By Robert Coleman
Salt Lake Tribune original link

Eighth Blackbird deftly navigates 'Split Horizon' at Deer Valley festival

PARK CITY - Taking flight from the norm, contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird showed Wednesday night that a little New Age attitude can spice up Old World convention.

The ensemble, regarded as one of the premier new music groups in the world, performed with authority and consummate musical skill during its concert with the Utah Symphony Chamber Orchestra and conductor Keith Lockhart.

The sextet's members - Michael J. Maccaferri (clarinet), Molly Alicia Barth (flute), Matthew Albert (violin), Nicholas Photinos (cello), Lisa Kaplan (piano) and Matthew Duvall (percussion) - performed David Schober's Concerto for Sextet and Orchestra, "Split Horizon." It premiered the work last season in Carnegie Hall.

The composer was in attendance to give brief comments about the descriptive work's movements, "Glacial Exhalations," "Circular Current," "Silken Threads" and "Razor Sleet - Shrapnel Hail." They were suggestive of the visceral experience about to be enjoyed.

The music was edgy, textural and fresh. Ensemble members played from memory - no easy task considering the work's rhythmic and melodic complexity. But this musical language seemed to be totally familiar to the blackbird flock. It allowed unencumbered expression and stunning precision.

The young musicians stretched their wings, performing on a variety of instruments. Piccolo, alto flute, bass clarinet, viola and scores of percussion instruments added colorful elements.

Lockhart seemed comfortable with the music, providing excellent orchestral collaboration. Symphony musicians, who, according to the composer, had only received their music a day before the performance, played with surety.

The concert opened with Sergey Prokofiev's "A Summer Day." The brief children's suite, written for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, percussion and strings, balanced child-like playfulness and whimsy with wistfulness and introspection. Lockhart and the orchestra achieved a rich tonal blend warmed by the arched wood ceiling of St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Park City.

Mozart's Symphony No. 39, written shortly after the death of his 6-month-old daughter, ended the concert. It contains brief somber moments but mostly dances with exuberant passages. It is not performed as frequently as his next two symphonies - a shame, because this is one of his most lyric.

Several technical mishaps stood out - especially by a member of the first violin section - proving you can run, but not hide in this abbreviated orchestral setting.  

The church's acoustics were particularly flattering to the woodwind section seated behind the altar. A charming clarinet duet during the "Minuetto" by assistant principal Russell Harlow and free-lance musician Daron Bradford was especially satisfying.

Copyright 2004 Salt Lake Tribune