Photo courtesy of the Kronos Quartet The Kronos Quartet is (left to right): Hank Dutt, Jennifer Culp, John Sherba and David Harrington. The acclaimed quartet returns to Tucson at Centennial Hall tonight at 7:30 with a distinctive program that includes Nuevo, an ambitious new concert based on the quartet's latest recording of the same name, which encompasses nothing less than a century's worth of Mexican musical history.

The people shout and the church bells ring. A party is in the air. Laughing, dancing, whistling and singing dominate the mood so that no one can sleep. Something like magic fills the streets of this festive community.

You may think that you are in the very heart of Mexico City during a fiesta. But in reality, you are listening to the genius of the Kronos Quartet displayed on their latest release, Nuevo.

This string quartet, which will be enlivening Centennial Hall with their music tonight, performs more than 100 concerts a year and has won numerous awards.

The group consists of four innovative performers who are known for the original and exciting sounds they create with their instruments. With David Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on the viola and Jennifer Culp on the cello, there is no telling what note will string forward next, in which instrument will be imitated or what inspired fun the group will conceive.

Harrington founded the group in 1973, a time of great turmoil and change in the United States. While the Vietnam War raged, Harrington found his inspiration for life in a piece of music called "Black Angels" by George Crump. After his experience, the idea of Kronos sprouted and took root.

Harrington started by locating the first members of the group, which included Sherba, Dutt and a cellist named Joan Jeanrenaud. When Jeanrenaud left to pursue a solo career in 1998, the group discovered a soulmate in cellist Jennifer Culp.

If you go . . . UApresents welcomes Kronos Quartet to Centennial Hall tonight at 7:30. Tickets range in price from $12 to $34.

Over time, the quartet's mission has developed into one that includes modernization and innovation as its primary goals.

"We want to expand the idea of what a string quartet can be," Harrington said. "We have spent our careers so far expanding the pallet of musical colors."

The next step was obviously to find composers who would write music for the group to perform.

"What I've always wanted to do is discover the most exciting composers I can find and then make sure that those people write us their most amazing pieces," Harrington said.

But the quartet does not ask just anyone at any random time to compose music for the group. The process is very methodical.

"Every composer peaks at a certain point, like athletes," Harrington said. "We like to feel when that right moment is to ask a composer to write a piece for us."

Kronos has come a long way from their humble beginnings; they now have more than 40 composers arranging music for them. This music has encompassed a wide range of cultures. From African to Chinese to Middle Eastern to Russian to South American, Kronos has made it a goal to bring new and different work to the music scene.

This is what Dan Buckley, a music critic for the Tucson Citizen and Stereo File Magazine, call "Kronos' most important legacy."

"Kronos made a conscious decision that the string quartet world should not be strictly the domain of male European and white American composers, but that it was time to broaden the base and include the rest of the world," Buckley said.

Their recording Pieces of Africa, which topped Billboard charts in 1992, remains one of the most innovative albums that Kronos has ever created. It was the first record to ever feature African string quartet music by African composers, something about which Harrington is very proud.

Another great moment for Kronos was when Darren Aronofsky commissioned the group to record the soundtrack for his film "Requiem for a Dream" in 2000. Aronofsky attended a Kronos Quartet concert and believed them to be a perfect match for his movie. Harrington previewed the movie without a completed soundtrack and agreed that Kronos would definitely have something valuable to contribute to the project.

Kronos' most recent released project is Nuevo, a collaboration of Mexican songs written by a number of Hispanic composers, including Juan Garc’a Esquivel and Alberto Dom’nguez. Nuevo was first inspired by Harrington's various trips to Mexico.

"The sound of that culture is different and I always feel better, more musical, more alive, more in tune with the world of man-made sounds after I leave," Harrington said. "I wanted to find a way of celebrating that."

During this seven-year-long project, he talked to numerous people about writing songs for the album, along the way gathering ideas for how to represent the unique aspects of Mexico and the Mexican culture.

One such aspect that Harrington specifically remembers is that almost everywhere in Mexico, music blasts from tiny speakers, which causes a rare distortion not heard anywhere else. An important character throughout Nuevo is Kronos' attempt to copy this distortion with their instruments.

Harrington says he cherishes the final product and looks back on the album with a greater sense of pleasure and accomplishment than with any other previous recording.

"Every track is a universe of its own and tells its own story," Harrington said. "On the surface, it's about Mexico and Mexican music, but it's also about life and the ways to discover joy and happiness and to end up dancing."

At tonight's 7:30 performance in Centennial Hall, the quartet will perform tracks from Nuevo and Altar de Muertos, a piece by Gabriela Ortiz that celebrates Mexico's Day of the Dead. This show will include visual elements, such as altars and flowers, which are not normally a part of a Kronos concert.

Kronos has been to Tucson before and, according to Tara Kirkpatrick, a publicist for UApresents, has always crammed the house full of adoring fans who love the creativity exhibited by the group.

"(The members of Kronos) just have a flare for bringing the audience into their work," Kirkpatrick said. "They have a body of work that is unsurpassed in its scope, they have played every type of music that you can imagine, and I think that the audience really embraces that."