Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger

Three years ago Kronos Quartet released an album titled Folk Songs, a journey into Appalachian tradition featuring guest singers Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens and Natalie Merchant (a Top of the World in #129). It worked so well that they’ve now recorded 15 tunes from Pete Seeger’s songbook in a similar style. In a way Long Time Passing brings Kronos full circle. Ken Benshoof’s ‘Traveling Music’, which interpolates the refrain from Seeger’s ‘Kisses Sweeter Than Wine’, was the first original work the quartet commissioned back in the 1970s and it is resurrected here in jaunty fashion with Aoife O’Donovan on vocals.

With arrangements by Jacob Garchik (who also worked on Folk Songs and the quartet’s album with Mali’s Trio Da Kali), Seeger’s banjo tunes are seamlessly transposed and expanded for the violins of David Harrington and John Sherba, Hank Dutt’s viola and Sunny Yang’s cello to create a striking accompaniment for the contrasting voices of guest singers: Spain’s Maria Arnal, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight, Ethiopian Meklit Hadero, Zoe Mulford as well as O’Donovan and the returning Amidon. It’s not the most challenging music the quartet has ever tackled, but they manage to make even such over-familiar tunes as ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ and ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ sound like you’re hearing them anew.