Kronos Quartet's Hanover Week Starts Well Before the Spaulding Show

If you buy one ticket at the Hopkins Center this October, it will probably be for Kronos Quartet's "Three Bones" on Friday, Oct. 23. Most of what Kronos and pipa player Wu Man are bringing to Hanover happens on other days, though.

The Hop calls the Oct. 23 performance "the centerpiece of a week-long residency." Around it are class visits, a discussion hosted by the Dartmouth Libraries, and dinners with students from School and North Park Houses. Wu Man arrives earlier still. The Hop's residency page says she will spend two weeks embedded in the Music Department, playing solo and with Kronos. Plan for the full eight days and you hear the music, the research behind it, and the artists talking about their craft. Most of those pieces are free.

This is also the Hop's second fall in the rebuilt building. The center reopened to the public with a celebration Oct. 16 to 19, 2025, and dedicated the new 15,000-square-foot Daryl and Steven Roth Wing, designed by Snøhetta and Page.

The week, laid out by date

Both ticketed nights fall on Fridays, and the Top of the Hop holds its public bar hours on Friday evenings. That overlap comes up again below. The Hop lists "Three Bones" at three hours, so plan for a long evening on the 23rd.

Oct. 16: Wu Man on her own

The Hop calls Wu Man "the preeminent pipa virtuoso." Her recital is a program she put together for this visit, while she is in residence as a principal collaborator of Kronos. It also introduces her part of the Oct. 23 concert. The section of "Three Bones" the Hop commissioned is built around her playing, so you hear her instrument on its own a week before you hear it inside the larger work.

The free "Art of the Pipa" talk sits between the 5:30 and 8 p.m. performances. If you are skipping the recital, it is still a free way to hear her discuss the instrument before it reappears in Spaulding.

What "Three Bones" is built from

The title comes from the ossicles, the three small bones that amplify sound in the middle ear. The Hop's Oct. 5 preview describes a triptych that uses new music, video, archival recordings, visual art and environmental sound to tell the histories of three groups of Americans. The program page breaks it into three sections:

1. "Ground" draws on Indigenous American music and stories. It uses contemporary composers including Raven Chacon and Tanya Tagaq, along with historical recordings from 1899.
2. "At the Sea Islands" centers on the Gullah-Geechee community. It features music by Charlton Singleton and Trevor Weston, and pairs historical recordings of "Amelia's Song" and "Kumbaya" with contemporary work.
3. "Beyond the Golden Gate" is the section the Hop commissioned. It tells the history of Chinese Americans in San Francisco, features Wu Man on pipa, and uses music by Dai Wei, Tan Dun and Wu Man.

In the Hop's own preview, the writer, who saw the Carnegie Hall premiere last April, describes the range this way:

"By the end, a listener has heard the artists move from the Apache fiddle to Inuit throat-singing; from Delta blues to a new piece for string quartet and pipa."

According to the same preview, drummer Quentin Baxter joins Kronos for the Gullah-Geechee section. The preview also notes that the quartet has a 53-year history of working with scholars, filmmakers and musicians around the world. The Hop bills the concert "In honor of America's 250th anniversary."

Oct. 20: the archive behind the concert

Two of the three sections are built partly on old recordings. The residency event that explains them is in a library reading room, not a concert hall.

The Tuesday panel, "Arts and Archival Research," starts at 4:30 p.m. in the East Reading Room of Baker Berry Library and is free. It brings together Kronos violinist David Harrington, Andrea Decker of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center, and Jay Satterfield of Rauner Library Special Collections & Archives. Memory Apata, Research & Learning Librarian for Music & Performing Arts, moderates. Harrington's research for "Three Bones" included work with the American Folklife Center. That puts in one room the musician who went looking for these recordings and a librarian from the archive where he found some of them.

The same evening, the Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble plays selections from its upcoming tour of Mexico. The program includes works by Carlos Chávez, Juan Pablo Contreras and Omar Arellano Osorio, as part of the Mexican Repertoire Initiative. You could do the 4:30 panel and an evening concert on the same Tuesday.

Friday evenings at the Top of the Hop

Before both Friday shows, the Top of the Hop is open. This second-floor social space is the most visible change the renovation made to the Hop as a place to spend time. In The Dartmouth's May 2026 look at the space, the paper reported that it opens to the community from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, with music, snacks and drinks. Those bar hours were new after the fall 2025 reopening. The paper described student bands and invited artists playing through the evening. One student musician estimated 40 to 50 people on the nights he performs.

The details of the free drink are less settled. The Dartmouth reported that every attendee received a drink ticket at the entrance. The Hop's own Top of the Hop page, posted in 2025, says the complimentary drink goes to Hop members, Dartmouth employees and students. Last spring, Hop director of external affairs Michael Bodel told The Dartmouth that the center was:

"planning for similar programming and bar hours to continue next year, with the exact details dependent on funding and staffing considerations."

No fall 2026 schedule has confirmed the hours yet. Check with the Hop before planning a pre-concert drink on the 16th or the 23rd. If the hours are running, they end at 7 p.m., which is when "Three Bones" begins.

The rest of October follows the same pattern

The Kronos week is the clearest example, but the whole October calendar pairs free talks with the paid performances they relate to.

• Oct. 29 and 30, "AI at 70." On Thursday, "Art, Ethics & AI" brings together Nona Hendryx, DJ Spooky and Jacqueline Wernimont, moderated by Roopika Risam. On Friday, "Dvorak, AI & Musical Discovery," with Filippo Ciabatti and Nikhil Singh, serves as the pre-show talk for the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra.
• Oct. 30, Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra opens its term with Barber's Cello Concerto and Dvořák's "New World" Symphony.
• Oct. 22, "Maintenance Artist." This documentary about Mierle Laderman Ukeles, New York City's first Sanitation Department artist-in-residence, screens with director Toby Freilich in person.
• Oct. 25, ChamberWorks. Dartmouth's jazz faculty performs with bassist Mimi Jones. The Hop lists it as "Register Now," not a ticketed show.
• Oct. 28, Jesse Taitt Trio. Pianist Jesse Taitt plays in the Sykes Concert Series, also listed for registration.

The calendar has screenings too. On Oct. 17, Mountainfilm on Tour 2026 shows an evening of outdoor short films, and the Met Opera's new production of Verdi's "Macbeth" screens in HD with Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen. On Oct. 25, the Broadway in HD revival of Noël Coward's "Fallen Angels" screens, with Kelli O'Hara and Rose Byrne. Two more come before the Kronos week begins. Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" screens Tuesday, Oct. 13, with live organ accompaniment by Peter Krasinski, and the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band plays Wednesday, Oct. 14.

From Oct. 16 to Oct. 23, the Hop's October calendar has two ticketed Kronos-related evenings at $40 and up and two free events tied to them, plus a second-floor bar open Wednesday through Friday evenings if the hours continue as described last spring.

Second-home owners and new arrivals often ask Alan DiStasio which parts of Hanover are easy walks to campus venues like the Hop and Baker Berry. To talk through which streets put you within reach of an evening like Oct. 23, contact Alan DiStasio to request a complimentary market assessment.