several planets and moons are referenced in the work.
鈥淪un Rings鈥� will be performed on an original visual stage design by Willie Williams that incorporates liquid crystal display technology with images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory鈥檚 space photography archive. The work premieres this month; the Summer Arts Festival performance will be its Northwest premiere.
Kronos is a string quartet consisting of two violins, a viola and a cello. Performing together since 1973, the group is devoted to new music and typically commissions about a dozen new works each year 鈥� more than 400 in all.