Kronos Quartet is rooted in the classical-quartet tradition, but its members look and sometimes sound more like escapees from the college-music circuit. Kronos has consistently and irreverently bridged musical styles ranging from jazz, rock and blues to folk and avant-garde music, creating, in effect, a challenging commentary on the different kinds of music available in our culture. Its efforts on earlier releases like White Man Sleeps (1987) and Black Angels (1990) have scrambled cultural codes, calling into question the ways in which musical genres are categorized.

Pieces of Africa, consisting of works written specifically for the quartet by African composers, continues Kronos's obliteration of boundaries. The album merges traditional African concepts of composition and time with the typically Western instruments found in the string quartet. The result is not merely novel or exotic but a fresh, real and unusual musical experience.

Instead of relying on the Western concept of harmonic tension and release, these pieces take shape through the development of motives, rhythm and timbre. Melodic lines, like those in "Ekitundu Ekisooka" ("First Movement," composed by Justinian Tamusuza), may be drawn from scales that are atypical in the Western repertoire. The rhythmic layers in "Wawshishijay" ("Our Beginning," by Obo Addy) never compete but rather continually unfold and transform. The two violins, viola and cello combine with traditional African instruments such as the mbira (thumb piano) to create a gamut of compelling, sensual textures: the sinewy, fervent lines of "Escalay" ("Waterwheel," by Hamza El Din) or the rhythmic effusion of "Tilliboyo" ("Sunset," by Foday Musa Suso). This results in a sense of time that is both broad and immediate.

Kronos continues not only to perform contemporary music but to establish important directions for it. Pieces of Africa is at once a constructive critique and an album of quiet, deep and expansive joy. (RS 628)

SUSAN RICHARDSON