Loosening Up the Strings : Kronos Quartet focuses on a wide spectrum, from Bartok to Astor Piazzolla tangos, with everything from Hendrix to Monk in between

Everyone knows what string quartet players are supposed to look like: tuxedoed and white-tied, bent over conventional instruments, and playing mostly Germanic masters of the 18th and 19th centuries.

“But we’re not in Vienna,” says David Harrington, first violinist and founder of the Kronos Quartet, admitting that, as a child in Seattle, his cultural identity had more to do with McDonald’s than bratwurst.

It’s easy to see what he means. In publicity photos the foursome--which includes second violinist John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud--might each be a Melrose Avenue habitue, the kind who embraces thrown-together-funky chic.

Even the Kronos catalogue of recordings reads like the United Nations membership. To date, the group has championed the work of composers from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, some of which will be presented Monday at the L. A. County Museum.

But if you’re thinking that the agenda smacks of political correctness with a vengeance, or that the profile is poised just a little too calculatedly for publicity, Harrington will disabuse you:

“The music we play and the clothes we wear are what is right for us,” he says. “Fred Astaire looked great in a tux. Madison Avenue people are just fine in business suits. But we never felt comfortable in either.

“And as for the repertory, well, I’ve always been a collector of the great music experience, trying to reach out and find that full body chill from as many different sources as possible.

“Putting it as metaphor, you could say that I want to be the lightning rod on a barn--placed there to attract lightning and keep the barn from burning down.”

Is he alluding to the museum music that some say will decay and become obsolete without new infusions from current composers? Harrington teasingly chooses not to elucidate, but does not deny a visitor’s inference.

Whatever the case, Kronos concentrates on a wide spectrum that runs from Bartok to Astor Piazzolla tangos to an Alfred Schnittke quartet that brilliantly reformulates Beethoven’s “Grosse Fugue,” with everything from Jimi Hendrix to Thelonious Monk in between.

The inspiration for the kind of music he wanted to focus on came to him two decades ago when he was 22.

“One night, very late,” recalls the slender, bespectacled violinist, “I was listening to the radio. I remember the date--Aug. 19, 1973--because the music being played, George Crumb’s ‘Black Angels,’ astonished me.

“In that moment I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Play it. And other music that had the same urgency.”

But to do so he needed three other string players who would feel a similar compulsion. Harrington says he is lucky to have found them and that their guiding principle is “to remain true to the strength of that revelatory experience.”

“If we do not love a piece of music, we do not program it. Just a few weeks ago, after our performance of ‘Black Angels,’ Crumb himself came up on stage, and it was a kind of milestone for us.”

The Kronos’ recording of the work was nominated for a Grammy in 1990, as were four others recently, one of which, “Different Trains,” received the award in its category.

But what to program and what to record has become such a consuming subject that Harrington says he has not even thought about the current season being the group’s 20th anniversary. As they go about their heavy touring schedule throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, they lug bags filled with 150 tapes.

These new works, sent by hopeful composers who know that a Kronos acceptance translates to high-profile exposure, get a careful listening, Harrington says. And the group commissions well-established composers; right now, 35 of them.

Janet Cowperthwaite, Kronos’ managing director, says the group “is constantly in search of the next great piece. They’re always onto what’s new”--sometimes at the risk of keeping a few 20th-Century classics in the repertory.

But she doesn’t complain because the Kronos belongs to “the lucky half-dozen quartets with more opportunities to play than there are days on the calendar,” she says. As a result of their prosperity, all new music flourishes.

Whereas most string quartets that play the same music over and over need worry only about maintaining technique and interpretation, the Kronos continuously has to learn new works.

“And that,” says Harrington, “requires us to be single-minded. We have a non-separation pact, whereby no one goes out to play a private gig. Sometimes we’ll add a choir or other instrumentalists. But never do we subtract.”

The benefits of that single-mindedness caught him up recently at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, famed for its acoustics.

“We were playing Gorecki’s Second Quartet,” he says. “My part called for a long rest, and I sat listening to the others. It was so gorgeous I wanted to get up and stand aside. If an earthquake had taken us down, then I would have died happily.”

The Kronos Quartet plays at 8 p.m. Monday at the Bing Theatre, L . A . County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Tickets $11 to $7. Call (213) 857-6010.