Into the Night (2023)
Joan Tower (b. 1938)
Commissioned for Eighth Blackbird by Harry Santen in honor of the birthday of his wife, Ann.
Joan writes: The title Into the Night was taken from the last movement of my cello concerto A New Day, which was dedicated to my husband who passed away in November of 2022. The decline and loss of a partner of fifty years creates a major and complex challenge of emotions that
involve sadness, love, anxiety and too many other emotions to describe in words. I guess this piece has helped me go through a journey of those feelings through a musical expression - my beloved and supportive friend - which I am so blessed to have in my life. I want to thank Eighth Blackbird for playing my piece so very beautifully.
This is no small thing, to take a work born from such a deeply emotive place - to take responsibility for it - and aspire to be the ambassador of an expression so personal. Eighth Blackbird and Joan began their relationship at a music festival in 1996, where Joan was a faculty member and Eighth Blackbird was a group of undergraduate students trying to figure out what this whole chamber ensemble thing is about. Joan knows Eighth Blackbird. She knows for whom she was composing, and we feel that connection in these parts formed from love. She believed in us then, and she believes in us now, and it means the world to us.
Electric Aroma (2017, arr 2018)
Viet Cuong (b. 1990)
Commissioned by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting for the 2017 Blackbird Creative Laboratory, Eighth Blackbird’s professional development immersion.
The poet Pablo Picasso (yes, that Picasso) intrigued Viet with a line written in 1936: 10 october XXXVI (ii)
"...and if the weather is clear listen to the crack when in my chest breaks the perfume of the stick the arrow painted on the fan tossed on the bed the luminous alarmed panther sheen of her regard with an electric aroma, a most disagreeable noise spreading a dreadful odor of stars crushed underfoot" - Pablo Picasso
Perhaps Viet thought to himself, “Well then, let's make disagreeable noises, shall we?" Imagining an electric aroma, he colors the instruments using extended techniques that sizzle and snap, such as tin foil in the vibraphone, metals buzzing on an upside-down snare drum, and wind players rudely playing multiple pitches simultaneously. Viet likes writing fun music.
The Garden of Iniquitous Creatures (2016)
Ned McGowan (b. 1970)
Commissioned for Eighth Blackbird by De Doelen Rotterdam.
It’s kinda hard to describe Ned. Composer, teacher, flutist, improviser and curator. But really an artist in a broadly encompassing conceptual scope. He’s known for rhythmic virtuosity and vitality. You’re as likely to find him in Bangalore as Rotterdam creating self-contained musical creations through a process of cross-genre translation.
The Garden of Iniquitous Creatures is Ned’s aural imagining of Bosch’s super-weird “The Garden of Earthly Delights” interpolated through the metal band Meshuggah, south Indian Carnatic rhythms, Steve Reich, Colin Nancarrow, Frank Zappa, John Zorn, and George Crumb.
Wut? Let’s just say that it’s all you, Ned.
*Nerd-Alert: The Garden of Iniquitous Creatures has a recurring rhythmical spine composed of a series of groups with the lengths 7 7 5 5 5 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3. These groups are repeated, built upon and altered throughout, an influential rhythmic landscape on top of which much of the music travels. But wait, there’s more: The length of the groupings adds up to 60, which is neatly divisible by 3, 4, and 5 (plus a few other numbers), another source for composition material. Ultimately these factors result in a composition that gives the performers anxiety induced heart palpitations.
Eighth Blackbird moves music forward through innovative performance, advocacy for music by living creatives, and its growing legacy of guiding an emerging generation of artists.
Accolades include: Four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance | The MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions | The Concert Artists Guild Competition Grand Prize | The Musical America Ensemble of the Year | The Chamber Music America Visionary Award | The APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards Performance of the Year.
Creative Output Includes: Commissions and World Premieres of hundreds of works by established and emerging composers | Fully Produced Theatrical Chamber Music Productions | Chamber Ensemble Concertos with both orchestras and bands | An Extensive Recording Catalog
In addition to chamber music performance, the members of 8BB value their roles as curators, educators, and mentors. Beginning exclusively as a chamber music ensemble, 8BB has expanded in recent years to represent multiple mission-driven initiatives: Eighth Blackbird | Blackbird IV | The Blackbird Creative Lab | The Chicago Artists Workshop | Blackbird Productions.
The name “Eighth Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, imagistic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.”
Eighth Blackbird is managed by Epstein Fox Performances LLC.