It’s not easy to transform the Civic auditorium in Santa Cruz into a venue for musical intimacy. For me the place forever brings back memories of those events in middle school gymnasiums which all parents with children with musical aspirations have endured: we dutifully sat on bone-numbing bleachers faithfully checking off each cacophonous offering of unintended quarter tones, bent notes and polyrhythms. But somehow, the unseen hoards of backstage workers worked their magic at the Civic and on Sunday evening we were transported on a journey across the globe in the hands of that most intimate of music ensembles, the string quartet. Lighting designer Laurence Neff’s imaginative use of the backdrop, presenting abstract shapes and color patterns set the scene. Was that a temple peeking through bamboo shadows?

So, with the stage all set a memorable evening of music was in store. The performance by the Kronos Quartet was nothing short of spectacular. With nine pieces on the program and no intermission it would have been easy to drift off into a quiet daydream, but the energy and immediacy of the performance was highly contagious. This program truly demonstrated this quartet’s impact on contemporary music for every piece had either been written for, or arranged for, this now legendary ensemble of David Harrington, John Sherba, Hank Dutt and Sunny Yang, currently celebrating their 40^th year together.

Metamorphosis was the underlying theme in the first three pieces: first, that of the human soul “On the Wings of Pegasus” composed by the youngest composer ever to write for the The Kronos Quartet, 21 year old Yuri Boguinia; second in a work about “Clouded Yellow” butterflies, that symbol of regeneration caught for a moment in fleeting glimpses. Composer Michael Gordon created haunting soaring sounds high above low open strings which provided the ground above which these fragile creatures assemble in large clouds, blurring their outlines, their melodies, their harmonies. Metamorphosis of a different nature was seen and heard in “Death to Kosmische” by Nicole Lizee, in which the composer explores “the faded and twisted remnants” of this faze in East German pop music of the 1960’s incorporating two now archaic electronic instruments.

For the next three pieces the Kronos players were joined on stage by special guest artist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, originally from Hanoi. Her appearance was dramatic in stunning costume and headdress, her music was riveting, her stage presence theatrical, and her contribution to Vietnamese musical culture outstanding. Like Chinary Ung’s Spiral X: “In Memoriam” harrowing exploration of genocide in his home country of Cambodia performed by the Del Sol String Quartet in the Blue Room at last year’s Cabrillo Festival, “All Clear” is a five-movement stage work written by Vân-Ánh in close collaboration with David Harrington, recounting the suffering of those people from all sides who were caught up in the Vietnam war. The sound of the dàn Bâu, a one-stringed plucked instrument with a buffalo horn whammy bar, not only evokes the sound of mourning but represents the Viet cultural legacy which survived the war. Overlaid with pre-recorded sounds from Vietnam and the poetry of a 19^th century woman the instrumentalist wove their ever-changing web of sound. “Queen of the Night” explored the spiritual music used in the Ceremony of Death where added percussion provides insistent rhythm as the melodic lines fly with the freedom of the soul. Vân-Ánh writes that after years playing for spiritual ceremonies she felt “able to breath and inhale in both worlds,” the living and the dead. Two worlds, love and death, also cohabit in the “Prelude from Tristan und Isolde,” and in this arrangement by Aleksandra Vrebalov a sea of lush harmonies, delicacy of tone, subtle dynamics combine to portray a fragile landscape of the inner soul.

“Sim Shalom” gave cellist Sunny Yang the opportunity to take center stage in this piece inspired by the emotional intense recording made by Polish cantor Alter Yechiel Karnoil. The program ended with a work about accented English by Pamela Z entitled “And the Movement of the Tongue.” Commissioned for the Kronos Quartet the work has a soundtrack featuring interviews with people speaking English in a variety of accents, some regional, some international, and these are sometimes heard in complete sentences and at other times as phonemes and rhythmic fragments.

The audience responded to this piece with enthusiastic applause and expressed their appreciation for the evening’s concert with a spontaneous standing ovation. After our exciting trip around the world a rousing rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” provided an appropriate reminder to us of the quartet’s beginnings in Seattle forty years ago. Happy anniversary, Kronos!