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By Gail Wein
The Washington Post Eighth Blackbird:
Action Music
Try this at home: Take four of your favorite albums of chamber music,
put them all in your CD player and hit the random shuffle button. You'll
have approximated the effect of Wednesday night's performance at the
Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater by the renegade chamber ensemble Eighth
Blackbird.
This innovative sextet commissioned four composers to create
what amounts to one communal work: "di/verge (2001)." The composers,
Dennis DeSantis, Roshanne Etezady, Adam B. Silverman and Ken
Ueno, who make up the Minimum Security Composers Collective, based their
four-movement works on a single motif, the opening chords of Stravinsky's
Violin Concerto. The performers arranged sections of all the works in
an order of their own devising, creating a sort of meta-composition by
committee. Eighth Blackbird took the concept one step further by marrying
the musical effect with choreography.
Unlike most chamber music performers,
the group often plays from memory, which not only makes the stage action
possible but also contributes to its stellar ensemble playing. Violinist
Matthew Albert, flutist Molly Alicia Barth and clarinetist Michael J.
Maccaferri made it sound effortless to advance to the edge of the stage
while navigating Etezady's intense "Damaged Goods."
Nicholas
Photinos got a few good licks in while crossing the stage with his cello,
pianist Lisa Kaplan proved she could play just as fluidly standing up
as sitting down, and percussionist Matthew L. Duvall shone in his comic
abilities as well as his spectacular mallet technique in DeSantis's "Powerless."
Performances
of contemporary music are generally not easy for either audience or
performer, but by infusing them with pop music and theatrical practices,
Eighth Blackbird rises to the challenge every time.
Copyright © 2003 The
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