Kronos Quartet’s New Program on Humanity’s Greatest Threats
A Hard Rain is the Kronos Quartet’s newest large-scale program, created in collaboration with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and inspired by the Doomsday Clock. An idea born in Chicago, where Kronos performed for a gathering of Nobel Prize–winning physicists addressing existential threats such as nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. That performance—combining music with readings from Hiroshima survivors, world leaders, and historical archives—sparked the vision for a program exploring the fragility of civilization and honoring the scientists working to safeguard it.
Marking the 80th anniversary of the Trinity nuclear test, the Kronos Quartet, together with The Hard Rain Collective, has released two powerful reimaginings of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.” The sung version, Hard Rain, features an eclectic ensemble of voices including Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, Allison Russell, Laurie Anderson, and Stephin Merritt, supported by members of Belle & Sebastian, Deerhoof, Patti Smith’s band, and a Brooklyn choir. Its counterpart, Hard Rain (Drone), offers an experimental spoken-word interpretation featuring Ringo Starr, Tom Morello, Ocean Vuong, Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others. The full program expands these collaborations, with Russell as a guest artist and poet Ocean Vuong contributing new spoken texts.
Framed by historical “near misses” when humanity narrowly avoided catastrophe, the concert weaves together readings from Gorbachev’s private reflections, Saddam Hussein’s cabinet transcripts on nuclear risk, testimonies of Hiroshima survivors, and accounts of genocides averted with Kronos’ repertoire, creating a narrative that reveals how close the world has come to disaster and the urgent need for vigilance. Blending music, testimony, and collaborations with scientists, poets, and musicians, A Hard Rain becomes more than a concert; it is an artistic reckoning with humanity’s greatest threats and a call to action for our survival.
For 50 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet — David Harrington (violin), Gabriela Díaz (violin), Ayane Kozasa (viola), and Paul Wiancko (cello) — has challenged and reimagined what a string quartet can be. Founded at a time when the form was largely centered on long-established, Western European traditions, Kronos has been at the forefront of revolutionizing the string quartet into a living art form. Today, with new voices and renewed vision, Kronos continues to forge the sound of the people and issues of our time.
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We invite you to contact us now about finding a date to bring A Hard Rain to your series.