Kronos Quartet Learning To Play Fences As Musical Instruments (Sydney Opera House, Australia)

For over 40 years, Kronos Quartet has been reimagining the purpose of string quartets and what they can do. Making "The Reach Of Resonance" involved documenting two of their most radical projects: performing a detailed transcription of a queer rights riot as music, and learning to play barbed wire fences as musical instruments.

David Harrington founded Kronos in 1973 after hearing George Crumb's 1970 piece "Black Angels," perhaps the only string quartet inspired by the Vietnam War. Experiencing "Black Angels" for the first time is like getting struck by a lightning bolt. It portrays a voyage of the soul through an unconventional score for "amplified electric string quartet and crystal glasses" that sounds like listening to Bach while losing consciousness in a cathedral under bombardment by helicopter attacks and a plague of locusts. It incorporates complex magical numerology and mercurial, dreamlike visual notations which require creative solutions to perform. For Kronos, this involved getting out of their chairs to navigate through a jungle of musical instruments hanging from the ceiling on stage. There are screaming parts for the string players notated in the score.

George Crumb Score Fragments (Black Angels and Spiral Galaxy)

More George Crumb Scores (Makrokosmos, Time Is A Drifting River, Agnes Dei, Hymn For The Advent Of The Star-Child)

"Black Angels" can be heard below, along with a six-minute film on the piece. They are a perfect introduction to Kronos Quartet and their groundbreaking 1990 album "Black Angels," which addresses the political, physical, and spiritual consequences of war across the centuries. It also provides context for their later work making music from riots and fences.

AB101 Rioters Using Police Barricades To Shatter The Front Doors Of The California State Building (On The Cover Of A Queer Punk Zine, Left) And Leaflet From The White Night Riots (Right)

Michael Daugherty's piece for Kronos "Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover" focuses on illuminating the SUBTEXT of human speech. Daugherty composed string parts to “sing along” with actual historical speeches delivered by J. Edgar Hoover, who directed the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation virtually unchallenged from 1924 until his death in 1972. The piece opens with Hoover reciting one of his favorite mottoes: “The FBI is as close to you as your nearest telephone.” This “reassurance” to the American public served to authorize his systematic invasion of their privacy: for Hoover, the telephone became an instrument for playing out his lifetime obsession with collecting sensitive information for his so-called “secret files.”

Throughout his 48 years as director of the FBI, Hoover ordered the wiretapping of the telephones of movies stars, gangsters, presidents, civil rights activists, politicians, communist sympathizers, entertainers, and anyone who opposed his own political and moral agenda. As he speaks, Kronos conjures an expanded palette of sounds from their instruments, resembling sirens, American patriotic songs, and machine gun syncopations, creating new context for Hoover’s own words: “I hope that this presentation will serve to give you a better knowledge and a deep understanding of YOUR FBI.”

Housesitting At The Former Headquarters Of The Black Panthers During Production With Kronos Quartet (Oakland, California)

What links all these explorations of the human voice — according to David Harrington of Kronos Quartet — is that "People who regularly go to concerts have somehow convinced themselves that music is a refuge, that it’s a place to hide from the world of thoughts and ideas and action...I’m intending to spend the rest of my life attempting to change that perception." Case in point: Kronos has also made music from the voices of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and radical investigative journalist I.F. Stone (which can be heard above). Harrington sees these collaborations as part of Kronos’ wider mission: to bring the entire world, with all its messiness, violence, beauty, and humanity, into the all-too protected, bubblelike classical-music venue.”

Joan Jeanrenaud Of Kronos Quartet And Steve Elkins

For "The Reach Of Resonance," I decided to film each member of Kronos Quartet performing their own parts for "All The Rage" individually at their homes. This allowed me to focus on microscopic details of each player's role in the piece: for example, Kronos cellist Joan Jeanrenaud performing the precise pitches of glass shattering while rioters used police barricades as battering rams to storm the front doors of the California State Building; or Hank Dutt performing detailed nuances of a voice yelling "Burn it!" as the building caught fire. I later edited the individual performances together into their full context.

Steve Elkins In Kronos Quartet's Music Library (San Francisco)

Steve Elkins And David Harrington Of Kronos Quartet

Meanwhile, I attempted to track down participants in the riot to interview them about their experiences. This proved very difficult as many preferred not to identify themselves and in general there were very few people who seemed to know anything about the riot (including most of the archivists at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco).

After years of searching, I finally encountered one of the two people who actually organized the protests: Gerard Koskovich. Gerard turned out to be a goldmine. Not only was he an articulate historian and activist, but he even had a personal archive of relics he collected from the riot, including shattered glass from the California State Building and a shoe that the San Francisco police chief lost as he was chased out of the Castro on foot when he showed up to the protests posturing for votes to become San Francisco’s mayor. The shoe was later set on fire by the rioters. The short film below contains part of my impromptu interview with Gerard in San Francisco (February 2010), in an effort to document the history of the riot, and the events that sparked it.

Kronos Quartet's Hanging Setup For "Black Angels" At The Yerba Buena Center For The Arts (San Francisco, October 2010)

The following year, Gerard hosted an event at San Francisco’s GLBT History Museum to commemorate the 20 year anniversary of the AB101 Veto Riot. The event reunited many of the organizers and participants in the riot for the first time in the two decades since it had taken place, to share their memories of that night and the events that sparked it.

It also reunited several incredible photographers who took me into their attics and through hidden shoeboxes to excavate long forgotten images of the riot for "The Reach Of Resonance," including Jane Cleland and Dan Nicoletta. Dan is a legendary photographer in San Francisco, who worked in Harvey Milk’s camera store and was involved in Milk’s victorious election as the 7th openly LGBT elected official in the U.S. history. Dan photographed a lot of the archival materials seen in the Academy award-winning documentary “The Times Of Harvey Milk," and was later played by Lucas Grabeel in Gus Van Sant’s Academy award-winning feature “Milk." In an interesting twist, Dan played Carl Carlson in the film (the last person to see Harvey Milk alive).

Bob Ostertag, Steve Elkins And Sister Maejoy B. Withu At The San Francisco GLBT History Museum (September 29, 2011)

Because so many people in the room had taken part in the riot, the second half of the evening was opened up to the audience to share their memories of that historic night, which turned out to be the last of three queer riots in the history of San Francisco (and the last known one in the world). A powerful conversation ensued about the various dynamics that can lead to such a public outpouring of anger, as well as those that prevent it. The museum videotaped the discussion and excerpts can be watched below.

Blue Mountains and Sydney Opera House Illuminated By Brian Eno (Australia)

I traveled to Jon's home in the Blue Mountains of Australia where he was building Kronos Quartet a fence rig they could perform in concert halls, and documented the whole process of teaching Kronos to play them in several countries. It was at Kronos's rehearsal studio that I filmed the now notorious interview with Jon laying in bed — sheets pulled up to his nose — that people still always ask me about. Kronos was rehearsing for their upcoming tour on the other side of the wall, so Jon and I played a kind of game where I fired away questions as rapidly as I could each time Kronos paused their playing, while Jon tried to squeeze in a coherent answer before Kronos interrupted us again. It would be interesting to release the full recording of that interview one day.

A few months later, I returned to Australia to film Kronos Quartet's premiere of Jon's "Music For 4 Fences" at the Sydney Opera House. The Opera House was beautifully illuminated by Brian Eno, who had worked with Kronos Quartet on the score of one of my favorite films of the 1990s, "Heat" (starring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro).

Kronos Quartet Rehearsing "Music For 4 Fences"

I was granted several days of production with Kronos Quartet inside the Sydney Opera House in June 2009. I threw together a small handful of unused footage from that time (which can be watched below), including Kronos Quartet rehearsing "Flugufrelsarinn" by Icelandic band Sigur Rós before the concert. Later that night, they performed it as an encore to Jon's piece while still surrounded by his fences; the music emanated outward as if to suggest something fences can't contain.

Filming Bob Ostertag Kayaking In Half Moon Bay

David Harrington told me that working with Bob Ostertag and Jon Rose to make music from riots and fences changed the course of Kronos Quartet's history. It led them to work with other composers likewise exploring "the idea that musicians can turn instruments of repression and violence into musical instruments that can maybe create beauty."

One of those composers is Victor Gama, who collected musical instruments that children in Angola made out of bullet shell casings and landmines for Kronos to play.

Victor Gama's "Pangeia Instrumentos"

Eager to know more, I tracked down Victor to interview him about his work, and it turns out his his journeys into war-torn Angola to find and preserve music cut off from the rest of the world by land mines barely scratches the surface of what he's been up to. His completely unique sonic universe includes designing and 3D printing highly unusual musical instruments that incorporate constellations, the flight patterns of birds, and central African knowledge systems into their design; journeying to Antarctica to research the connection between a disappeared anthropologist and nuclear testing near the south pole; and composing a multimedia opera with the indigenous people in the rainforests of Colombia. Our conversation can be read here: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/On-Music/Victor-Gama/

We have since become friends, and collaborated together on the soundtrack of my subsequent film "Echoes of the Invisible": https://www.steveelkins.net/Cinema/Echoes-of-the-Invisible/

Steve Elkins & Glenn Weyant Turning The U.S. / Mexico Border Wall Into A Giant Musical Instrument For An Audience Of Border Patrol Near Nogales (Arizona, December 2008)

During rehearsals at the Sydney Opera House for the fence concert, Kronos began asking me about my own recent experiences transforming the U.S. / Mexico border wall into a giant musical instrument. Most of this work was done primarily around Nogales (a town split in half by the U.S. / Mexico border), while providing water and medical aid for migrants hiding in the desert. Contrary to all the sensational fear mongering about the border in the news, I found that communities on both sides of the border were continually finding creative ways to bridge the unwanted wall between them.

Remains Of A Migrant Water Bottle Preserved As A Sacred Relic At A Church Near The Mexico Border (Southern Arizona)

I saw people come to the wall every day on horseback to make sand paintings expressing messages of love and community for the other side to see. A seesaw had been built into one section of the wall, which children on each side of the border rode together. American Border Patrol kept tearing it down, but the locals kept rebuilding it. A local American resident erected memorial sculptures of missing migrants near the wall, made entirely out of their own discarded belongings which she collected from the surrounding desert: most commonly Bibles, prayer books, icons of Our Lady of Guadalupe, torn jeans, and The Diary Of Anne Frank. American and Mexican families played games like volleyball together, using the border wall as a "net." I remember one section where an artist had painted a photo-realistic hole in the border wall, depicting exactly what you would see if the wall wasn't there.

Joan Jeanrenaud And Hank Dutt Of Kronos Quartet During Production At Their Homes (San Francisco)

Another scrapped scene was about Joan's work with composer Annie Gosfield, who had written a piece for her called "The Harmony Of The Body-Machine." Annie's captivating music includes compositions for destroyed pianos, a duo for violin and drifting satellite, a concert-length work that transforms an entire Nuremberg factory into a giant musical instrument (accompanied by an enormous rusted metal acid–bath pool transported past the audience on a crane and guitars played by electric cake mixers), chamber music inspired by deteriorating 78 RPM records played by cactus needles (a common necessity when metals were at a premium during World War II), and an opera that eliminates the boundary between the concert hall and the city streets. She has also composed a duo for violin and radio jamming signals that were used to block radio transmissions in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union in World War II. Samples of her music can be heard below.

Jon Rose And Bob Ostertag

For more on working with Bob Ostertag: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Bob-Ostertag/

For more on working with Jon Rose: https://www.steveelkins.net/Interviews/Making-Reach/Jon-Rose/