The Kronos Quartet and the Middle East

What has it meant for the Kronos Quartet to collaborate with Middle Eastern musicians? What have these collaborations enacted? This article traces some of the recordings, liner and programme notes, interviews, and performances that result from these works. In the first part, I offer a critical reading of the 2009 album Floodplain, drawing on Dylan Robinson’s insights around settler colonial listening practices and the politics of intercultural musical collaboration. In the second part, I move to the recent past and read Kronos’s 2025 performance of the Palestinian folk song ‘Ya Taali‘een’ in relation to the same song’s parallel life as an anti-genocide call to action. Throughout, I counterpose my situated encounter with these sounds alongside the construction of these recordings and performances as intercultural encounters.