Kronos Quartet: Black Angels

This episode’s guest is David Harrington, founder of Kronos Quartet, the legendary string quartet at the vanguard of contemporary music for nearly 50 years. In this episode the subject is "Black Angels", the startling George Crumb composition which sparked the formation of Kronos in 1973, and the quartet’s recording of the piece nearly 15 years later. George Crumb (b. 1929) is an American modern classical and avant-garde composer who formed his distinct style, featuring unusual timbres and innovative sonorities, in the early 1960s. By the time he finished “Black Angels” on March 13, 1970, Crumb had already won a Pulitzer Prize (1968) and established himself as the creator of a highly spiritual and poetic sound world.