Smithsonian Folkways has announced a new album titled ‘Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet & Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger.’ The release date is October 9th, 2020. The album is a tribute to the music, political philosophy, and social effect of highly influential American folk singer Pete Seeger.
Like Pete Seeger’s music, San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet was birthed in protest. Violinist David Harrington was inspired to form the group in 1973 partially in response to the terrors of the Vietnam War. Throughout Kronos’ more than 60 albums are examples of a worldview that equals Seeger – whether it’s the group speaking truth to power (like 1996’s Howl, U.S.A.) or sharing its platform with a global community of artists (including Homayun Sakhi and Alim and Fargana Qasimov on Folkways’ 2010 release Rainbow: Music of Central Asia Vol. 8).
“Pete Seeger has been part of my life for as long as I can remember,” Harrington says, citing the live album We Shall Overcome as a pivotal recording. Joining the acclaimed quartet are Sam Amidon, Maria Arnal, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight, Meklit, and Aoife O’Donovan. These artists give voice to the plainspoken songs of struggle that Seeger both wrote and collected in his seventy-plus years as a musician, while Jacob Garchik and Kronos’ arrangements translate his banjo-playing for the group’s two violins, viola, and cello.
Kronos Quartet includes David Harrington on violin; John Sherba on violin; Hank Dutt on viola; and Sunny Yang on cello.
Author: World Music Central News Room
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