eighth blackbird

resident ensemble

Tim Munro - flutes
Michael J. Maccaferri - clarinets
Matthew Albert - violin, viola
Nicholas Photinos - cello
Matthew Duvall - percussion
Lisa Kaplan - keyboards

One of the premier new music groups in the world, eighth blackbird promises its ever-increasing audiences provocative and engaging performances. It is widely lauded for its unusual 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, APR’s Weekend America and The Next Big Thing.

Since its founding in 1996, eighth blackbird has been active in commissioning new works from eminent composers – most notably Frederic Rzewski and George Perle – as well as ground-breaking works from Jennifer Higdon, Derek Bermel, David Schober, Daniel Kellogg, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and the Minimum Security Composers Collective. The group is looking forward to premiering new commissions by Steve Reich and Bang on a Can composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe in the spring of 2008. eighth blackbird was the recipient of the first BMI/Boudleaux-Bryant Fund Commission and has received grants from Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, and the Greenwall Foundation, among others.

The ensemble is also enjoying acclaim for its three CDs released to date on Cedille Records. The first, Thirteen Ways, featuring works by Perle, Schober, Tower and Thomas Albert, was selected as a Top 10 CD of 2003 by Billboard magazine. Beginnings, featuring Kellogg’s Divinum Mysterium and 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 fall 2006. The winner of both the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, where it was the first contemporary ensemble to win first prize, eighth blackbird is also a three-time recipient of the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

Committed to teaching young artists about contemporary music, the sextet has taught master classes and conducted outreach activities throughout the country, at the Aspen Music School System, the La Jolla Chamber Music Series, the Candlelight Concert Series, Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa and elsewhere. The members of eighth blackbird hold degrees in music performance from Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory and Northwestern University. 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

eighthblackbird.com