eighth blackbird
Photo: Steve Leonard
Wardrobe: Xcito - Chicago, IL

Described by The New Yorker as "friendly, unpretentious, idealistic and highly skilled," eighth blackbird promises its ever-increasing audiences provocative and engaging performances. It is widely lauded for its performing style – often playing from memory with virtuosic and theatrical flair – and its efforts to make new music accessible to wide audiences. A New York Times reviewer raved, "eighth blackbird’s performances are the picture of polish and precision, and they seem to be thoroughly engaged…by music in a broad range of contemporary styles." The sextet has been the subject of profiles in the New York Times and on NPR’s All Things Considered; it has also been featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning, St. Paul Sunday, Weekend America and The Next Big Thing, among others. The ensemble is in residence at the University of Richmond in Virginia and at the University of Chicago.

Highlights of eighth blackbird’s 2006-07 season include a return to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, two concerts at The Kitchen in New York City, and tours through New York, California, Colorado, and Texas. During the ensemble’s tenth anniversary in the 2005-2006 season, the group toured Osvaldo Golijov’s song-cycle Ayre with soprano Dawn Upshaw and a special collaboration with the Blair Thomas & Co. puppet theater and soprano Lucy Shelton, performing a fully memorized and staged cabaret-opera version of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.

In previous seasons the sextet has appeared in South Korea, Mexico, Canada, Amsterdam, and throughout North America, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, and has performed as soloist with the Utah Symphony and the American Composers Orchestra. During the summer the group has appeared several times at the Great Lakes Music Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and Cincinnati’s Music X, and has also appeared at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.

Since its founding in 1996, eighth blackbird has been active in commissioning new works from eminent composers such as George Perle, Frederic Rzewski, and Joseph Schwantner, as well as ground-breaking works from Jennifer Higdon, Derek Bermel, David Schober, Daniel Kellogg, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Jefferson Friedman and the Minimum Security Composers Collective. The group received the first BMI/Boudleaux-Bryant Fund Commission and the 2004 NEA/CMA Special Commissioning Award, and has received grants from BMI, Meet the Composer, the Greenwall Foundation, and Chamber Music America, among others.

The ensemble is enjoying acclaim for its three CDs released to date on Cedille Records. The first, thirteen ways, featuring works by Perle, Schober, Joan Tower and Thomas Albert, was selected as a Top 10 CD of 2003 by Billboard magazine. beginnings, featuring Kellogg’s Divinum Mysterium and George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae, was summed up by the New York Times: "The performances have all the sparkle, energy and precision of the earlier outings…It is their superb musicality and interpretive vigor that bring these pieces to life." eighth blackbird’s third disc for Cedille, fred, with three works of Rzewski, was released in June 2005. The San Francisco Chronicle reported: "The music covers all kinds of moods and approaches, from dreamy surrealism to caffeinated unison melodies, and the members of eighth blackbird deliver it all with their trademark panache." A fourth CD, titled strange, imaginary animals, is scheduled for release on Cedille Records in late 2006. In 2006 the group debuted on the Naxos label in a performance of The Time Gallery, commissioned by eighth blackbird from 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec.

eighth blackbird is active in teaching young artists about contemporary music and, in addition to their residencies, has taught master classes and conducted outreach activities throughout the country, including the Aspen Music School System (grades K-12), the La Jolla Chamber Music Series, the Candlelight Concert Series and Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa.

The members of eighth blackbird hold degrees in music performance from Oberlin Conservatory, among other institutions. The group derives its name from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." The eighth stanza reads:

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know

Visit the ensemble’s official website at www.eighthblackbird.com for more information.

JUNE 2006

+Matthew Duvall endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments.