U.S. Highball is one of the first underground masterpieces in American music. Partch's work explores what, decades later, would be called a 'subculture' - the hoboes, who traveled across the U.S. in search of work or new experience, defying social conventions and the strictures of civilized society. The recording on this CD is not U.S. Highball in any of Partch's (three) versions, but an arrangement for voice and string quartet made for Kronos in 1997 by Ben Johnston, a composer who studied and worked with Partch and with whose own music Kronos has had a long and fruitful relationship.