The Eighth Blackbird is a group of highly skilled contemporary classical music performers with degrees in music performance from a highly selective Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Northwestern University.
Described by The New Yorker as “friendly, unpretentious, idealistic and highly skilled,” the Grammy Award-winning eighth blackbird promises its ever-increasing audiences provocative and engaging performances. They are widely lauded for its performing style, often playing from memory with virtuosic and theatrical flair, and its efforts to make new music accessible to wide audiences.
A New York Times reviewer raved, “eighth blackbird’s performances are the picture of polish and precision, and they seem to be thoroughly engaged…by music in a broad range of contemporary styles.”
Eighth blackbird held a performance in Melbourne last year at the BMW Edge in Federation square during the Melbourne International Arts Festival, and i was present at their show.
The program included two works. The first, Double Sextet, represents a return to the rhythmic intensity that is synonymous with Steve Reich’s most venerable works such as Music for 18 Musicians and Drumming and features eighth blackbird performing simultaneously, both live and pre-recorded. The second work, singing in the dead of night, is inspired by eighth blackbird’s distinctive predilection for memorisation and is a continuous weave of music and motion; an intrepid collaboration between composers David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe and choreographer Susan Marshall.
Their performace was exhilarating, filled with anticipation and suspense. Eight blackbird is one of the contemporary classical groups around that achieved world wide recognition and worth sparing time to enjoy and learn.
