The Kronos Quartet’s new album celebrates the
Singer and activist who embraced
music from across the world – and still has so much to teach us
Long Time Passing is the only Kronos Quartet album where the original idea behind it has an exact date and place. My daughter, Bonnie Quinn, is a third-grade teacher in San Francisco’s Francis Scott Key Elementary School. Kronos plays for her students every year, and on 2 May 2018 her students were joined by pupils from Monroe Elementary School across the city for our concert. Monroe’s teacher Mark Rosenberg brought his guitar. Our final piece that day was We Shall Overcome – the old spiritual that, with help from Pete Seeger, became a key anthem of the Civil Rights movement in the US. All the kids sang with us while Mark led the singing and joined in with his guitar. The whole room was filled with energy, optimism and promise. Mark said to me: “Tomorrow would have been Pete Seeger’s 99th birthday.” I remember replying: “That means we can celebrate his 100th birthday next year!”
That’s how our new album, Long Time Passing, had its beginning: as a 100th birthday tribute to a beloved performer who spent decades exploring the diversity of the world’s music and sharing it with many generations of audiences along the way.