By Erik Eriksson

eighth blackbird on the Wing
Green Lake Festival of Music
Demmer Recital Hall, Ripon College, Ripon, WI

A new music group of bracing distinction, eighth blackbird (no capital letters) brought this Green Lake Festival of Music audience to a pitch of excitement in the first of a series of 2005 festival events. Even those who may not have fully anticipated the edge with which this sextet performs were won over by their craft, commitment and passion as applied to contemporary classical music.

By Allan Kozinn

Many Styles, All of Them Contemporary

Most new-music ensembles support a prevailing philosophy of contemporary composition, with some leaning toward the world of post-tonal complexity and others toward more consonant styles. Eighth Blackbird, a new-music sextet based in Chicago, has not declared a stylistic allegiance, and its program on Saturday evening at Washington Irving High School in Manhattan showed that there was no reason it should, given the deftness with which its young players moved through a broad range of modern styles.

By Jon W. Sparks

'Blackbird,' IRIS players take wing

Amazing musical adventures just keep on coming with IRIS. Maestro Michael Stern programmed and executed yet another sterling concert with the chamber music orchestra Saturday night at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre, one that was rich, diverse, sexy and surprising.

By Richard Scheinin

Tight, fearless sextet's musical declaration

For decades, one of jazz's greatest spectacles was a band called the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The group performed in war paint and loaded the stage with drums, gongs and unusual wind instruments. When the Art Ensemble played, it sent a message: We come from a tradition (Armstrong, Miles Davis, blues, bop), but we're updating it with influences that may surprise you (aleatory music, Asian theatrics, lots of silence) while moving into the future at warp speed.

Making a Strong Case

If all new music had advocates as enthusiastic and dedicated as Eighth Blackbird, perhaps there would be no need to worry about audience apathy. In their concert last Friday in Kanbar Hall at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, the group showed a level of energy, virtuosity, and hard work that made me wish I did not expect less at a new-music concert.

By Andrew Adler

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.