By Larry Fuchsberg
Minneapolis Star-Tribune original link

Blackbird on the wing

"New" or "contemporary" music, we're often told, appeals almost exclusively to a narrow, specialist audience. But Eighth Blackbird, the dazzling Chicago-based sextet, clearly hasn't gotten the memo. Neither had the listeners, schoolkids and octogenarians among them, who filled a hall at Macalester College last Friday for the ensemble's belated Twin Cities debut. The performance, most of it played from memory, was as notable for its theatrical and visual elements as for the musicians' coordinated virtuosity. (Percussionist Matthew Duvall, equipped with everything from a jew's harp to a metal trash-can lid, injected an offhand bravura he probably didn't pick up at the Oberlin Conservatory, which hatched the group.) The Twin Cities area was once a center of music-making like this. It's high time for a revival.