Originally assembled to perform George Crumb’s caustic antiwar opus “Black Angels” in 1973, Kronos Quartet has spent some four decades on the cutting edge of new music, forging a vast international network of collaborators. But the San Francisco string quartet’s global vision has rarely seemed as timely and urgent as the Kronos Festival 2017: Here and Now, which runs at the SFJazz Center from Thursday, Feb. 2, to Saturday, Feb. 4.

I am honored to announce my artist residency at the upcoming KRONOS FESTIVAL 2017 through which ten of my old and new works will be performed. The 3-day festival also includes four new works of mine, specifically commissioned for this festival and which all will be performed between Feb 2-4 at San Francisco Jazz Center.

My new pieces will involve many extraordinary bay area ensembles such as one and only Kronos Quartet, iconic Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat, San Francisco Girls Chorus, Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, Delphi Trio, Amaranth Quartet, The Living Earth Show and Mobius Trio. The program also includes my rendition of Kayhan Kalhor and Mohammadreza Shajarian's iconic song, "The Rain" arranged for Kronos Quartet and a new tribute piece in memory of prominent Persian violinist Parviz Yahaghi.

I am glad to share with you a video recording of "Sound, Only Sound Remains" (2016) performed by Kronos Quartet and San Francisco Girls Chorus at SFJAZZ in February 2016 as part of Kronos Festival 2016: Explorer Series. The piece incorporates the voices of tens of female singers from Iran featuring amazing talents, Ooldouz Poori, Mina Momeni and Loreta Hayrapetian (1911-1998). Contributors include Forough Farrokhzad, Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai, Nazli Rahmanian, Tara Tiba, Roohangiz and Madam Lazaria.

My most recent piece, The Wind Will Blow Us Away, for String Quartet which was commissioned by my friend and long-time collaborator, Hannah Nicholas was premiered at The New Tropic, Miami, Fl as part of O, Miami Poetry Festival on April 4th. The piece was performed again at The New World Symphony on April 10th by Hannah Nicholas, Julia Yang, Maya Cohon and Rebecca Reale. The visuals for this piece were original and designed by Syrian NY-based artist, Kevork Mourad. The piece more of a descriptive piece of music which is based on the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad, arguably one of Iran's most influential female poets of the 20th century, a controversial modernist poet and an iconoclast who died tragically in the late 60's. The poetry is recited by the performers and embedded inside the piece.

The Kronos Quartet is so often on the road that even its fans forget the group is based here. So it occurred to its members—David Harrington and John Sherba, violins; Hank Dutt, viola; and Sunny Yang, cello—that an annual festival dedicated to the unusual repertory Kronos inspires and champions might strengthen the ties between this forward-looking ensemble and its home. And so the group presented a series of concerts from Feb. 4 through 7 largely devoted to emerging composers at SFJazz Center, one of this city’s most appealing new venues. Like Kronos’s tribute to the composer Terry Riley last year, also at SFJazz, these programs, under the banner “Explorer Series,” typically featured a bevy of guest artists and unusual instruments, to say nothing of the atmospheric “backing tracks” intrinsic to the scores the group favors.

San Francisco composer Sahba Aminikia never heard a woman sing in public, on radio or television while growing up in Tehran in the 1980s. They were banned from doing so by Iran’s ruling mullahs after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The clerics think the solo female voice can trigger lust, says Aminikia. But he wanted to hear and share the singing of Iranian women, who can only perform in private homes, for all-female audiences or, since the reforms of the 1990s, in a background chorus.