Black Angels (2023 Reissue, Nonesuch, 2 LPs)

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Nonesuch releases Kronos Quartet's award-winning 1990
album Black Angels on vinyl on February 16, 2024, to
coincide with Kronos Quartet: Five Decades , a year-long
celebration of the quartet's 50th anniversary. First
released in 1990, the album features David Harrington
(violin), John Sherba, (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Joan
Jeanrenaud (cello) performing George Crumb's title piece,
which inspired Harrington to found the quartet in 1973,
and works by Charles Ives, István Márta, Thomas Tallis,
and Dmitri Shostakovich. Crumb's title piece, called "an
unusually elevated and searing Vietnam War protest? by
the New York Times , sets a dark, powerful tone for this
collection, which addresses the political/physical/spiritual
consequences of war. The fourth side of the vinyl edition
is an etching of an illustration created especially for this
purpose by Matt Mahurin, whose work is featured on the
original album cover. "Stylishly packaged, intelligently
programmed, superbly recorded and brilliantly performed,?
proclaimed Gramophone . "In short, very much the sort
of disc we've come to expect from the talented and
imaginative Kronos Quartet.? The Evening Standard
included it among its "100 Definitive Classical Albums of
the 20th Century.