Violinist David Harrington chats to Limelight about music, 9/11, spirituality and deep space.

As if they weren’t already adventurous enough, Kronos Quartet is reaching for the stars to bring us sounds never before heard by human ears. Sun Rings, for string quartet, chorus and pre-recorded spacescapes, is a unique collaboration between NASA, American composer Terry Riley and the Kronos Quartet. Immersive projections of the planets will accompany this journey into deep space when the work has its Australian premieres at the Melbourne Festival and Adelaide’s Earth Station in October. Limelight caught up with Kronos Quartet founding violinist David Harrington to talk about this miraculous space-age music.

Interview

Kronos performs in Australia quite regularly, but never before at anything like the Womad Earth Station environmental festival. What appealed to you about this particular setting?

Earth Station is an absolutely perfect fit for what Kronos has been doing and what I’m hoping we will be doing in the future. The idea of the entire festival, the camping venue of the Belair Nationa Park and just everything about it leads me to think that this is the concert format of the future, in a way. Bringing together seemingly different fields of endeavour and knowledge...