Black night

The last time I saw eighth blackbird, they were responsible for injecting a little "high-minded severity" into last summer's Bang on a Can Marathon. That was also when I learned they'd commissioned a "combo piece" from Bang on a Can's founders -- Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and the recently Pulitzer'd David Lang. The Blackbirdians have double-billed this with another ambitious commission from Steve Reich, who is effectively the granddaddy of the Bang on a Can approach to classical music -- which is, in a nutshell, "less high-minded severity, more grooves."

By Allan Kozinn

A Night of Collaboration and Energetic Activity

You can measure a new-music group’s success by the composers it commissions. When Eighth Blackbird began performing, in 1996, its repertory consisted largely of revivals of older scores and works by young composers in the early stages of their careers. The group has not forsaken those composers, nor has it given up curatorial programming completely, but the program it played at Zankel Hall on Thursday evening showed that it is now in another league.

larger audience?

Thursday night I heard a wonderful concert by eighth blackbird, in Zankel Hall. There was a new Steve Reich piece, Double Sextet, and then an extravaganza -- music plus exuberant staging -- from the three Bang on a Can composers, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon. Among much else, this was a real New York event, highlighting music by two generations of composers whose sound just about screams "New York." Steve Reich was New York in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Bang on a Can -- not that they don't have other influences -- come in a direct line from him. That was especially clear at the start of their piece, with a rippling pattern of repeated things that wouldn't have been possible without Reich showing the path.

Live: 'Blackbird,' by the numbers

The math behind eighth blackbird’s program Tuesday night at the Orange County Performing Artscenter, titled "The Only Moving Thing," was this: The ensemble, based at the University of Chicago, takes its name from Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," an inspiration for many composers. The musicians number six: flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano (the grouping Schoenberg came up with nearly a hundred years ago for "Pierrot Lunaire"), plus percussion. The concert, given in the intimate Samueli Theater, contained two major new pieces -- Steve Reich’s Double Sextet and "singing in the dead of night" by the Bang on a Can collective -- but involved four composers. One piece was for 12 players. There were more instruments onstage than I could count. Is birdseed poured on an amplified table one instrument or many?

Reich's pulsing pleasures sung by blackbird

For classical music critics, premieres can be heady stuff. In an art form routinely disparaged for repeatedly programming the same museum collection of works, the unveiling of a new work – even as a "West Coast" premiere rather than the "world" variety – offers a chance to celebrate a living, growing art. And Tuesday night's performance by the chamber sextet eighth blackbird at Samueli Theater was no garden-variety premiere. Both pieces on the program, Steve Reich's Double Sextet, a co-commission of the Orange County Performing Artscenter, and the three-composer collaboration "singing in the dead of night," could hardly have been newer.

Blackbird virtuosos need no visuals

In addition to playing their instruments like demons, members of the phenomenal new-music sextet, Eighth Blackbird, often incorporate stage movement into their performances. At its best, the group dispatches intricate and demanding scores - generally from memory - while supplementing the music with elegant visual counterpoint.