(Above, Steve Reich talks to members of 8bb prior to the world premiere of Double Sextet at the University of Richmond on March 26, 2008.)

Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, a work commissioned and performed all over the world by 8bb, has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for music. According to the panel of judges, it is “a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear.”

This is the second year in a row that an 8bb-commissioned and premiered piece has been nominated (Stephen Hartke’s kickass Meanwhile was given that honor in 2008), but the first time a commission has won the coveted prize. We will be recording the work in September for Nonesuch Records, and that recording will hopefully be released in 2010.

Before that, you can learn about the piece on our website! Over in the projects part of our site there is a section named for the touring show that involves the Reich, The Only Moving Thing. There you will find program notes, an interview with Reich about the piece, blog entries (including videos), press highlights and a short excerpt from one of the early performances.

A very hearty congratulations to the fabulous Mr Reich on behalf of all us 8bb folks! And a hearty thank you to all of the co-commissioning partners who made this piece a reality: The Carnegie Hall Corporation, The Abe Fortas Memorial Fund of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Liverpool Cultural Company – European Capital of Culture 2008, The Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond (our wonderful second home, where the premiere took place), Orange County Performing Arts Center, The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music – Music 08 Festival.

Update: NPR’s All Things Considered has a story on the Pulitzers this evening, which includes a short interview with Steve Reich and concludes with the last 30 seconds of 8bb playing Double Sextet.

On Saturday May 2 at 7pm, 8bb is proud to present our friend Jeremy Denk in his only Chicago recital during the 2008/09 season. The concert will take place at PianoForte Chicago, and proceeds will benefit both PianoForte and eighth blackbird Performing Arts Association. Space is very limited, and you don’t want to miss this amazing bloke! Click here to buy tickets.

American pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a name as one of today’s most compelling young artists. In 1998, he won both the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and received a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, and over the past decade his career has flourished. He is a frequent collaborator with violinst Joshua Bell and author of the popular Think Denk blog. The program will include Charles Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 1 and J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

According to the New York Times:

With familiar repertory, expectations need to be not only manipulated but surpassed for the performance to graduate from the merely enjoyable to the profoundly affecting. A rendition of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations by the pianist Jeremy Denk…was entrancing from the first notes of the famous Aria, a magical experience that was one of the best solo performances this year.

Here’s the info:

Charles Ives Piano Sonata No. 1

J.S. Bach Goldberg Variations

Saturday, May 2
7:00 pm
410 S. Michigan Ave., #825, Chicago
$30 ($20 for PianoForte Foundation members)

As only a true attention-seeking prima donna could be, I was delighted to find that he mentions me up-front:

Haunted house. That’s how flutist Tim Munro described eighth blackbird, the instrumental sextet in which he and colleagues play contemporary music with a fusion of brilliance, charisma and joy.

Although audiences certainly don’t know what they’re going to get at an eighth blackbird concert, the results aren’t so much scary (Munro’s word) as captivating. So let’s propose a slightly different metaphor for the group: enchanted garden.

Ok, so “haunted house” was stretching it a little. (In my intros to our previous few concerts, I’ve likened seeing an 8bb performance to taking a ride on Space Mountain, listening to the radio while driving cross country, and making a trip to the circus. I’m prone to perversity…)

After declaring that we were “in top form,” Rosenberg asserts that the ensemble “brings magical qualities to music of fragrant and pungent allure.” We have “a knack for programming works of color and suspense. As the musicians interact, they often tap physically into the theatricality that animates the scores.” Rosenberg does a particularly deft job of “painting” each piece in just a few words:

Two movements from Dennis DeSantis’ “Powerless” found the players trading syncopated figures, savoring rhythmic puzzles and engaging in frisky conversation. Franco Donatoni’s “Arpege” moves from shadowy piano and vibraphone lines to nimble ensemble fragments, snapping strings and wisps of sound.

Clarinetist Maccaferri had a chance to scoot on and offstage during Thomas Ades’ “Catch,” a deft mix of dreamy and irreverent material. And the alternation of lyrical and fierce activity in movements from Roshanne Etezady’s “Damaged Goods” found eighth blackbird in typically alert, soaring frame of mind.

(A side-note: It was nice to meet Donald Rosenberg’s predecessor at the Dealer, Robert Finn, who interviewed the Phot and me in an entertaining pre-concert chat. What a nice bloke, who told interesting anecdotes in his wonderfully dapper, old-fashioned suit and bow-tie.)

These words were sung at the very end of 8bb’s performance on Thursday night of Tituli, Stephen Hartke’s euphonic, emotionally potent reawakening of some of the world’s oldest (and yet curiously “modern”-sounding) written texts. The quote is the only modern addition to Stephen’s scrupulously chosen ancient libretto, and it sets the composer and dedicatees “in stone,” as it were, for the ages. 8bb was lucky enough to have the Hilliards on hand in Chicago for a performance at the Harris Theater in front of some 600+ audience members.

The concert was very positively reviewed by both Chicago papers: in the Sun-Times by Wynne Delacoma, and in the Tribune by Michael Cameron.

According to the Sun-Times, Hartke’s works helped “eighth blackbird soar”:

Eighth blackbird … has blithely ignored musical categories in its concerts this season at the Harris Theater. On Thursday, with the five-man Hilliard Ensemble as its collaborators, eighth blackbird offered a lively survey of works by a leading California-based composer, Stephen Hartke. Concluding with a group of songs set to ancient Latin and Greek texts, the concert was a stimulating blend of old and new sounds …

Hartke’s music has just enough dissonance to give it a crisp, 21st century edge but it never feels like a craggy collection of melodic or rhythmic bits and pieces …

“Tituli,” performed by the Hilliard singers accompanied by Albert’s violin and percussionists Doug Perkins and Matthew Duvall, was an engrossing journey to an ancient but surprisingly familiar world. Hartke’s texts were touching, especially “Epitaph for a Small Boy” and “Inscriptions on Portable Objects.” Individual voices in the Hilliard Ensemble, especially countertenor David James and baritone Gordon Jones, glowed in the Harris Theater’s crystalline acoustics. Seeming to float in from another galaxy, they sounded intensely human yet mysterious …

Delacoma rightly took us to task for keeping the lights too low for audiences to follow the texts in Tituli, a work who’s effect (I believe) is blunted by an ignorance of the amazing source material. As I sank into my seat in the audience for the second half I suddenly realized: Oh my bloody god, nobody is gonna be able to decipher the faint serif font of the printed texts. Bugger. (Despite my maternal-like nerves for the performers onstage, I have to say that I very much enjoyed the rare experience of actually hearing 8bb from “the outer”)

Avoiding bird metaphors, the Tribune thought we created “magic”:

Anyone doubting the relevance of new classical music must surely have overlooked eighth blackbird, a sextet that in a few short years has built a following that would make most purveyors of the traditional canon green with envy …

The composer forges his links with seamless, elegant craftsmanship, coaxing sounds, tunes and harmonies suggestive of the East, but mostly with Western instruments …

The ensemble absorbed the work with utter assurance, and incorporated subtle staging by Erica Mott that suggested the casual banter of street musicians [in Aussie: Onya Erica!!] …

[Tituli] partnered The Hilliard Ensemble with two members of eighth blackbird and percussionist Doug Perkins in an authoritative account of an eight-movement work based on ancient inscriptions from many sources—featuring messages that were ambiguous, banal and poetic.

A great way to end our 2008/09 Harris season!

8bb’s 2009/10 season will be announced very soon, so WATCH THIS SPACE. Teaser: there will be an overload of all things theatrical, including much twirling and pirouetting, some speaking, acting and 8bb’s singing debut! (Don’t worry – I won’t be reprising my Oz-famous role as Isolde, but I warn you, I do have the vocal range to do it.)

In the meantime, below are some snapshots and a video from Thursday’s dress rehearsal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK73ysGnq9Q[/youtube]

8bb performs the music of Stephen Hartke with The Hilliard Ensemble at 7.30pm tomorrow (Thursday 19 February), Harris Theater, Chicago.

Here are three reasons that you should come: To hear the Hilliards (one of the world’s great vocal ensembles); to hear the music of Stephen Hartke (imagination and craft at the highest level – music that will stand the test of time); and to see 8bb strut its stuff in a brand spanking new staging of Hartke’s astounding Meanwhile.

Until then, below are some photos and a video from tonight’s first rehearsal with the Hilliards. First impressions: They are consummate musicians (rarely putting a foot wrong in music that takes absolutely no prisoners, which they haven’t sung in five years), consummate professionals and incredibly nice blokes. The Hilliards’ five-concert US tour featured not one, not two, but FIVE different concert programs. “It’s all stuff we know well,” one of them humbly added. 

Below, the incredibly refined ears of Stephen Hartke listen as Doug Perkins and the Duv strike, bow, pat and cajole the marimba into action.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Eki-SHrys[/youtube]

It is true that before now there have been life-altering discoveries in the fields of navigation, science, medicine, technology and semi-homemade food preparation. 

But none can compete with the wonders of twitter. In the past, if one wanted to share a deep and important moment with the world, like “That is YUMMMMMMMY!! I had to heart your shop. . . shame on you enabling my addiction. . . lol,” where and how could this happen? 

According to Wikipedia, twitter is a “a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as “tweets”), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.”

It seems natural that 8bb should step into this inane but brave new world, especially given the bird references in the site’s terminology… The Mac has already put the 8bb twitter feed on our blog and homepage. We also encourage you to become “followers” of eighthblackbird on the twitter site.

The host of this show, on Chicago’s classical music station, is Kerry Frumkin, and the format is so simple and so fabulously old-fashioned: 8bb will play live, chat to Kerry, play, chat, play, chat, play, play, play.

The in-between-pieces chatting will be informal and hopefully entertaining, and we will be sure to plug our next Chicago concert, at the Harris Theater on February 19, in collaboration with England’s amazing Hilliard Ensemble.

Below is the program of music that we will play live in WFMT’s fabulous recording studio:

Dennis DeSantis: “Ace” and “Own” from Powerless - 8′

Kati Agócs: Immutable Dreams - 14′

1. I Feel the Air of Other Planets
2. Microconcerto
3. Husks

Stephen Hartke: The Horse with the Lavender Eye - 16′

1. Music of the Left
2. The Servant of Two Masters
3. Waltzing at the Abyss
4. Cancel my Rumba Lesson

Roshanne Etezady: “About Time” and “Eleventh Hour” from Damaged Goods - 7′

Stephen Hartke: excerpt from Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain - 7′ (ECM recording by The Hilliard Ensemble)

Thomas Adès: Catch - 9′

Stephen Hartke: “Cradle songs” and “Celebration” from Meanwhile - 8′

David Lang: third movement of these broken wings - 6′

So tune in!

The story is not available online, so I encourage you to pick up an issue at Borders or some such place, but here are a couple of excerpts:

They haven’t changed much since 2006 [...] Appearance-wise, violinist Matt Albert’s formerly cropped hair has become a blond, floppy fringe, clarinettist Michael J Maccaferri’s beard has grown impressively bushy, and flautist Tim Munro has cultured his own whiskers and shot up about a foot in height. Actually, it wasn’t Tim Munro in 2006 [...]

“eighth blackbird is music director,” grins Munro. “That alone presents grammatical problems! There has been a lot of fabulous arguing and going back and forth, as there have been very strong personalities each with different views.

On the first page of the article is a photo of a genteel old man, which prompted some discussion among the group:

“Maybe it’s Sam Melville” [the author of a letter, set by Fred Rzewski in Coming Together, which is discussed in the article]

“Nah, this guy looks all high-falutin n educated n stuff”

“Nick, it’s a picture of you that’s been run through an automatic aging maching…”

“Hm.”

“…bloody hell. It’s Wallace Stevens!”

“God, what illiterate slobs we are. How did we not pick that…”

 

Actually, there’s quite a lot about me in the piece, which, as I am a true flutist prima donna, is all to the good. Hinson manages to publicly announce my adolescent obsession with Billy Joel and Andrew Lloyd-Webber, to share with the world my desperation to be part of a rock band, and to quote two of my family members:

“My stepfather used to say, ‘Oh, you play music that sounds like an orchestra tuning up,’ ” Munro said and laughed. “There’s a little more to it than that.” …

“We try to give the happy face of contemporary music,” Munro said. “I sent a picture of our group to my brother, who is an indie singer-songwriter. I was asking his opinion about which one we should use. He wanted to know why we were all smiling in the photo. . . . Smiling is not allowed in the indie rock world. You can’t smile in those photos. We can smile.”

My memory is that I didn’t QUITE say the last quotation quite like that. It makes me seem very happy-clappy and evangelical. “We like to smile, all of the time. Smiling is good for the soul and baby Jesus smiles with us.” I think I said that I was reluctant to call ourselves the “happy face of contemporary music,” but in such cases of slight and benevolent misquotation I’ve learnt to remember the old adage, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

In other news, FSU is HUGE. Huge. There are some 1200 students in the music program alone, and, upon comparing notes after our individual masterclasses yesterday, declared the quality of the players to be very high indeed. The Fazioli piano for tonight’s performance is loud, bright and incredibly penetrating, yet is able to be pared down to the faintest whisper. Lisa was having a field day during rehearsal; we agreed that it was truly a “pianist’s piano.”

It’s official: 8bb will give the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s concerto for sextet and orchestra with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano conducting in June 2010.

The wonderful ASO and its inspirational Artistic Director announced the orchestra’s 2009/10 season yesterday, and nestled in among the Tchaikovsky symphonies and Wagner overtures, among the Midoris and Yo-Yo Mas is little ol’ 8bb. Here is the press release, and here is a chronological listing.

The commission has been in the works for a while (there is even a page on our website devoted to the new composition), but before now we have been unable to publicly mention the commissioning orchestra. And now that we can: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

For those of you keeping score at home, we will be giving three performances of the work, on June 3, 5 and 6, as part of Delta Classical Series 1. Ours is the penultimate week of performances in the orchestra’s season, and the Higdon concerto has been programmed with a new work for chorus and orchestra by Michael Gandolfi and Mozart’s Symphony No. 39. In this and the season’s final week of performances, the ASO will present all three of Mozart’s last symphonies.

You can download the ASO’s 2009/10 subscription brochure by clicking here.