By Jo Ann Baldinger
Santa Fe New Mexican

eighth blackbird flies back to Santa Fe

Contemporary chamber ensemble combines music, theater "We're trying to transform the traditional concert format into an all-inclusive experience," said Lisa Kaplan, pianist in the prize-winning chamber music group Eighth Blackbird.

The young, six-member ensemble captivates audiences across the country with passionate interpretations of contemporary works and a riveting performance style that often includes theatrical lighting, masks and choreography. Yes, these daring musicians are apt to move about the stage while they play (except for Kaplan, of course; grand pianos are not terribly mobile).

Three years ago, after Eighth Blackbird made its Santa Fe debut on the 20th Century Unlimited series, local reviewers called them "a sonic and artistic wonder" and described the concert as "magical." The group makes an eagerly awaited return appearance at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 15, in St. Francis Auditorium, in a concert co-sponsored by 20th Century Unlimited and Santa Fe New Music. Oliver Prezant hosts a preconcert lecture with the musicians.

In addition to Kaplan, the performers are flutist Molly Alicia Barth, clarinetist Michael Maccaferri, violinist Matt Albert and cellist Nicholas Photinos. (The ensemble's sixth member, percussionist Matthew Duvall, is on paternity leave.)

Formed in 1996, when its members were students at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Eighth Blackbird is currently ensemble in residence at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. The group's name refers to the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

Eighth Blackbird's penchant for memorizing scores is unusual in chamber music, particularly for groups with a strictly contemporary repertoire, since such music is often complex as well as unfamiliar. "It's very freeing and a lot of fun," Kaplan said in a phone interview from her home in Chicago. "Without a score to look at, we are more in touch with one another and with the audience, and of course it enables us to move around the stage. You have to really pay attention and understand how your part fits into the whole. I think it forces you to listen a lot better," she said. "If you go to a rock or rap concert, or a dance or theater piece, the performers are very engaging, and that's what audiences love. Maybe it's a generational thing, but the six of us have tried to incorporate elements of that into what we do, simply because we find it more interesting."

None of which distracts Eighth Blackbird from its primary focus on the music, as evidenced by rave reviews and a string of awards. The first contemporary ensemble to win first prize at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, Eighth Blackbird has been honored with the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Award and first prizes in both the Fischoff and Coleman Chamber Music competitions.

In addition to its Santa Fe appearance, Eighth Blackbird's 2002-03 schedule includes performances at Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, UCLA, University of Texas at Austin and the Eastman School of Music.

"In choosing repertoire," Kaplan said, "we all have to agree. It's important to love what we're playing, or we don't send a convincing message to the audience. And we all work together on interpretation." The program features five works written between 1962 and 1985, including three performed without a score.

George Crumb's haunting Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whales), for amplified flute, piano and cello, was inspired by the singing of the humpback whale and has been called an oceanic equivalent of Olivier Messiaen's birdcalls. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer specified that the piece should be performed under blue lights, to evoke the sea, and that the three performers wear black half-masks. "Crumb wants to dehumanize the piece and have you really listen to the sounds," Kaplan said. "It's a very powerful, visceral work, with a feel of being about the beginning of time." New Yorker critic Andrew Porter, writing in 1973, called Vox Balaenae "a sustained and beautiful dream vision of the deep."

Joan Tower's Petroushskates pays homage both to Stravinsky, one of Tower's major influences, and to the flow and grace of figure skating, which she finds moving.

Michael Torke wrote The Yellow Pages (part of a larger work, The Telephone Book) in 1985, while he was a graduate composition student at Yale. It was one of the definitive works of post-minimalism, which combines the repetitive structures of the minimalists with techniques borrowed from both the classical and pop music traditions.

The Tower and Torke works are choreographed, Kaplan said, adding, "the Crumb piece is definitely theatrical in nature, although we can't move around because of the microphones."

Rounding out the program are Arrangements From the Glogauer Songbook, a work by Charles Wuorinen (another Pulitzer winner and a self-described maximalist) that plays with 15th-century counterpoint, and John Harbison's Variations, which received its world premiere at the 1982 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Copyright 2003 Santa Fe New Mexican