Performing Arts

Wortham Center Opens New Season with Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet

Tickets are now on sale for The Wortham Center for the Performing Arts 2019/2020 season featuring more than two dozen shows by top touring performers in music, theatre, dance, comedy and other arts. San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet kicks things off with a concert on Tuesday, September 17, at 7 p.m.

“As a 500-seat house, artists such as Kronos Quartet are often out of our price range,” says Wortham Center managing director Rae Geoffrey. “However, an opportunity arose to present this company in the opening slot and we jumped at the chance to showcase them in celebration of the Wortham expansion.”

Kronos Quartet combines a spirit of exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. Their program features more than a dozen compositions, including works by Philip Glass, Thelonious Monk (arr. Randall Woolf), John Coltrane (arr. Jacob Garchik) and Pete Townshend (arr. Jacob Garchik). “Glorious Mahalia”, a piece written for Kronos by Stacy Garrop, features the recorded voices of Mahalia Jackson and Studs Terkel.

“We want to explore as many corners of the light-filled jewel that is the world of music as we can,” says David Harrington, artistic director, founder and violinist of Kronos Quartet. “By using the strength and energy found within the contrast of sonic elements, we hope to arrive at a revitalized feeling about the present and future.”

Kronos Quartet is considered by many to be one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with some of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 1,000 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos has received more than 40 awards, including the Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prize. In 2018, the Quartet became the first U.S.-based musical group to receive the WOMEX (World Music Expo) Artist Award.

The Wortham Center for the Performing Arts offcially opens in September at 18 Biltmore Avenue in downtown Asheville. Tickets for the Kronos Quartet performance are $20–$45. To purchase tickets to this or other concerts or to learn more, visit DWTheatre.com or call 828.257.4530.

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