DAVID HARRINGTON

Violinist

APRIL 2, 2003 · The Kronos Quartet plays contemporary music from all over the world. David Harrington, a violinist with the quartet, says their music resonates differently, depending on what's going on in the world. The quartet began its tour of London, Amsterdam, Germany and Italy soon after the bombs started to fall in Iraq. In his War Diary entry, Harrington talks about playing music during a war.

Kronos has toured around the world for 30 years now and I've never been asked in my life before whether I was embarrassed to be an American. But it has happened on this tour.

The kinds of questions that I've been asked from members of the audience, you know, 'Do Americans really agree with this?' and 'Do they really know what's going on?' and how informed are we... And so I do feel that audiences that we have played for here in Europe were perhaps looking for a wider answer than the one that you can see on television every minute of the day right now.

I think of music as the result of the friction between people and the world. As a bowed-string player, we rely on that friction of the bow against the string. And for me, a note is this amazing opportunity to put everything that we know and feel and believe in into. I think that is affecting the way we play as well because this desire to make every note count. And to just find more of the humanity in each piece that we play and each phrase has become a major part of our work right now.

	Kronos Quartet Kronos Quartet, In Rehearsal