Michael Gordon (b1956) has enjoyed a productive relationship with the Kronos Quartet stretching back to the beginning of the century, with the four pieces to have emerged being featured on this latest disc from Canteloupe. Musically they divide into two pairs. The more abstract side of his thinking is evident in Potassium (2000) – its dogged abrasiveness recalling the visceral minimalism of such breakthrough works as Industry or Yo Shakespeare, and to which the blithely undulating motion of Clouded Yellow (2010) feels a passive complement as it unfolds in caressing waves of sound, with keening glissandos evocatively to the fore.

The remaining pieces are inextricably connected with the tragedy of 9/11 and are accordingly more graphic in their representation. Much the more extensive, The Sad Park (2005) treats (rather than sets) recorded extracts from four children at a Lower Manhattan nursery school who witnessed the events, their observations gradually combined with the quartet – though there is no cumulative interaction such as Reich pursues in his conceptually related Different Trains; rather Gordon allows his sound-sources to meld into a texture as ethereal or sombre as its sentiments suggest. Exalted (2010) furthers this process more obliquely: an ‘in memoriam’ to the composer’s father, the first line of the Mourner’s Kaddish is intoned by children’s choir while being integrated in an impulsive and increasingly affirmative-sounding quartet context.

Performances are as authoritative as expected given the lengthy collaboration between Gordon and Kronos, making for a valuable addition to the discographies of both composer and ensemble.