The ten pieces Meet The Composer commissioned for the Kronos Quartet between 1989 and 2003 have had a major impact on our work. In our efforts to enlarge the scope of what a string quartet means and what it can do, Meet The Composer has been the ideal partner for Kronos.

When I look at the list of commissions Kronos received from Meet The Composer’s commissioning programs, it is more clear to me than ever that the organization’s staff and panels fully understood and encouraged the complexity of the endeavor that Kronos has been involved in. With these commissions, Kronos received huge votes of confidence for its artistry and its exploratory spirit. I know each of the composers felt particularly challenged by his Meet The Composer commission.

For example, when we were faced with the daunting opportunity of performing our Carnegie Hall debut and thinking over our responsibility as American musicians in such an instance, it occurred to me that we simply had to perform Howl with its author, Allen Ginsberg. How could such an idea ever become a reality? After considering which composer in the world could possibly deal with all of the challenges of this task, we made our choice. We then turned to Meet The Composer with our proposal. I am very proud that for this symbolic occasion, Meet The Composer commissioned Lee Hyla to compose his feverish setting of Howl, which Allen Ginsberg and Kronos premiered at Carnegie Hall and later recorded for Nonesuch. There is only one chance to make a statement like this and every choice made will impact the future.

We met Allen Ginsberg when he attended one of our concerts with Dumisani Maraire. Originally from Zimbabwe, Dumisani was one of the most joyous musicians Kronos has ever worked with. His Meet The Composer commission, Mai Nozipo, became the opening track on our album Pieces of Africa. In our work with composers, each one of them has given Kronos valuable information, even evidence about music and life. Dumisani taught us about the way all of our instrumental voices must be “glued” together into one ecstatic texture.

I think all experiences are connected. We are constantly seeking to balance our unsettled world. So for us the purity, the attempt at absolute purity of intonation in La Monte Young’s Chronos Christalla — which he wrote for his Meet The Composer commission — with its gentle quiet beauty, its ear-cleansing quality, is balanced in our repertoire by the despairing violence of vision that Bob Ostertag brought to our concerts with his All the Rage. Issues of AIDS and violence towards gays and lesbians had perhaps never made it into the string quartet repertoire before. Seemingly all of a sudden with All the Rage our concerts could make statements about such issues. This venerable art form which derives great strengths from its legendary masterpieces proved it could enlarge and adapt itself to become a musical confrontation with a societal crisis.

The very fact that Meet The Composer existed acted as a challenge for Kronos to extend its own boundaries. One of our earliest adventures with sampling technology was in the Meet The Composer-commissioned work by Jay Cloidt called Exploded View. Miraculously, sounds which had been studiously avoided in concert halls for years were all there in one piece — barking dogs, trucks, crying babies, a particularly fantastic 60-cycle hum, you name it. It was a delicious time for the music of Kronos.

Mohican composer Brent Michael Davids brought into our rehearsals and concerts many unusual hand-made instruments and some exquisitely delicate sounds of Native American culture and beautiful viewpoints about nature that we had never before encountered.

When I think about the generosity of vision shown by Meet The Composer to Kronos and our audiences, I am inspired and energized. I can think of no other commissioning body that, in such a short amount of time, has expanded the context of an art form so completely. From any standpoint I find important and useful, whether that of a spiritual journey, or pure sounds, or issues of society, or future elements of concert life, Meet The Composer responded to our search for musical answers.

Surely a relationship with a composer who encourages a group to hear things in a fresh way will influence all the music that group plays, forever. And the Kronos Quartet has Meet The Composer to thank for so often allowing us to hear the world in new ways and to point in bold directions for the future of our music.