By Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
New York Press original link

Animal Instinct

Check out eighth blackbird for true musical innovation and imagination

It’s about time the classical world opened its doors to everyone else. Though we should be thankful that this process has been underway for decades, progress has occurred mostly at a slow and labored pace punctuated with stabs of forward motion. The proliferation of “New Music,” however, has certainly helped. New Music ensembles turn convention, quite literally, on its ear, and tend to draw inspiration from contemporary non-classical genres for starkly modern twists on centuries-old traditions.

As each successive wave of music school graduates finds it impossible to resist other types of music, and as more classically-trained musicians become convinced of the futility of keeping classical music chained to the past, the visibility of classical-derived music increases steadily at the margins of pop culture. Right now, new traditions and vocabularies are forming right under our noses with the same compelling combination of speed and energy as in any other art form taking shape in real time. In this age of unprecedented access and stylistic cross-pollination, New Music is arguably positioned to infiltrate mass consciousness as it never has before.

Luckily, the misshapen, creepy-crawly pieces on strange imaginary animals, the just-released fourth album from Chicago-based sextet eighth blackbird, come with a built-in capacity to scurry past intellectual preconceptions and head right for the ear where they belong. Delightfully eerie, animals comes popping out of your speakers with the kinetic flurry of an animated dance performance. The ensemble employs a myriad of sounds that require only a passing familiarity with cartoon music to grasp. From the hand-drawings in the artwork to the techno reprise that closes the disc, playfulness pervades.

Animals represents just a handful of the works that eighth blackbird has on the slate for its 2006-07 “season” (its 11th straight since forming in 1995). Looking at times more like The Residents or The Mothers Of Invention than a group of conservatory grads, the members of eighth blackbird embrace theatrics and ditch the sheet music in favor of playing from memory. Indeed, strange imaginary animals bristles with the pulse of music combining with itself to make new life.

And, unlike many other prominent acts in their oeuvre, eighth blackbird capture the natural grace of those evolutions. The program for their CD release at The Kitchen includes spirited and inspiring interpretations of Jennifer Higdon’s “Zaka,” Gordon Fitzell’s “evanescence” and David M. Gordon’s “Friction Systems.” Composer Steven Mackey’s “Indigenous Instruments,” the album’s centerpiece (also to be performed live), takes us on an ethno-musicological exploration. That it ventures into places and cultures that happen to exist only in his (and our) imagination is fitting—and speaks volumes not only about the horizons New Music has yet to reach, but about eighth blackbird’s sense of where it can go.

Copyright © 2007 New York Press