Kronos Quartet: Kronos Caravan

Kronos Quartet's love of surprises and avant-garde experiments has typecast the group as a bunch of boho weirdos. Yet the string quartet, which in 1998 celebrated its 25th year, is severely underrated when it comes to its dedication to premiering the works of international composers. Just about every nation has its version of the violin, and Kronos has made an effort to represent string music from every corner of the world. Kronos Caravan is ostensibly centered on the region known as Pannonia—the area that connects Europe with the Mediterranean and Asia—but, predictably, the compositions are from all over the place. Rahul Dev Burman's "Aaj Ki Raat" is an interpretation of a 1973 Bollywood film score, while "La Muerte Chiquita" was written by Enrique Rangel, leader of the iconoclastic Mexican rock band Café Tacuba. San Francisco minimalist pioneer Terry Riley contributes "Cortejo Funebre en el Monte Diablo," a bracing neo-electronic piece dedicated to the memory of Kronos leader David Harrington's son. "Romance No. 1" is Carlos Paredes' take on Portuguese fado music, while "Miserlou Twist" is Dick Dale's classic surf anthem remade to highlight its Middle Eastern accents. Plenty of other impressive pieces fill out Caravan, one of the group's most compelling and accessible recordings to date. But the album probably wouldn't cohere as well were it not for the involvement of Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, whose arrangements adeptly connect each piece (and each piece of international character) to the next. It's a globe-trotting treat, like walking through a world market and being bombarded by dozens of exotic spices at once.