La Monte Young, Chronos Kristalla from The Magic Chord x 4

To mark the closing of the exhibition “Minimal”, the Bourse de Commerce and the New York–based label Blank Forms present Chronos Kristalla from The Magic Chord x 4, a major composition by La Monte Young—founder and emblematic figure of minimalist music—in a previously unseen version. The work is performed in the museum’s Rotunda by a double string quartet, conducted by Charles Curtis, within a luminous and visual environment designed by Marian Zazeela and Jung Hee Choi.

La Monte Young, Chronos Kristalla from The Magic Chord x 4, 90 VII 22, ca. 3:00 AM NYC 
New Version of Chronos Kristalla for String Octet, 20 IV 12, NYC
In a setting of Dream Light by Marian Zazeela and Time Crystals Rippling Over the Magenta Ocean by Jung Hee Choi
With The Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble led by Charles Curtis
 

Cello: Charles Curtis, Reynard Rott, Judith Hamman, Peter Ko 
Violin: Jeff Thayer, Clara Levy
Viola: Eyvind Kang, Andrew Mcintosh

Chronos Kristalla is a major composition for string quartet by legendary American avant-garde composer La Monte Young (b. 1935). Originally composed in 1989–90, and commissioned for the Kronos Quartet, this multi-hour spectacle of close tunings, haunting natural harmonics, and uncanny resonances received a handful of performances between 1990 and 1995. Despite its significance, no commercial recording of the piece exists, and the work has not been heard publicly for more than thirty years. 

Chronos Kristalla draws on the pitches and just-intonation tunings of “The Magic Chord” from Young’s magnum opus The Well-Tuned Piano and transfers them to string instruments, opening a new dimension of continuity. Despite gradual changes in pitch, the listener experiences the piece as though situated within an immutable sound installation. The ensuing richness of harmony vies with the immateriality of the timbre to create an otherworldly atmosphere, evoking the composer’s fabled first musical influence: the sound of wind blowing through the chinks between the logs of the cabin in Idaho where he was born.

Comme l’a déclaré La Monte Young à propos de son travail avec Marian Zazeela : « notre médium est le temps ». Le titre Chronos Kristalla fait référence à Chronos, le dieu grec du temps, et suggère la cristallisation du temps, passant d’un flux continu à une solidité et une immobilité. Bien que l’œuvre continue d’évoluer au fil des représentations, cette dernière itération de Chronos Kristalla double l’instrumentation afin de clarifier davantage les accords et de prolonger la durée des sons.  

As Young has stated of his work with Marian Zazeela, “Our medium is time.” The title of Chronos Kristalla references Chronos, the Greek god of time, and suggests the crystallization of time from a steady flow into solidity and stillness. While the work itself continues to evolve over subsequent performances, this latest iteration of Chronos Kristalla doubles the instrumentation to further clarify the tunings and sustain longer durations.

As in all of Young’s concert performance pieces, Chronos Kristalla will be performed in a lighting environment created by artist Marian Zazeela and now realized by Jung Hee Choi. The premiere of the octet version will also incorporate Choi’s light projection Time Crystals Rippling Over the Magenta Ocean.

La Monte Young (b. 1935) is a world-renowned composer, performer, and artist. For over sixty-five years, he has advanced durational musical composition, developed the technique of just intonation, and explored the psychological and phenomenological effects of precise tuning in physical sound environments. In 1958, he composed the seminal work Trio for Strings, acknowledged as the first written work of musical minimalism. In 1962, alongside his longtime collaborator and partner Marian Zazeela, they formed the influential group The Theatre of Eternal Music and developed a radical performance practice that included Terry Riley, Angus MacLise, Tony Conrad, and John Cale. In 1970, Young and Zazeela supported Indian master vocalist Pandit Pran Nath’s journey to the United States, eventually spending twenty-six years as his disciples in the Kirana style of Indian classical singing. In 1974, Young premiered his monumental, ongoing, improvisatory solo piano piece The Well-Tuned Piano (1964) in Rome on a specially tuned Bösendorfer piano. With the support of the Dia Art Foundation, Young and Zazeela built their most expansive version of Dream House, a sound and light environment at the former New York Mercantile Exchange building, where it was open to the public from 1979 to 1985. The MELA Foundation Dream House, built in 1993, remains open to the public in its permanent home at 275 Church Street, where Young still frequently performs his work, including with The Theatre of Eternal Music and The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, founded in 2002 with Zazeela and their senior disciple Jung Hee Choi. 

 Marian Zazeela (1940–2024) is an American visual artist, painter, and musician.  Beginning in the 1960s, she developed a singular visual language, integrating light, color, and sculptural forms into immersive environments. Marian Zazeela’s light environments and graphic work shaped the visual language of nearly all the works of her partner, La Monte Young. A founding member of The Theatre of Eternal Music, she served as a vocalist in almost all of the ensemble’s concerts. In 2021, Marian Zazeela was honored as one of fourteen artists to receive the prestigious Anonymous Was A Woman Award, in recognition of her significant contributions. Her installations, works on paper, and performances have been presented by major American and European institutions, most recently at Dia Beacon (2019–2022) and Artists Space in New York in 2024.

Charles Curtis (b. 1960) is a major avant-garde cellist. A Juilliard graduate, he studied just intonation, improvisation, and the Kirana style of Indian classical vocal music with La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath. He has devoted much of his musical life to performing La Monte Young’s works, leading numerous performances in Europe and the United States. Curtis devised the just-intonation tuning for the complete original version of Trio for Strings, premiered at the Dia Art Foundation’s Dream House in 2015, and is among the few musicians to have performed in duo with La Monte Young. Since 2000, he has taught at the University of California, San Diego.

Jung Hee Choi (b. 1969) is a multimedia artist and musician based in New York, recognized for her series of environmental compositions, Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest—constellations of evolving light-point drawings, incense, sound, and performance. A disciple of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela since 1999, she co-founded The Just Alap Raga Ensemble in 2002 and has participated in all presentations of their installations and performances worldwide. Since 2015, Jung Hee Choi’s works have been an integral part of the Dream House, presented simultaneously with those of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, forming a continuous, collaborative environment of sound and light.