Kronos Quartet – Placeless (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Kronos Quartet – Placeless (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:41 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Kirkelig Kulturverksted

‘Placeless’ is the first collaboration between the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet and Iranian singers Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat, two of the most important performers of Persian vocal music in the world today.
Recorded in Kulturkirken Jakob in Oslo in November 2018, ‘Placeless’ has fourteen melodies that Mahsa Vahdat composed to classical poems by Hafez and Rumi and the works of contemporary Iranian poets Forough Farrokhzad, Mohammad Ibrahim Jafari and Atabak Elyasi. Composers Sahba Aminikia (Iran/US), Aftab Darvishi (Iran/ Netherlands), Jacob Garchik (US) and Atabak Elyasi arranged the songs for string quartet.
For 45 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet – David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello) – has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with an eclectic mix of composers and performers, and commissioning over 1,000 works and arrangements for string quartet. They have won over 40 awards, including the prestigious Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prizes and, most recently, the WOMEX Artist Award (the first US-based musicians to ever do so). About Mahsa Vahdat.

Many of the Kronos Quartet’s biggest-selling albums, going back to 1991’s Five Tango Sensations, have drawn on vernacular traditions from outside the European-American sphere, and some, such as Caravan (2000), have drawn from the music of the Near East. Placeless, though, is a standout among the bunch, for several reasons. The album contains settings of Persian poetry by Rumi and various other classical and modern writers in the same ecstatic vein, hovering between religious mysticism and sensuality. The title comes from a poem by Rumi, who famously proclaimed, “I am not from the world, not from beyond. My place is placelessness. My trace is tracelessness.” The album’s most immediately attractive feature is the singing of Iranian vocalist Mahsa Vahdat, who has performed widely outside Iran but is forbidden by the country’s Islamic government from appearing at home. (She still lives in Tehran and teaches privately.) Vahdat also wrote the melodic settings, and these are fascinating. They are not classical improvisations in the Persian system of modes but small chunks that fit the devotional exclamations of the poetry beautifully. And they approach the poetry in various ways. Sample Fate Astray, with its squarish, almost Western-style melody, and you’ll also encounter another strong point: the variety of the arrangements. These draw on the work of various figures, both Persian and Western (this one is by Jacob Garchik), and they call for a wide range of textures from the Kronos Quartet, from evocations of plucked-string accompaniment to traditional string quartet textures, and even Middle Eastern percussion. The melodies are bewitching in themselves, and they seem to pass through prisms and come out in different shades. Highly recommended; one of the Kronos’ strongest releases in recent years. – James Manheim

Tracklist:
1-01. Kronos Quartet – Placeless (03:14)
1-02. Kronos Quartet – My Ruthless Companion (03:19)
1-03. Kronos Quartet – My Tresses In The Wind (03:33)
1-04. Kronos Quartet – I Was Dead (03:14)
1-05. Kronos Quartet – Endless Embrace (03:48)
1-06. Kronos Quartet – Fate Astray (03:00)
1-07. Kronos Quartet – The Sun Rises (05:44)
1-08. Kronos Quartet – Vanishing Lines (05:29)
1-09. Kronos Quartet – The Might Of Love (03:08)
1-10. Kronos Quartet – Far Away Glance (03:15)
1-11. Kronos Quartet – Leyli’s Nightingales (03:39)
1-12. Kronos Quartet – Color Of Moonlight (04:23)
1-13. Kronos Quartet – Lover Go Mad (03:26)
1-14. Kronos Quartet – Eternal Meadow (03:21)

Download: