By Rebecca Howard, music critic
Deseret News

Eighth Blackbird plays with passion

The classical music of the future is young, hip and alive. And it's best friend is Eighth Blackbird. The young sextet came to Libby Gardener Concert Hall Tuesday evening with a program of new music. The group plays with conviction, and its passion for the music comes through in every phrase.

The evening started out strong, with "Yellow Pages," by Michael Torke. Vibrant, rhythmic and driving, the group got down to business from the opening notes. It also had a great concept with this piece — everybody had his part memorized, and each member moved fluidly about the stage. Of course, it became apparent that the "choreography" was planned when flautist Molly Barth, clarinetist Michael Maccaferri and violinist Matt Albert synchronized some hip swings, which elicited a laugh from the audience. However, the movement, coupled with a fantastic performance, effectively broke down any barriers between audience, artist and music.

Unfortunately, they retreated to a more conventional performance style for all but the last piece of the program, remaining stationary and reading from music. Sadly, that extra dimension got lost somewhere in the process. Their performances of Harbison's "Variations" and Lerdahl's "Time After Time" were good but a little more stand-offish than the memorized pieces. Chen Yi's "Qi" broke the rule, though — they used music but it was still compelling and powerful.

The evening ended with Joan Tower's homage to Stravinski, "Petroushskates." Again, true to form, the group sparkled as it played by heart and with heart. The strength of this ensemble is that it has a vision of what contemporary music is all about. The players understand the language of the music and know how to speak it fluently and beautifully. They also have the capacity to bring this "intellectual" music close enough so that anybody can reach out and touch — and be touched — by it. The weakness is that — in Tuesday's performance, anyway — the group didn't do that consistently. It should be noted that even the weaker pieces received excellent performances by anyone's standards but lacked that extra something that sets Eighth Blackbird apart.

It was encouraging to see a decent crowd at the performance; Libby Gardener Hall was almost filled. Apparently a few people were lost at intermission, however. As they left, two couples were overheard saying, "That's not at all what I expected. I thought this was a vocal performance." While another seemed to sum up the consensus of the rest of the audience: "I really like modern classical music. It's nice to hear it played well."

Copyright 2003 Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah)