By Andrew Adler, Courier-Journal Critic
Louisville Courier-Journal original link

Crackling energy in service to the new

Yesterday's concert by eighth blackbird, the prodigiously gifted contemporary music ensemble, demonstrated how nothing argues a case for the unknown more persuasively than a superb performance.

Appearing at the University of Louisville School of Music, this sextet of young American instrumentalists inverted typical Chamber Music Society expectations to quite brilliant ends. Never for an instant did the repertoire seem arcane or obtuse. And an audience accustomed to the likes of Beethoven, Schubert and perhaps a morsel of Bartok likely came away with entirely new affections.

There were a lot of notes to be heard during these presentations, but no squandered energy. What impressed in the foreground was the economy of means most of the composers applied to their respective expressive tasks. It couldn't have been coincidental that two of the most intriguing scores, David Ludwig's "Haiku Catharsis" (written this year) and George Perle's "Critical Moments 2" (from 2001) were constructed out of pristinely edited components. Consider that Ludwig was born in 1972 and Perle in 1915, and suddenly the generational chasm doesn't seem so vast after all.

Eighth blackbird (which draws its name from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is a crackling fine band of Oberlin Conservatory alums. It comprises flutist Molly Alicia Barth, clarinetist Michael J. Maccaferri, violinist Matt Albert, cellist Nicholas Photinos, percussionist Matthew L. Duvall and pianist Lisa Kaplan. They understand how to communicate shrewdly among themselves and to an audience — like yesterday's — that's not versed in their idiom.

When appropriate, one or more ensemble members spoke a bit about the music to come — as in a preamble to Frederic Rzewski's "Les Moutons des Panurge" (1969), in which the players coax a small universe of intersecting lines out of a mere 65 notes. Kaija Saariaho's "Cendres" (1998), scored for flute, cello and piano, whispered and wailed. And in David M. Gordon's "Dramamine" (2002), where quarter tones and prepared/toy-piano figures duke it out for aural supremacy, eighth blackbird found cool logic amid white-hot musicianship. Quite a show.

Copyright 2004 Louisville Courier-Journal