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Our Guest Artists from Music11 Tim Munro, flutes | Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets Grammy-winning eighth blackbird promises – and delivers – provocative and mind-changing performances to its burgeoning audiences. Combining bracing virtuosity with an alluring sense of irreverence, the sextet debunks the myth that contemporary music is only for a cerebral few. The ensemble attracts fans of all ages to its performances and recordings, which sparkle with wit and pound with physical energy; it inhabits and explores the sound-world of new music with comfort, conviction, and infectious enthusiasm. eighth blackbird is lauded for its performing style – often playing from memory with theatrical flair – and for making new music accessible to wide audiences. “It’s new music you can bring home to your mother,” observed the Washington Post. Profiled in the New York Times and NPR’s All Things Considered, the sextet has also been featured on Bloomberg TV’s Muse, CBS News Sunday Morning, St. Paul Sunday, Weekend America, and The Next Big Thing, among others. The group is in residence at the University of Richmond in Virginia and the University of Chicago. Now celebrating its 15th season, eighth blackbird showcases music by the two most recent Pulitzer Prize-winning composers in its 2010-11 recording and performing repertoire, programming new and recent works (written expressly for the ensemble) by both Jennifer Higdon and Steve Reich on its season concerts and CDs. Highlights include a return to Zankel Hall; performances at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, representing the fourth year of the ensemble’s hometown series; a tour of Higdon’s new concerto On a Wire with several high-profile orchestras; Reich festivals on both sides of the Atlantic – at Carnegie Hall and London’s Barbican Hall; a return to the Library of Congress for a concert that includes the world premiere of a new work by Stephen Hartke; and two new CDs – featuring, respectively, Reich’s prize-winning Double Sextet (on Nonesuch) and Steven Mackey and Rinde Eckert’s music-theater piece Slide (on Cedille). Headlining the group’s season is its new politically-driven two-part program "Powerful/less", tackling Stravinsky's provocative statement questioning the value, meaning and power of art. Last season the sextet made its debut at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, playing the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Grazioso!; it presented a new version of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, with choreography and direction by Mark DeChiazza; the group toured Slide, by Eckert and Mackey (having premiered it in summer 2009 at the Ojai Music Festival); and it enjoyed residencies at the Universities of Richmond, Chicago and Maryland, as well as at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music. New York City hosted the ensemble at the Look & Listen Festival and the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, and the group made its Minneapolis debut. Capping off the season – and looking forward to its next - eighth blackbird gave the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s new concerto for sextet and orchestra with the Atlanta Symphony. For a full biography, please visit: www.eighthblackbird.com. *Matthew Duvall endorses Pearl/Adams musical instruments, and Vic Firth sticks and mallets. |
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