The album cover for the Kronos Quartet's new Nonesuch recording
of Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 has provoked strong
reactions online. Posters to contemporary classical music site
Sequenza 21 and the Nonesuch website have questioned the label's
artistic taste, with some calling the cover tacky and
exploitative.
The cover, which was unveiled last week ahead of the album's
release on 6 September, uses a manipulated image of the terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center. The way in which photographer
Masatomo Kuriya's shot has been darkened and tinted drew particular
criticism, and led one disgusted poster to remark, 'When did
Nonesuch hire Jerry Bruckheimer?' a reference to the frequent use
of brooding, overly atmospheric skylines in the Hollywood
blockbusters that Bruckheimer has produced.
WTC 9/11 is the third quartet that Reich has written for
the Kronos Quartet. The piece is scored for three quartets and
pre-recorded voices, the latter including air traffic controllers
and fire department workers responding to the attacks as they
happened, and New Yorkers remembering the tragedy years
later.
Reich and his family lived four blocks from the World Trade Center
at the time of the attacks. Nonesuch quotes the composer as saying:
'On 9/11 we were in Vermont, but our son, granddaughter, and
daughter-in-law were all in our apartment. Our phone connection
stayed open for six hours and our next-door neighbours were finally
able to drive north out of the city with their family and ours. For
us, 9/11 was not a media event.'
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