ALBUM REVIEW: Kronos Quartet, Mary Kouyoumdjian collaborate on heartbreaking, haunting portrait of surviving conflict

It’s easy to become desensitized to the consequences of conflict, or even outright ignore them. But in doing so, we —“we” being society-at-large —lose focus of something important: our shared humanity.

That reminder is at the core of Witness, the brilliant new LP from the legendary Kronos Quartet and 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist, documentarian, and composer Mary Kouyoumdjian. Through the use of dynamic arrangements and performances and intimate interviews with survivors of the Armenian Genocide and the Lebanese Civil War, Kronos Quartet and Kouyoumdjian present a deeply moving portrait of experiencing and surviving the atrocities of war. It should also serve as a wake-up call to current audiences about the people enduring devastation in the ongoing conflicts in Lebanon and Syria.

Witness opens with “Groung (Crane),” an Armenian folk song. In the original version of the song, the singer is calling to the crane to deliver word from their homeland. But the crane only responds in silence; their homeland is gone. Kronos Quartet opts for an instrumental-only rendition, which captures that same mournful sense of dislocation and sets the stage for the music and oral histories to come.

The three-part “Bombs of Beirut” suite continues the themes introduced in “Groung.” Part one, “Before the War,” features audio of Lebanese men and women sharing what life was like in their home community before the 1975 war began, with recollections both positive and negative. As these stories unfurl, the music builds in intensity, serving as an auditory prelude for the war to come. At other points, the quartet moves from harmony to disharmony to match the voices’ tales of approaching conflict.

This concept and marriage of dramatically appropriate music to spoken word carries through the next two pieces of the “Bombs of Beirut” suite. The second part is “The War,” where the listener hears of marriages postponed, families witnessing rocket fire over their homes, women giving birth in hospitals as bombs fall nearby. As these stories build over the course of 13 minutes, the music continues to ramp up, too. It’s chaotic disharmony, capturing the anxiety and tumult laid out in the narratives. The final part, “After the War,” is mournful. Survivors recount the despair of returning to a homeland in ruins, or never going back home at all.

The four-part “Silent Cranes” suite closes out Witness. Kronos Quartet and Kouyoumdjian first brought this piece to life in 2015 for the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the 1900s. The sequence takes the lyrics of “Groung (Crane)” as inspiration, using early 20^th Century recordings of “Groung (Crane)” and “Andouni (Homeless),” as well as testimonies from genocide survivors. The suite is rooted in traditional Armenian folk music, a beautiful and a stark sonic contrast to the avant-garde structures of the “Bombs of Beirut.”

Thematically “Silent Cranes” still mirrors the preceding pieces of Witness. It serves to keep alive the memories of the lives lost and impacted by the genocide —which remains largely unrecognized and wasn’t acknowledge by the U.S. government until 2021 — and forces the listener to remember the 1.5 million lives lost.

But whether it’s the Lebanon Civil War of 1975-1990 or the Armenian Genocide, compelling people to remember is only the beginning. Right now, there is another generation of individuals with stories all too similar to the ones that are shared across Witness. Through the album, Kouymoudjian and Kronos Quartet show that just as the two major portions of Witness mirror each other, they also serve as a reflection of the present-day Middle East.

Kronos Quartet and Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Witness released on Mach 14 via Phenotypic Recordings.