Kronos Quartet and Mary Kouyoumdjian’s New Album, “WITNESS”

Released on Phenotypic Recordings, the album features works by composer and  documentarian Mary Kouyoumdjian

A GRAMMY-Award winning ensemble, the Kronos Quartet has released a new portrait album featuring the works of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Armenian-American composer and documentarian Mary Kouyoumdjian. 

Her first portrait album, “WITNESS” showcases Kouyoumdjian’s unique integration of testimonies from resilient individuals and field recordings of place, which seeks to humanize complex experiences around conflict and invite empathy. 

The works include an arrangement written especially for Kronos of the traditional song Groung (meaning “crane”); Bombs of Beirut; I Haven’t the Words; and Silent Cranes. 

“This collection is an open letter to the tragic hymn of transmitted trauma and the possibility of art and magnificently gifted artists to help create new life,” writes the Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, who often collaborates with Kouyoumdjian. 

All streaming proceeds from the album will be donated to Kooyrigs and the Lebanese Red Cross to support the Armenian and Lebanese communities.

To purchase and listen to this album, click here. A vinyl version of the release will be available in Spring 2025.

Additionally, at its annual Kronos Festival in San Francisco in April 2025 at SF JAZZ, the Kronos Quartet will be performing works from the album alongside a program themed around Terry Riley’s work Good Medicine. 

“I still remember meeting with David Harrington (Kronos violinist and founding member) for the first time, when he excitedly handed me his Discman and headphones, which had been carrying a recording of the Armenian folk song Groung,” Kouyoumdjian shared on their collaboration.

“I was deeply familiar with composer Komitas Vardapet’s version of Groung, which had become an anthem for the Armenian diaspora, but this version that David had shared was entirely new to me. In this song, the singer calls out to a crane, pleading for news from their homeland. [Zabelle] Panosian’s voice seems to carry the burden of her entire homeland with a heart-achingly beautiful interpretation of the melody, and in my own arrangement, the ensemble is asked to emulate her unique interpretation of the song. At the time Panosian recorded this piece in the United States, her family and the Armenians were going through genocide in Ottoman Turkey, and I find the timing of her recording to bring even more meaning to the music.”

Kouyoumdjian is a first-generation Armenian-American who comes from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide. A finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music, she has received commissions for the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Roomful of Teeth, and more. A graduate of Columbia University, New York University, and UC San Diego, Kouyoumdjian is a cofounder of the annual new music conference New Music Gathering, plus serves on faculty at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University and The New School. 

The Kronos Quartet has released over 70 recordings and received more than 40 awards, including three GRAMMYs and the Polar Music, Avery Fisher, and Edison Klassiek Oeuvre Prizes. In 2024, Kronos’ Pieces of Africa album was inducted into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.

Further, the Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) has helped the group commission more than 1,100 works and arrangements for performance. Notably, the KPAA has recently completed its Kronos Fifty for the Future initiative.