By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff
The Boston Globe original link

Blackbird displays dramatic flair

CAMBRIDGE -- Eighth blackbird's gift is to make new-music concerts feel fun and sexy. The six musicians started working together as students at Oberlin College; 10 years later, they are still attractive, energetic people with superb chops. They wear what they are comfortable in -- on Sunday at Sanders Theatre, pianist Lisa Kaplan was outfitted in a halter top, camouflage pants, and platform heels -- and they often play from memory, which enables them to roam the stage, group and regroup. Their concerts are a form of music theater.

The players are so good they can overshadow the music, and they run the danger of going the Kronos Quartet route -- re-creating music in their own image. But they can also rise to really challenging work, such as Fred Lerdahl's brainy but glittering ''Fantasy Etudes," which, along with Derek Bermel's ''Tied Shifts," was the highlight. Bermel's exhilarating piece is all about shifting, overlapping, and exhilarating meters, which eighth blackbird communicated not only aurally but visually.
Frederic Rzewski's ''Les Moutons de Panurge" involves a tricky counting game. The musicians begin and end in unison, and as they inevitably fall apart in the middle, shimmering counterpoint develops. Thierry De Mey's ''Musique de Tables" calls for three musicians to perform a ballet of hands, creating rhythmic patterns with fingertips, knuckles, nails, and fists.

There were three new pieces: ''Lucid" by Gordon Fitzell, ''Inescapable" by Ashley Fure, and ''Rhythms" by Marcus Maroney. Each is a vivid, ingeniously fashioned character piece. ''Lucid" was the biggest hit because of cellist Nicholas Photinos's knockout performance on the musical saw, which climaxed when he cut a board in two as the other players fell supine on the stage.

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