Examining The Kronos Quartet Experiment’s Dot Cloud

the kronos quartet
“It’s like a dinner conversation, it’s just a perfect conversation. Everybody, when they say something is just exactly the outcome of what someone else had said,” David Harrington notes concerning the piece performed by the Kronos Quartet.

This is a glorious setup for a moving piece about instrumental conversation, and not the standard paradiddle version of one player harmonizing or simply building off another. There is a syncrocity that is alive and apparent within this piece that is sharp and clear.

The beautiful insight provided here from members of the group provide for the ebb and flow that is experienced when listening to the piece. There is the obvious notice of skilled and professional musicians who have rehearsed and practiced the intricacies of the movement. But, as Hank Dutt (viola) states, there is still breathing room present to allow for spontaneity and improvisation between the performers in their musical dinner conversation.

This closure provided here by the performers is like a musical “Director’s Cut” of the performance and piece that really provides sight-­beyond­-sight for the dynamic that transpires in the performance and execution of such a moving piece. It’s something powerful and wondrous that we are richly benefited by.

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