Winter Was Hard is a studio album by the Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...

. It contains compositions by Aulis Sallinen

Aulis Sallinen

Aulis Sallinen is a Finnish contemporary classical music composer. He writes in a modern, though tonal and not experimental music style. He studied at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Joonas Kokkonen...

, Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...

, Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...

, Anton Webern

Anton Webern

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

, John Zorn

John Zorn

John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

, John Lurie

John Lurie

John Lurie is an American actor, musician, painter and producer. He is co-founder of The Lounge Lizards, a jazz ensemble. Lurie has acted in 19 films including Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law, composed and performed music for 20 television and film works, and he produced and starred in...

, Ástor Piazzolla

Ástor Piazzolla

Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music...

, Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...

, and Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

.

Track listing

Critical reception

The album was listed at #11 in the Los Angeles Times Classical Top 25 of 1989. Brian Olewnick, in the All Music Guide to Jazz, calls it a "fairly typical early mélange type recording by Kronos, mixing in au courant contemporary fare with a downtown edge and 20th century classics."

Musicians

• David Harrington - violin
  Violin
  The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
  
  
• John Sherba - violin
• Hank Dutt - viola
  Viola
  The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
  
  
• Joan Jeanrenaud
  Joan Jeanrenaud
  Joan Jeanrenaud, née Dutcher , is an American cello player. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, she played with the Kronos Quartet from 1978 until 1999, when, after a sabbatical, she left to pursue a solo career and collaborations with other artists, in part due being diagnosed with multiple...
  
   - cello
  Cello
  The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
  
  
• San Francisco Girls Chorus, Elizabeth Appling, director ("Winter Was Hard Op. 20")
• Earl L. Miller - reed organ
  Reed organ
  A reed organ, also called a parlor organ, pump organ, cabinet organ, cottage organ, is an organ that generates its sounds using free metal reeds...
  
   ("Winter Was Hard Op. 20")
• Christian Marclay - turntables
  Turntablism
  Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer.The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...
  
   ("Forbidden Fruit")
• Ohta Hiromi - voice ("Forbidden Fruit")

Production

• Tracks 1-4, 6-10 recorded November 1987 at Methuen Memorial Music Hall
  Methuen Memorial Music Hall
  Methuen Memorial Music Hall, initially named Serlo Organ Hall, was built by Edward Francis Searles to house "The Great Organ", a very large pipe organ that had been built for the Boston Music Hall...
  
  , Methuen, Massachusetts
  Methuen, Massachusetts
  Methuen is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 43,789 at the 2000 census.-History:Methuen was first settled in 1642 and was officially incorporated in 1726; it is named for the British diplomat Sir Paul Methuen. Methuen was originally part of Haverhill,...
  
  
  • John Newton - Engineer
• Track 1 recorded January 1988 at St. Ignatius Church, San Francisco, CA
  • Howard Johnston, John Newton - Engineers
• Track 5 produced by John Zorn, recorded September 1987 at Russian Hill Recording, San Francisco, CA (Howard Johnston - Engineer) and at Metal Box Studio, Tokyo, Japan (Ono Seigen - Engineer); mixed September 1987 at CBS Roppongi Studio, Tokyo, Japan by Ono Seigen