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News« backSigur Rós and the Kronos Quartet at the finale of Sacrum Profanum!
Add date: Friday, 10 February 2012
Filip Berkowicz
Artistic Director of the Sacrum Profanum Festival  Sigur Rós, an Icelandic post-rock band established in 1994, is particularly known for the outstanding falsetto voice of its front man and the sound effects achieved by the use of bowed electric guitar. The group was formed in the capital of Iceland, Reykjavík, by Jón Þór Birgisson (vocals and guitar), Georg Hólm (bass guitar), and Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson (percussion). It owes its name, Icelandic for “Victory Rose”, to the front man’s sister, Sigurrós, who was born on the day that the band came into being. Sigur Rós started out on a local record label, Smekkleysa; their first album Von (“Hope”) was released in 1997, to be followed, a year later, by a remix collection entitled Von brigði. In 1998, the band took a new keyboard player, Kjartan Sveinsson, on board. Ágætis byrjun (“A Good Beginning”), an album released in 1999, proved very successful, reaching platinum sales at home and earning the band wide international acclaim. The popularity of Sigur Rós was on the rise, in part thanks to their collaboration with Radiohead on the soundtrack to Split Sides, a dance piece by Merce Cunningham. The band’s tracks were featured on soundtracks to several films and TV series, such as Vanilla Sky, 24 hours, CSI, and V. Following the album’s success, the percussionist, Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson, left the band to pursue a career in graphic design and was replaced by Orri Páll Dýrason. 2002 saw the release of ( ). The tracks were initially untitled, and it was only after a while that the band made their titles available on their website. All the songs from the album were sung in a constructed language called Vonlenska (“Hopelandic”). In 2004, the band released an EP entitled Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do, which contained three tracks composed for the purposes of the project. The EP was followed a year later by yet another album, Takk... (“Thank You”). An official single from the album, Hoppípolla, was used, among others, in advertisements for a popular science TV series, BBC Planet Earth. The band’s fifth album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (“With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly”), came out in 2008. Another thing worth mentioning is the huge success of Heima (“At Home”) (1997), a documentary about the extraordinary tour of the band throughout Iceland, showing concerts at local culture centres, in abandoned post-industrial buildings and in the mountains, in the open air, against the backdrop of the breathtaking natural landscape of the country. The second film, Inni, was released in 2011; it was the first concert DVD, documenting the band’s final tour in 2008 and contained tracks from all five albums. The band’s front man, Jón Þór Birgisson, has a parallel solo career. As part of the concert tour promoting his solo album Go, Jónsi gave two performances in Krakow at the Sacrum Profanum Festival in 2010.  Kronos Quartet - For nearly 40 years, San Francisco's Kronos Quartet—David Harrington, John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola), and Jeffrey Zeigler (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, the Grammy-winning Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 45 recordings of extraordinary breadth, and commissioning more than 750 new works and arrangements for string quartet. In 2011, Kronos became the only recipients of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. Integral to Kronos' work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world's foremost composers, including Americans Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich; Azerbaijan's Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; Poland's Henryk Górecki; and Argentina's Osvaldo Golijov. Additional collaborators from around the world have included Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man; the legendary Bollywood "playback singer" Asha Bhosle; Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq; Mexican rockers Café Tacuba; famed Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov; and iconic American singer-songwriter, Tom Waits. A non-profit organization, the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association is committed to mentoring emerging musicians and composers, and to creating, performing, and recording new works. The quartet devotes five months of each year to touring, appearing in the world's most prestigious concert halls, clubs, and festivals. Kronos is equally prolific on recordings, with a discography on Nonesuch Records including Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers that simultaneously topped Billboard’s Classical and World Music lists; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy–nominated celebration of Mexican culture; the 2003 Grammy-winner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite; and Floodplain (2009), spotlighting music from regions of the world riven by conflict.Other news:
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This will be a very special event: two remarkable concerts, two great stars, both on one stage, exclusively in Krakow. Sigur Rós and the Kronos Quartet will perform at the finale of the 10th jubilee edition of the Sacrum Profanum Festival. The concerts will take place on the 16th and 17th of September, traditionally on the main floor of the Tinning Plant of ArcelorMittal Poland. Ticket sales are scheduled to begin on March 1st.