May is typically the month when our season begins to wind down, and although we might have a couple of summer gigs, the most intense and nutso stuff is usually behind us, and we can enjoy the slow emergence from hibernation of our wonderful hometown, Chicago.

Not this year, and I must say that it is mighty good to be busy given the current climate!

On May 30 we head to Ojai, CA, for two weeks of 12-hours-per-day rehearsals prior to our Music Directorship of the Ojai Festival. This will be a test of our powers of endurance, but, well, we only have ourselves to blame for programming so much music to play!

Then we make a six-day pit stop at the Great Lakes Festival in Bloomfield Hills, MI. This is a fantastic festival with a hugely diverse program, and if you come, you’ll hear us playing Bach, Haydn and Copland in collaboration with some of the festival’s outstanding guests, including Jeremy Denk, piano. There is a focus on the wonderful music of Stephen Hartke, and there will be performances of almost all of his chamber works during the festival. The history of the festival itself is worth mentioning; according to the website, it was founded as a “secular event,” but one that was “sponsored by three religious institutions (representing Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant faiths).”

Next is a flight to Europe for the Music09 Festival, newly relocated from its previous home in Cincinnati to the Hindemith Foundation in gorgeous Blonay, Switzerland. In addition to its own concert at the festival, 8bb will split up to perform the music of student composers in ensembles of student musicians. We will also give a performance of the Music09 composition competition winner, David Brynjar Franzson’s Il dolce fare niente. You can hear a recording of this fascinating and truly bloody crazy piece here.

Finally, after a few weeks off (during which I will try to get some of my Aussie accent back in the Motherland), 8bb makes a trip to the illustrious Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, where we will give the world premiere of hot English composer (and current CSO composer-in-residence) Mark-Anthony Turnage’s ironically-named Grazioso. Here is what the composer has written about the work:

It is one of a group of my recent pieces inspired by the music of Led Zeppelin. In this case the influence is mostly a general one, although there is a very slight allusion to the group’s 1971 Black Dog. The title refers to the first model of instrument played by Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page. Applied to this piece, it is ironic, as the music is not “grazioso” (graceful) at all. It is mostly aggressive and riff-based, using the extremes of register of the piccolo, bass clarinet and piano, and with a percussion set-up including a pedal bass drum, tom-toms and a large anvil.

The Mac, the Alb and I will also be taking part in Marin Alsop’s crazy festival of contemporary orchestral music, the Cabrillo Festival, which takes place in impossibly beautiful Santa Cruz, CA. Lots of reasons to get excited about this, not the least of which is working with and playing the music of two very different but equally interesting Aussie composers, Matthew Hindson and 2009 Grawemeyer Award winner Brett Dean. Also at the festival will be old friends of 8bb, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Ward-Bergeman and Kevin Puts.

eighth blackbird was named Music Director of the 2009 Ojai Festival way back in the summer of 2006. This was shockingly, overwhelmingly, nerve-rattlingly unexpected. Taking the reins of the Festival, we would be stepping into the shoes of some giants of 20th-century music, including Stravinsky, Copland, Boulez, and the Emerson Quartet. The weight of tradition has remained on the back of our minds throughout the process, but so has the “kids-in-a-candy-store” feeling: “Those crazy Ojai folks are giving us a whole festival? Woo-hoo!”.

Our first programming meeting with Ojai’s artistic director Thomas W. Morris in September 2006 was chaotic. Conversations collided, overlapped, intersected; megalomaniacal plans and utopian visions were hatched; hundreds of programs were planned. We all agreed the Festival should reflect the character of eighth blackbird, and two overarching ideas were settled upon: present unique, unexpected, groundbreaking chamber music experiences; and, make the Festival a wild, no-holds-barred musical party.

“Groundbreaking chamber music”? The Festival would expand the traditional definition of chamber music to include all of the bizarre things that we do as a 21st-century new music band: chamber-sized music theater (the world premiere of Rinde Eckert/Steve Mackey’s Slide); the collision of dance and small ensemble (Mark deChiazza’s radical new Pierrot Lunaire); unconducted “super-ensembles” (Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians; David Gordon’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Quasi-Sinfonia; Andriessen’s raucous, pedal-to-the-metal Worker’s Union).

“A wild musical party”? By cramming a diverse group of the country’s best musicians in close proximity, we would encourage cross-pollination, turning Ojai 2009 into a weekend-long jam session, concluding with a “marathon” concert that will be a rollicking good time for all!

There are good reasons that the designation “Music Director” is typically used in its singular form. Artistic decisions made by committee can be stilted, bureaucratic, compromised. This is where Tom Morris, former Executive Director of the Cleveland Orchestra and one of America’s most experienced orchestral “thinkers,” was essential. We met with him every few months until early 2009, and during the meetings he played many roles with ease and gusto: supportive dad (“That’s a great idea – nice work!”); experienced diplomat (“You both have interesting ideas, we just need to find the right place for them”); football coach (“OK guys, we’ve done solid work so far, but we still have a big job ahead of us”); the voice of reason (“I really think that is too much work for you”). He resolved inevitable disputes, massaged our egos, and focused our minds on the task at hand.

From the outset, we wanted Slide as the centerpiece of Ojai 2009. This project, eight years in the making, reunites prize-winning collaborators Rinde Eckert and Steve Mackey, who have created an ambitious night of “concert-theater” in which all eight performers speak, sing, play instruments, and take roles in this poignant drama. Eckert plays Renard, a psychologist whose 40-year-old experiment into perception and reality still haunts him.

Other highlights from Ojai 2009? The world premiere of a new production of Schoenberg’s tragicomic masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire, in which director Mark DeChiazza uses dance and gesture to connect to the human core of this bizarre, fascinating work. We will also perform Steve Reich’s new Pulitzer Prize-winner: the Double Sextet.

We have invited more than 20 of our favorite friends and collaborators to join us at the Festival, including the brilliant pianist Jeremy Denk, genre-bending ensemble Tin Hat, legendary soprano Lucy Shelton, surprising recorder quartet QNG, superstar guitarist/ composer Steve Mackey, rising Aussie star flutist Alexis Kenny, and a battery of amazing percussionists.

After three years of dreaming and scheming, the craziness of Ojai 2009 is almost upon us. I do hope you’ll join us for our wild musical thrill-ride!

Flutist Tim Munro is a member of eighth blackbird.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(As usual, watch in “HD” if you can!)

Desperate measures in harsh economic times?

Fortunately, no. Our Swingle Singers-like rendition of several songs from Pierrot Lunaire came about during a cue-to-cue (lighting rehearsal), in advance of last night’s studio concert at Chicago’s wonderfully unkempt Viaduct Theater. Lucy Shelton (our renowned prima donna) and Elyssa Dole (our prima ballerina) needed aural cues (so they could be in the right place at the right time), and so, without our instruments at hand, we resorted to some increasingly eccentric scat singing. My favorite moment? The ephemeral flutter of the song Raub (”Robbery”), during which the quartet sang every breathless, breakneck-speed 64th-note on the word “raub!”  (This was unfortunately not captured on film!)

The studio concert was a well attended and mostly very well executed run of our brand spanking new Pierrot production. Due to the fact that we spin, whir, sneak, embrace and drag chairs for much of the piece, it’s impossible for us to have an objective opinion about the production, which received its first-ever run-through during last night’s performance. So audience reaction becomes fascinating, frustrating and crucial. We talked to lots of people about almost every conceivable aspect of this quite abstract reading of the almost 100-year-old melodrama, and have a lot of data to mull over before the public premiere at the Ojai Festival in less than a month. Happily, we’ve received lots of positive comments so far, and, just as important, our rather frazzled, stressed-out director seemed very happy with what we have acheived!

The world premiere of Slide is the centerpiece of the 2009 Ojai Festival (where 8bb is Artistic Director), and the performance will take place on Friday June 12 at 8pm. Hope to see some of you there!

First up: two interviews about the genesis of the project, conducted during our second big workshop week on the project, in January 2009 at Princeton University.

In March 2009, at University of Richmond (our beloved second home!), we had another workshop session on the project. At the end of this 3-day session I conducted a short interview with Steve and Rinde, dealing with how the project had changed in the intervening months.

Also, the good Mr Muhly and Mr Daniel Stephen Johnson are both really bloody keen for the upcoming Nonesuch recording of Double Sextet to come out. (Thanks to Mr Johnson for kindly referring to a hiccup in a live performance of the piece as “unintentional phasing.” The performance also has some “expressive intonation” in there as well, for good measure.)

Economy got you down?  Come party with eighth blackbird!

We at eighth blackbird understand how tough it is right now, so we’ve decided to downscale.  While we love a big benefit event as much as anyone, we want to make sure all of Chicago friends can preview our exciting new work, regardless of their circumstance.  We also want to make sure that every dollar we receive goes to what matters most: great art.

We invite you to come by the Viaduct Theater at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 21st, hang out with us and our friends, enjoy a cash bar and a few snacks, and then see excerpts from the new production of one of our signature works, Pierrot Lunaire, with soprano Lucy Shelton, dancer Elyssa Dole, choreographer and director Mark DeChiazza and . . . percussionist Matthew Duvall as Pierrot!

Any contribution at all will get you a seat.

That’s right.  Any donation at all, whether $2 or $200, makes you our honored guest. You can donate here, and you will automatically be added to the list for the event.

Or just turn up, and you can give generously (or ungenerously) at the door!

And if you can’t attend in person, please consider making a contribution.  We’ll not only save you a place, we’ll take a picture of your empty seat and include the image in a future blog post!

Come join us for a fun evening of music and dance in an intimate setting and mingle with eighth blackbird and fellow supporters while enjoying snacks and drinks in the casual atmosphere of the Viaduct Theater.

For more about Pierrot, including a compelling interview with Mark DeChiazza, click here.

eighth blackbird’s ongoing commitment to creating high quality new musical experiences that are unique, entertaining and relevant to all audiences is only possible with the generous support of individuals like you.

Please subscribe to our email list and never miss the latest news and announcements: click here.

We are in beautiful Hanover, NH – home of famed Dartmouth College – for a three-day music department residency and a concert at “the Hop” (the Dartmouthians seem to enjoy abbreviations as much as Oberlin did: the Rat, the Sco, the Feve, the Con).

Yesterday the Kap and I appeared on Word of Mouth, an arts show from NHPR, New Hampshire’s public radio affiliate. The host, Virginia Prescott was incredibly well-versed in the life and times of 8bb, and surprised us with her knowledge of the ins and outs of the ensemble. (”How did she know that?” “Where did find that out?” “I feel like she must have been tapping our phones…”) It’s a nice little interview, and you can listen to it online here.

One other quick note: In addition to the usual round of masterclasses and class visits, the college scheduled a more unique residency activity for us: trips to on-campus residence houses to chat about the life of 8bb with students, during which we eat a meal cooked by one of the students. (My favorite residence house feature? A bathroom chock-a-block full of traffic signs, including, above the toilet, “NO DUMPING”. Wishful thinking…) Although none of the students were music majors (except a music/math major – “It’s a fun course – I get to experiment…a lot”) they were all very engaged, and seemed very interested in our, well, frankly bizarre lifestyle.

And, at one of the houses, they even specially designed the dessert to suit our name. Chocolate pudding with broken-up Oreos and candy worms. Get it? Imagine the candy worms sticking up out of the “ground”, waiting to be eaten up by a blackbird…bloody adorable!

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Above: Excerpts from rehearsals of Stephen Hartke’s “Meanwhile” with three amazing students from the Colburn School of Music, Los Angeles. These guys memorized their parts and learned our choreographed stage movement for one performance! Colburn students are: Louise McKay, cello; David Fung, piano; and Stan Muncy, percussion. Click on “HD” once the video has begun, to watch in much higher quality.)

Our concert with a collection of Colburn School’s improbably talented students last week didn’t get a newspaper review, but noted LA critic (and former writer for the LA Weekly) Alan Rich wrote a very positive blog entry about the show. He began by praising the Pulitzer-Prize winning Double Sextet, writing that it “deserved the award, every teeming, pulsating note. This is music that sweeps you up; its sound spectrum is grand and irresistible. You hear it the way you hear the “Eroica,” as unfolding melodic material pushing forward from idea to idea.” Rich declared the Colburn contingent “a handsome group, if I may say so.” The concert was ”the last of an excellent series of Sunday afternoon chamber concerts at Zipper, nicely organized by Colburn, free to the public and mostly jam-packed.”

I worked most closely with the group that performed Stephen Hartke’s Meanwhile. As with all three pieces on the concert, duties were evenly divided between 8bb and Colburn students. In the Hartke there were three 8bb-ers (the Alb, the Mac and me) and three Colburn-ers (Louise McKay, cello; and David Fung, piano; and Stan Muncy, percussion). Louise and David were proud, if perhaps overly patriotic Aussies (Louise with an Aussie flag sticker on her cello case, David beginning one rehearsal with our forgettable national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair”), so rehearsals were peppered with unintellible slang (”Waddayareckon”, “Bloodybewdiful”, ”Oimofftathadunny”) and our poetic note values (”hemi-demi-semi-quavers”).

Below, the Alb with Aussies David Fung and Louise McKay.

We performed Meanwhile from memory, with the choreographed stage movement that 8bb has been touring for the past few couple of months. I think it is fair to say that, prior to arrival, this scared the crap out of the Colburn folks.

The impossibly even-tempered, easy-going percussionist Stan Muncy walked into the first rehearsal with the entire hulking, sprawling, complex Hartke percussion part completely memorized. Typically, he shrugged off his achievement, suggesting that it was 8bb’s percussionist (the Duv) that had frightened him into action. Having such a solid foundation helped make the rehearsal process much easier. Louise and David (bloody lazy Aussies) hadn’t reached Stan’s level, but proved to have incredibly quick musical minds, so they did manage to squeeze all of the notes into their heads (despite some miniscule cheat sheets nestled inside the piano; David: “Dya reckon anyone’ll see’m?”).

We worked on the Hartke for three hours a day over an eight-day period, which is intense, but pretty typical for 8bb’s working method. We’re very lucky to be able to afford to do that, because it allows us to do the crazy things that we do, and it was nice to be able to bring a microcosm of the high concentration, diligent “8bb experience” to students.

Below, Louise attempts to strum the cello like a guitar for a section of the Hartke while Stan looks on:

The Colburn model is unique. It is a degree-granting institution, but also includes an apartment building (where students live at no cost), a cafe (where students eat for free), more than enough glorious- (or should I say, properly horrendous-) sounding practice rooms, two gorgeous halls (one seating just 100, the other more like 500), a fitness room (and a fabulous, good-natured but ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners, please-let-me-sit-this-one-out-for-the-love-of-god-! personal trainer). It doesn’t cost a cent to attend. And it’s sunny and 80 degrees all year round. Numbers? There are enough students to fill an orchestra, plus there are a number of pianists.

The Mac: “I’m gonna take a 6-month sabbatical and come study here!”

Like all conservatories, it is a close-knit community, but somehow living together seems to bring everyone even closer. Hence the obsession with things like the Colburn Table Tennis Competition, which students and faculty alike mentioned with great reverence, in hushed tones. At the the Championship Match, to be held after we left, there was to be a half-time band (one student: “the best marching band ever created!”), complete with fake press quotes:

One afternoon we took part in a “business of music” class led by the wonderful Edna Landau, who is one of the most experienced managers in the music world (in 2006 New York Magazine named her as one of the six most influential people in New York music and dance). I couldn’t quite believe that Colburn had managed to nab such a high-level person, but what an absolutely amazing opportunity for the students!

I found our Colburn visit inspiring. Seeing the high level of professionalism and skill in these young players has given me a right royal kick in the arse, and I’m now reaching for the books of etudes and technical exercises that were gathering dust in my library. Fabulous flute student Martha Long reintroduced me to the baroque flute and taught me at least a dozen “fake” fingerings I didn’t know about (OMG, really! How have I survived without that…bloody hell), while fellow Colburn-er, the totally-job-ready flutist Leah Arsenault gave me pause for thought about my place in the musical world, which I too easily take for granted these days. Some Colburn students even came with a brilliant plan for 8bb to start a brewery and name the beers after composers that the group has played. (Reich? An easy-drinking but very well crafted lager; Hartke? A complex and bizarre experimental ale in the tradition of Dogfish Head; Schoenberg? A heavy, sipping beer that can be tough-going but feels very worthwhile by the end.)

Below, more photos, from the week’s Double Sextet rehearsals:

Oh, and I just had to include this, a brewery/fitness center down the road from Colburn. Weird, and, um, VERY LA:

8bb’s recording of Reich’s Double Sextet made it onto Colbert last night. In the segment, “Who’s not honoring me now,” Colbert first took on the Pulitzers:

Hey, this sucker was made for me. Look at the inscription on the back: “For disinterested and meritorious service.” Nobody is more disinterested in public service. Hell, last year I robbed a bank just to get out of jury duty…

[Plays excerpt of Double Sextet] That is what I call head-banger music – in that it was clearly written by someone banging their head against a piano.

The Pulitzers … gave out fifteen awards to newspaper journalists, and there are only sixteen people still working at newspapers.

He then shredded the World Barista Championship (”…gripping…”) and the Emmys, who very unwisely removed the category in which Colbert had been nominated three times…

The Colbert Report 4/28/09

eighth blackbird will hold our annual benefit event on Thursday, May 21st, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., at the Viaduct Theater in Chicago.

Attendees will be the very first to see a preview of eighth blackbird’s new production of Schoenberg’s legendary Pierrot Lunaire. Directed by noted New York choreographer Mark DeChiazza, it features soprano Lucy Shelton and dancer Elyssa Dole. The musicians of eighth blackbird perform the challenging work entirely from memory, and players take important roles in the drama.

Percussionist Matthew Duvall plays Pierrot, the sad, naïve, clown-like character from Commedia dell’Arte who takes a darkly comic journey through a strange world. Written in 1912, the fevered intensity, gallows humor and touching pathos of this modern classic is drenched in the music of smoke-filled Berlin cabaret clubs and the bizarre world of the German melodrama. Visit our Pierrot project page for more information, photos and video.

In addition to this exclusive preview, attendees will have the opportunity to bid on a host of special auction items, including a home cooked meal by some of the culinarily gifted ensemble members! Come mingle with eighth blackbird and fellow supporters while enjoying hors d’oeuvres and drinks.

eighth blackbird’s ongoing commitment to creating high quality new musical experiences that are unique, entertaining and relevant to all audiences is only possible with the generous support of individuals like you. If you are unable to attend the benefit event in Chicago, please consider making a donation to our enrichment fund.

Tickets are $120, and space is limited. RSVP to benefit@eighthblackbird.com. We hope to see you at the Viaduct on Thursday, May 21st!

Below, an interview with director Mark de Chiazza following rehearsals at University of Richmond for the new production. In addition to five musicians and phenomenal soprano Lucy Shelton, the staging will include Elyssa Dole, dancer, and eighth blackbird’s percussionist Matthew Duvall, who will play the character of Pierrot. If you can, watch it in HD for higher video quality.