As part of its 40th anniversary, the Kronos Quartet will present Kronos at 40, a five-day program that will include 28 free performances on Lincoln Center’s plazas during the opening week of this year’s Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival, which runs from July 24 through Aug. 11. The ensemble’s programs will include 11 premieres (including four newly commissioned works), and collaborations with dancers, pop musicians and indie classical performers. They are also the group’s first New York performances with its new cellist, Sunny Jungin Yang.
The Kronos series is unusual for Lincoln Center Out of Doors, a festival more typically given to unrelated (or loosely related) single-evening events. That format is largely preserved in the festival’s second and third weeks.
This year’s Out of Doors, the 43rd, will include more than 100 free performances, including a concert of traditional Greek music by Magda Giannikou (July 26); a tribute to Lead Belly by Dan Zanes and Friends (July 27); a new arrangement of the Pixies album “Surfer Rosa,†by the Asphalt Orchestra (July 28); dance performances by Kyle Abraham’s Abraham.In.Motion and The Living Word Project (Aug. 1); and concerts by Rubén Blades (Aug. 7); the Crickets (Buddy Holly’s band) and Nick Lowe (both Aug. 10); and Bobby Rush and Allen Toussaint (both Aug. 11).
Kronos at 40 begins with the world premiere of “Ritual Cycle,†a dance piece by Mark Dendy Dance & Theater Projects (July 24 and 25) and an Afrobeat and Afro-futurist program in which the Kronos will join a roster that includes Red Hot + Fela Live, Tony Allen, Superhuman Happiness and members of several indie-rock bands. Other Kronos performances include programs of works written or arranged for the ensemble by Omar Souleyman, Ram Narayan and Van-Anh Vanessa Vo (July 26); Bryce Dessner, Clint Mansell and Dan Deacon (July 28) among others; and collaborations with My Brightest Diamond and Emily Wells (July 25); and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (July 27).
