Pioneering avant-garde classical group Kronos Quartet is seeking donations via Kickstarter for founder David Harrington’s Research & Development Fund. In recent years, the group’s R&D fund has supported a slew of incredible collaborations with the likes of Noam Chomsky, Omar Souleyman, Laurie Anderson, Bryce Dessner, and Jon Rose, whose composition “Music From 4 Fences” is played above by Kronos on barbed wire fences. From the Kickstarter page:
For a lot of Kickstarter projects, “Risks and Challenges” translates as “what might go wrong.” But Kronos looks at risks and challenges as key parts of the creative process. Our goal with this project is to fund four works for string quartet that challenge their composers or arrangers to the utmost in terms of their artistic vision and the ability to achieve it. As David puts it in the video above, these are intended to be works that the composers have been waiting their whole lives to create—transformative pieces for the composer, the performer, and the listener. And with these high aspirations come risks of all kinds—aesthetic (conceiving of and developing the vision), technical (marrying the vision to the instruments of the Quartet), logistical (translating the work from the rehearsal studio to the stage), and more.
Donate to Kickstarter for Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington Research & Development Fund