eighth blackbird helps launch new CD label and new music festival this winter

By -
“eighth blackbird play like musicians possessed” — BBC Music

The ultimate ambassador for new music, eighth blackbird has become the go-to ensemble for living composers at the top of their game. This winter, the group issues its second recording of the season to feature a new commission from a recent Pulitzer Prize-winner: September saw eighth blackbird’s Nonesuch release of Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, winner of last year’s Pulitzer, and in the new year the sextet helps launch the Atlanta Symphony’s brand new CD label – ASO Media – with On a Wire, a concerto by this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, Jennifer Higdon. Both commissions – like a wealth of other important new works – were written for and premiered by eighth blackbird. The Grammy Award-winning sextet is moreover the first choice of new-music festivals looking for inspired and visionary curators. Following its success at California’s Ojai Music Festival, eighth blackbird has now been invited to curate and perform at the “Tune-In” festival at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory in February. Meanwhile the group’s intensive touring schedule continues apace; besides performing On a Wire with the Toronto, Vermont, and Akron Symphonies, eighth blackbird looks forward to recitals in venues including the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.

eighth blackbird’s recording of Higdon’s On a Wire is centerpiece of first ASO Media CD (Feb 22)

One of the most prolific and frequently performed American composers alive today, Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) is having a momentous year; in February her Percussion Concerto was awarded the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition and two months later she won the Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto; as the New York Times observed, she has become “a hot commodity.” With the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Robert Spano, eighth blackbird gave her new concerto, On a Wire, its world premiere last season. The work impressed the San Francisco Chronicle as an “exuberantly beautiful and inventive group concerto which left the audience exhilarated,” and the group’s performance, as the Mercury News bore witness, was “dispatched with dazzling flair,” making it “hard to imagine another sextet playing it with such energy and precision.”

It is this premiere performance that headlines the first release – due out on February 22, 2011 – on the Atlanta Symphony’s new CD label, ASO Media. The orchestra has already amassed an impressive 27 Grammy Awards in its 32-year recording history, so the new label promises to make its mark – not least with eighth blackbird’s contribution on this first, major release. Although On a Wire marks Higdon’s first concerto for eighth blackbird, it is not the first piece she has written for the sextet. Two previous commissions are critic- and crowd-pleasers: strange imaginary animals, the album that won the group two Grammy Awards, features the premiere recording of her piece Zaka (2003), which was also nominated for a Grammy, and Zango Bandango is a popular eighth blackbird encore.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In ...
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

Teaching Composition – What are we trying to achieve

By -
In the process of learning composition I have spent time with a number of instructors who have encouraged me to write twelve-tone, pitch-class, electro-acoustic and other forms of experimental techniques. No matter how much I might understand and appreciate the work of other composers in the genres, these are not forms of music I resonate with. They are simply not forms of music I listen to and I struggle with the idea of writing them. However, in a Master Class by Libby Larsen she made the comment, “Learn them all, because all forms of music have something to offer.” This I very much agree. There are elements of each of the above mentioned forms (and others) that I do resonate with. Berg’s Violin Concerto is a beautiful twelve-tone work, although it is possible to look at numerous sections of the music with a “tonal” analysis. Another composer friend, Gary Bachlund commented that using these techniques can narrow the choices for how to compose a piece of work. If you look at ...
Read more