eighth blackbird announced its new composition competition (creatively named “eighth blackbird composition competition”) in early February. The initial response was positive, with enthusiastic online notices and a few very early entries, but we did start to get hammered in some quarters for our comp comp’s rules and regulations. These negative reactions surprised us, but on reflection we feel that some of the criticism was deserved. In the strine-tinged words of Kevin Rudd, Australia’s illustrious current Prime Minister, “fair cop, mate.”

In response to the many constructive and informative comments we’ve received, we have decided to postpone the competition.

8bb remains committed to the original intent of the competition – to discover, recognize and perform/record an undiscovered compositional gem – and we will relaunch the whole shebang by June.  In the meantime, we’ll be on the hunt for the best way to create an event that is awesome for all involved. Any works that are currently being written will remain eligible for the relaunched competition, and any application money already submitted will of course be refunded.

In the meantime, feel free to let us know your thoughts about your perfect, utopian, idealized nirvana of a comp comp, either by commenting on this post, or by dropping us a line, at brian@eighthblackbird.com. Oh, and creative name suggestions would be most welcome!

The application deadline is fast approaching for the Music10 festival happening in Blonay, Switzerland, June 21-July 2.

Performers who are accepted to this program will work intensively and perform new compositions by America’s most talented young composers. Each ensemble will consist of a member of eighth blackbird along with a carefully selected group of young instrumentalists. Concurrently, the instrumentalists will prepare and perform works by the three principal composers, Martin Bresnick, Stephen Hartke and Joel Hoffmann. This repertoire will be performed in a series of concerts throughout the festival in Blonay and surrounding locations.

Blonay is a beautiful village, located between Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) and the Swiss Alps. Nearby cities are Montreux and Lausanne. The Hindemith Foundation is a fully-equipped music residence center, whose purpose is to present short-term international festivals and workshops on the highest level.

When we say Blonay is beautiful, what we mean is BEUWWWWWWWWWWWWDIFUL, as in un-bloody-believably-spectacularly-idyllic.

Come and join us for 10 days in our little musical utopia in Swiss paradise! Click here to apply.

Here’s the info:

Tim Munro (flutist with Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird) and Jennifer Gunn (piccoloist with the Chicago Symphony) present Trembling Air at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall, February 3, 2010. Flutes sing, speak, growl, wheeze and chirp in this surprising, kaleidoscopic musical patchwork.

Ben Broening’s Trembling Air possesses an ethereal, other-worldly beauty that collides dramatically with Grawemeyer-winner Brett Dean’s virtuosic, hellish Demons. Munro is joined by Chicago Symphony star piccolo player Jennifer Gunn for the hypnotic repetitions of Philip Glass’s Music in Fifths and rolling dark waves of Helena Tulve’s Soaring.

The program also includes the world premiere of Tai-Kuang Chao’s Isolated Dance on a Bench, winner of Roosevelt University’s first flute composition competition, and Grey Light, Early Morning, a haunting piece from the pen of Gerard McBurney (Chicago Symphony’s “Beyond the Score” maestro).

What: Trembling Air

Where: Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., 7th Floor, Chicago (312-341-3780)

When: February 3rd at 7.30pm

Tickets: Free entry

Program: Ben Broening Trembling Air for solo flute (2009, World Premiere)

Ross Edwards Ecstatic Dances for two flutes (1990)

Tai-Kuang Chao Isolated Dance on a Bench for solo flute (2009, WP)

Gerard McBurney Grey Light, Early Morning for alto flute (1992)

Brett Dean Demons for solo flute (2004)

Helena Tulve Soaring for two flutes (2007)

Philip Glass Music in Fifths for two flutes (1969)

For more information: http://ccpa.roosevelt.edu/ccpa-calendar.php

It’s official – we’re doing a crazy/cool benefit with Mario Batali and Paul Kahan at The Publican on March 15th.

For those who attended eighth blackbird’s 2007 benefit with Paul Kahan and Mario Batali at Blackbird, we don’t need to tell you just how special the 2010 event will be. If you are one of our newer fans, or simply couldn’t participate previously, then don’t miss what is sure to be one of the year’s artistic and culinary highlights.

eighth blackbird begins the evening with a short concert at the Packer Schopf Gallery, featuring highlights of our 09-10 touring program and complemented by an exclusive arrangement by Wilco’s Glenn Kotche, performed by eighth blackbird with Chef Batali on guitar. Following this, Chefs Kahan and Batali will present a five-course meal, with wine and beer pairings, at Chef Kahan’s own gastro-pub, The Publican. These celebrated chefs accepted our challenge to base the menu on our musical selections, so both your ears and mouth will be treated with fresh Catch, a few of These Broken Wings, Meanwhile, a bite of Spam and a serving of Still Life with Avalanche.

To buy tickets, visit this website:
http://www.eighthblackbird.com/benefit/

For further information, please email benefit@eighthblackbird.com.

As part of this shebang, I was asked to write a blog entry that dealt with our relationship with Reich, forged during the commissioning of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet. A couple of months ago, I asked the composer for permission to publicly share some emails from our correspondence with him, in the hope that it might shed some light on his working methods. I was surprised that he said yes (and he emailed me back within the hour!), but decided to use them for WQXR’s request.

You can read the entry below, or on WQXR’s comprehensive all-Reich-all-the-time mini-website.

Steve Reich has graciously allowed me to share a few emails from his correspondence with eighth blackbird during the composition and preparation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 work Double Sextet. I hope these shed a little light on his creative process. You can also read an interview I did with Steve here.

It was with excited trepidation that I approached working with Steve. He was by far the most famous composer who’d written for eighth blackbird, and was a boyhood hero of mine. We’d been warned about his uncompromising vision, mostly via second- or third-hand rumors that were some variation of, “He’s really demanding, and will freak out if he isn’t happy with what you’re doing.”

As a successful composer, Steve is lucky in only needing to write one new piece each year, which allows for each work to have a generous, patient gestation period. Below is an email written almost 20 months before Double Sextet’s world premiere, setting out some of the composer’s initial ideas for the work.

From: Steve Reich
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006

Matt,

I did start work on your piece which I have tentatively called Double Sextet – for obvious reasons. I just got about 4 pages of it begun and need to revise those. It is quite angular and more percussive than my recent works and should be a bit of a wake up for the audience. It’s also immediately involved with short motives and their retrogrades. Haven’t done that before.

As for the doublings, i did assume they were what you say and am not sure which I will be using. For percussion, i am sure both the live sextet and the pre-recorded sextet will each have a vibe and “mini set” of snare and kick drum. Please tell Matt. I have started out with 2 flutes and 2 B♭ clarinets for the live and recorded sextets plus two pianos, two violins and two celli. Nice to hear there’s bass clarinet and viola waiting in the wings. – We’ll see.

Give my greetings to all the musicians.

And thank you once again for your e mail.

All best,

Steve

The differences between the composer’s original thoughts and the finished product are interesting. Early in the process, Steve thought it will be “angular and more percussive” than other works, something that’s clearly related to the “mini set of snare and kick drum” he originally envisaged for the score. These instruments don’t appear in the final version, and as a result, the work isn’t more percussive than any of Steve’s other recent pieces. (In fact, the variations movement that provides the beating heart of Double Sextet signals a move for the composer into uncharacteristically lyrical territory). He also says that it’s “involved with short motives and their retrogrades.” Double Sextet, like all of Steve’s compositions, is constructed almost entirely of short motives, but there is no evidence at all of “retrogrades” (in which the tune would be played backwards).

Steve’s interactions with eighth blackbird were different from what we were used to. Once we received a finished composition we typically have very limited contact with the work’s composer before a pre-premiere rehearsal, at which time they offer comments on our performance. This “alone time” for the ensemble enables us to put the piece together into a well-drilled, dramatic, convincing, fully-committed interpretation, without feeling an intimidating warm breath over our collective shoulder.

What set Steve apart was his desire to work with the ensemble throughout the rehearsal process. Although he wasn’t ever actually in the room with us until the day of the premiere, we sent him recordings of ourselves at every step in the process of preparation, from the day of our first rehearsal until the day of the premiere, on which he would offer his comments in detailed, often illuminating emails.

A short note about the piece: For most performances of Double Sextet, eighth blackbird plays live with a recording of ourselves. So in order to perform the work for the first time, we recorded one sextet part, then practice playing the other live sextet with our recording.

Below are two emails, written after he heard our initial pre-recorded sextet rehearsal recordings. This first email deals with the first movement, and all of the numbers are measure numbers in the score.

From: Steve Reich
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008

Lisa,

First off: BRAVO! You got it and its going to be great. This based on opening to 122. Now for the details:

At 122 first chord is too short and too loud on second chord. Don’t forget the dash on first chord here and two bars later. Try and even the two chords off. Very good after that until 203 when same sort of thing happens. Too much accent on second chord which is naturally heavier because of bass so give full length to (put in a dash on) first chord. Similarly to 208.

Vibes at 315 – 323 practice by himself and make sure upper voice-melody is heard. Maybe one mallet in right hand two in left or slightly harder mallet on top – whatever. Vibes again at 368. I can hear strings fine but vibes are lost. Its a bit hard playing the clusters, so work on by yourself and then get closer to mic or slightly harder mallets. Vibes at 381 that chord is F, B♭, A♭. (its a rough passage…)

Winds, strings and vibes from 409 – 432 are a bit “blocky.” Try to always have the music “leaning forward” vis a vis the beat and not right on top of it, hammering it. Light and always moving ahead (not rushing) wins the day.

And from there to the end is excellent. For a first rehearsal this is really wonderful!

Best – and BIG thanks,

Steve

Why does Steve get so involved in this process? For much of the composer’s early maturity, the Steve Reich Ensemble (including Steve himself as percussionist) was the only group performing his music. They evolved a distinctive-sounding “house style” with its own unique energy. Rather than worshipping at the altar of the score as an exact set of Google Map directions, pieces like Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians were taught, learned, and developed without much recourse to the printed page. In some ways Steve must feel that this intense, collaborative process, and also the energy of the Ensemble’s particular style of playing, have become inseparable from his music, and should be passed down to all ensembles that are encountering a new work for the first time. Interestingly, this can ensure a sort of “legacy” for performances of his music during Steve’s lifetime, but what about well into the future?

The email above contains a typical entreaty to trust the markings on the printed page, but early in the process this sort of comment was difficult to decipher, especially as we didn’t yet speak fluent Steve Reich. How does one accurately perform a “dash” in Steve’s music? Play longer? Give it a stress that isn’t quite an accent? It would take several dances around the Maypole until we found what that meant in practice.

In trying to develop our understanding of Steve’s “house style,” I found his comment about the “blocky”-ness of our playing – where he cajoles the ensemble to giving him more “lightness” and a sense of “leaning forward” – particularly useful.

From: Steve Reich
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008

Lisa,

Here we go on mvmnt two.

Opening in piano and vibes ok – a little more flowing maybe. When strings and winds come in at 537 its a bit too “espressivo” – just a bit cooler will do it. Held notes have no crescendo – just evenly held. Think baroque. Also really need more vibes here which will keep one foot in Africa (as well as baroque.) Either closer to mic, play a bit stronger or harder mallets.

At 597 strings & winds please keep that first eighth separate and similarly throughout – don’t run it into following longer note. Single eighths are the punctuation throughout movement and we need them.

664 vibes needs the notes. In general there is a tentative feeling in vibes when it should be an equal partner to piano in volume and feel.

You are all way ahead and should have no problem making dynamite performances.

I’ll send this and take a break before i go through 3rd mvmnt.

Many thanks to all!

Steve

This email created heated arguments among the “front row” of eighth blackbird (flute, clarinet, violin, cello). What did Steve mean by comments entreating us to play “a bit cooler” and to “[t]hink baroque”? We liked the aria-like quality of the tune, and really wanted to bring it into the 19th century a little, giving it a little Puccini-esque character. Should we do it with less vibrato? More sustained and straight-tone? Held notes with “no crescendo”? Also, the comment about separated eighth notes took us by surprise, and our first attempts at it sounded very strange to our ears. Shouldn’t those notes be part of the phrase rather than cast adrift?

And those rumors of Steve as an unreasonably hard task-master? Hugely exaggerated. After such an exhaustive, intense process of preparation we were all a little jittery about what the composer might say when he heard us play the piece live. So you can imagine our relief when, at the end of the first complete run of Double Sextet for the composer, his only reaction was, “Wow, fantastic. I really have nothing to say.”

10) running to the Tiergarten
Morning of March 27th. Day before, we’d landed in Berlin, checked into our hotel, and played a concert for the Berlin Festival — a concert which I felt really great about, mostly because of the awesome work that Ryan (sound) and Emily (lighting) did in preparation for our arrival. But it was that Friday morning run, jetlagged and slightly hungover and therefore not very fast, that I remember. I checked out some maps and realized I could make it from our hotel to the Tiergarten. I remember reading about Rhoda Henry walking through the garden in The Winds of War, and as I ran through it (passed by many more fit Germans) I thought a lot about how lucky I was to have a job that took me to Berlin. Yeah, it was a crazy itinerary, with only 48 hours in Europe, but somehow running those paths made me feel like it was worth it.
9) listening to the Harp at UR
At the University of Richmond, one of our responsibilities is to do coachings for the student chamber music ensembles the weeks that we’re in residence. This past spring, I had the honor to coach a group of four students playing Beethoven’s Op. 74. It was a hard piece for them, but they drew on their experience playing together the previous year, and they took it seriously. The evening in April when I sat on the edge of my seat, mentally cheering their ambitious tempos while making checklists for things I wished drilled them more on, reminded me why sometimes I love teaching as much as I love performing.
8) cousins in Tallahassee
This was just crazy. Like a fox. In a good way. We played a concert at FSU for a great new music festival they have there. And for some amazing reason, three of my cousins, two of whom I hadn’t seen in years, decided to make a roadtrip for the evening. Denise, Shannon, and Molly — you made my night. Sorry your car got towed.

Denise, Shannon, Molly, and Matt

Von Rhein writes:

Mark DeChiazza’s fluid staging, set on a mostly bare stage hung with light bulbs on ropes, added its own layer of surreal ambiguity. A dancer, Elyssa Dole, interacted with the reciter, soprano Lucy Shelton, and both women interacted with the musicians as they moved around the space, performing the intricate score from memory, as did Shelton. The definitive “Pierrot” reciter of our generation, Shelton nailed her mime gestures as superbly as she nailed the score’s jagged intervals.

Manning, under the complimentary but predictable headline “Eighth blackbird flies high,” writes:

Director Mark DeChiazza’s spare, onstage tableau of constant movement allowed musicians and dancer Elyssa Dole to slither around at will in this surrealistic nightmare akin to a flickering silent film. Ensemble percussionist Matthew Duvall mimed the role of Pierrot with perfect detachment, giving the old Frenchman a Mr. Bean-like demeanor. By designing sets to include only hanging light bulbs, chairs and a ladder, DeChiazza wisely let the drama emerge from Schoenberg’s smoky atonal score. Living up to its title, “Paradoxes and parallels,” this was one of eighth blackbird’s smartest programs yet.

A more mixed review comes from Gerald Fischer in the online blog, Chicago Classical Review:

The New York diva has the measure of this melodrama, and it was marvelous to hear her fierce attack on the German text. She clearly has a real feeling for the dark Expressionistic poetry and the sprechstimme style … All this excess fripperie was completely unnecessary because the performers were uniformly so superb and could have carried the show on the music alone.

Majel Connery on her blog, Consider the Lillies, writes:

I don’t expect someone to literally stage “He stuffs a little parcel / Of fine tobacco, with finesse, / Into Cassander’s shiny skull.” That’s not the point. But do stage something that suggests a logic of its own. Do create a stage language that’s coherent unto itself and do give the people on stage a deep understanding of how to communicate in that language … Unless you convince your actors of the value of what they’re doing, the risk is that they look like so many automata in a series of rotating positions.

Above is an audio interview (with fancy titles) that I did with Evan Kuchar in advance of our Harris Theater concert on Tuesday at 7.30pm. You can also hear this on Evan’s blog, the seeing ear.

Practice makes perfect
Eighth blackbird flies without a safety net: sheet music.

By Doyle Armbrust
original link

Playing Arnold Schoenberg’s 40-minute melodrama Pierrot Lunaire without sheet music seems like a bad dare. But for eighth blackbird, the Herculean task is merely modus operandi—and extremely rare, if not unique, among such groups. “It’s like bashing the notes into our skulls with a two-by-four,” says eighth blackbird violinist-violist Matt Albert. “But the end result is awesome.” Learning Pierrot took 100 hours of group rehearsal, not counting individual practice, plus three weeks of staging.

Memorization has been a revelatory yet daunting practice for Chicago’s indomitable new-music group since its New York debut in 1998, when the sextet staged Fred Lerdahl’s Fantasy Etudes. (The ensemble moved to Chicago in 2000.) “We basically apologized up front at that first performance,” the 35-year-old Albert tells us. “We said it was just a fun experiment.”
The ensemble quickly realized that by keeping the music stands offstage, it could engage in score-enhancing movement. “The audience has one fewer barrier, the stands, between them and us,” Albert explains. “We can make more eye contact. We can hear better. Plus, we know our own parts so much better.”

While it’s beyond a stretch to refer to the 1912 work Pierrot Lunaire as “new music,” many concertgoers still find Schoenberg’s chromaticism and non-narrative poeticism challenging: one of those “barriers” Albert refers to. The descending piano figure wouldn’t be out of place in an early-20th-century art song, and the atonal Sprechstimme (speaking voice)—which guest artist Lucy Shelton will sing on Tuesday 8 at the Harris Theater—informs the audience it’s embarking on an unfamiliar, decidedly gloomy journey.

With lines such as “Dark, black giant moths / Killed the brightness of the sun,” Pierrot is an unmistakable nightmare-scape, even without staging. The imagery of the titular commedia dell’arte clown smoking Turkish tobacco out of a skull, not to mention his beheading by a “gleaming scimitar,” the moon, lends itself to the dramatic.

The eighth blackbird members knew just the person to infuse the score with theatricality: New York choreographer-playwright Mark DeChiazza, who worked as assistant director for the ensemble’s production last year of singing in the dead of night. “My first response to hearing Pierrot was panic,” DeChiazza says in a video interview on eighth blackbird’s website. The anxiety was short-lived, however; DeChiazza made the inspired decision to employ the talents of Metropolitan Opera Ballet dancer Elyssa Dole as a fluttering twin to soprano Shelton and to cast eighth blackbird percussionist Matthew Duvall as the peculiar lead, replete with bow tie and suspenders. The costumes evoke the roaring ’20s, with Duvall in a white suit and the women in flapper dresses, set against the muted tones of the musicians’ outfits.

The dramatic roles of the roaming instrument wielders fluctuate from song to song. One piece is staged as a waltz between Dole and Duvall, with Albert and flutist Tim Munro cutting in as suitors for the dame’s attention. In other tunes, pianist Lisa Kaplan joins Dole in a dance around the piano bench, and cellist Nicholas Photinos escorts Shelton around the stage as she tells a story.

The highly anticipated Chicago premiere reprises the production’s debut at California’s Ojai Music Festival in June. While Pierrot Lunaire no doubt will further eighth blackbird’s reputation for equal parts erudition and panache, the ensemble continues its commitment to casual concertgoers. “The goal of our performances isn’t a specific musical meaning that they have to ‘get,’” Albert stresses. “It’s about an experience that will move them.”

Eighth blackbird presents Pierrot Lunaire at Harris Theater Tuesday 8 at 7:30pm.

© Copyright 2009 Time Out Chicago

(Or, depending on your predilection, perhaps they think my viola shrinks.)

And these same people have probably also inwardly sighed over the dreary, one-instrument existence of Nick and Lisa. For what past transgressions are they atoning, forcing them to sit in one place bound by the constraints of their single instrument? When will they, too, be free to stride across the stage to another station, picking up a seemingly foreign object and drawing dulcet tones from its newly-won heartstrings?

Fret not: times are changing. If you’ve seen The Only Moving Thing, you know Lisa plays a mean accordian. Fans who were lucky enough to see Slide in Ojai know Nick can channel his inner Flea at a drop of a hat.

But now, we’ve gone even a step further, making all the above seem like idle posturing. Meet the newest addition to the stable of eighth blackbird instruments: the Schoenhut.