Sam Green & Kronos Quartet

Chamber music memoir

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS — Documentarian Sam Green pairs up with the legendary Kronos Quartet for this work-in-progress film-and-live-music meeting of the minds. Green’s doc, A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary by Sam Green and Kronos Quartet, tells the quartet’s 40+ year story, and they provide a live score in the flesh at MASS MoCA on Friday, December 8, at 8pm, in MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center.

For over 40 years the 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, changing the way we think about music. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 900 works and arrangements for string quartet. The ensemble has collaborated extensively with the “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, Henryk Górecki, Philip Glass, and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; performed live with the likes of Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Noam Chomsky, and The National, among others; and has appeared on recordings by artists from Nine Inch Nails to Nelly Furtado to Joan Armatrading. Kronos has received over 40 awards, including the Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prize, a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004), and “Musicians of the Year” (2003) from Musical America.

In Sam Green’s most recent documentary, A Thousand Thoughts, he follows the Kronos Quartet’s momentous career, from the group’s radical origins to long-running collaborations with musical icons such as Philip Glass and Tanya Tagaq. Green uses the quartet’s storied history as a springboard “to create a larger work about the mysterious ways in which music moves us; about time passing, loss, and beauty, and about utopia.” Performed rather than screened, this work-in-progress “live documentary” will bring audience and filmmaker together for a singular collective experience — think TED Talk meets concert — with Green narrating on stage, cueing images and videos, and Kronos itself providing the live soundtrack. A Thousand Thoughts is slated to premiere at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University in January 2018.

Sam Green began his career making traditional feature-length documentaries steeped in the political; his Academy Award-nominated The Weather Underground tells the story of a group of radical young women and men who tried to violently overthrow the U.S. government during the late 1960s and ‘70s. In 2010, he stumbled into the “live documentary” form when asked to do a presentation about a work-in-progress film. The presentation format resonated so strongly with the audience that it soon became a thing itself. Green’s first “live documentary,” Utopia in Four Movements, formally premiered at Sundance in 2010, followed by The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, which premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with live soundtrack from Yo La Tengo, and has since been performed countless times across the globe — including at MASS MoCA during the Solid Sound Festival in 2013. Green was also previously at MASS MoCA with The Measure of All Things in 2014.

On Friday, December 8, at 8pm, Sam Green brings to life the Kronos Quartet’s “extraordinary career of boundary-breaking discovery and innovation” (The New York Times) during a communal storytelling experience that transcends the screen. This is one documentary that can never be saved to your Netflix queue.

Lickety Split, MASS MoCA’s in-house café, serves up fresh salads, homemade soup, and lip-smacking pub fare. The MASS MoCA bar is always well-stocked with local beer from Bright Ideas Brewing and Berkshire Mountain Distillery spirits. Tickets are $20 for students, $30 in advance, $40 day of, and $54 preferred. Tickets for all events are available through the MASS MoCA box office located on Marshall Street in North Adams, open 11am to 5pm every day except Tuesdays. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 x1 during box office hours or purchased online at massmoca.org. All events are held rain or shine.

Images
High-resolution images of MASS MoCA’s fall 2017 events are available through this link.

About MASS MoCA
MASS MoCA is one of the world’s liveliest (and largest) centers for making, displaying, and enjoying today’s most important art, music, dance, theater, film, and video. MASS MoCA nearly doubled its gallery space in spring 2017, with artist partnerships that include Laurie Anderson, the Louise Bourgeois Trust, Jenny Holzer, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and James Turrell.

Gallery admission is $20 for adults, $18 for veterans and seniors, $12 for students, $8 for children 6 to 16, and free for children 5 and under. Members are admitted free year-round. The Hall Art Foundation’s Anselm Kiefer exhibition is seasonal and currently on view. For additional information, call 413.662.2111 x1 or visit massmoca.org

Hours
11am to 5pm, closed Tuesdays

Download the Sam Green & Kronos Quartet press release here.