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Folk Songs, a new album joining Kronos Quartet with four Nonesuch Records labelmates—Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens, and Natalie Merchant—is out now. The artists on the album first came together to perform these songs, most of which are traditional with contemporary arrangements, when Nonesuch Records celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014 with festivals at London's Barbican Centre and New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The group later recorded the songs with Doug Petty as the album's producer. For more than 40 years, San Francisco's Kronos Quartet—David Harrington and John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world's most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than sixty recordings, collaborating with many of the world's most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning more than 900 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos is the recipient of more than 40 awards, including the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize.