eighth blackbird in November
The Grammy-winning new-music sextet eighth blackbird covers a lot of
ground and water during ten days in November, beginning with two
concerts at New York’s Kitchen (with students from the Oberlin
Contemporary Music Ensemble) on Nov 13 and 14, and winding up in the
Netherlands at Rotterdam’s de Doelen on Nov 23. In between, there will
be a Nov 18 concert at home in Chicago’s Harris Theater with Glenn
Kotche, Wilco’s drummer, and a flight to a debut on Nov 21 in
Liverpool, home of the Beatles and this year’s Cultural Capital of the
European Union. Another overwater trip – across the English Channel –
to the Netherlands takes the sextet to Rotterdam’s de Doelen, an
all-purpose cultural hall where eighth blackbird makes its second major
debut in three days.
eighth blackbird’s program for the Kitchen concerts, augmented by six young Oberliners, will be world premieres of commissioned compositions by two genuine American mavericks: Frederic Rzewski and Steve Reich.
The program is headlined by Rzewski’s bizarre fantasia on songs
associated with war, a piece that was inspired by and named after Albrecht Dürer’s haunting 16th-century engraving “Knight, Death and the Devil”. Steve Reich’s tour-de-force, Double Sextet, receives its first all-live
performance: although eighth blackbird played it on tour last season,
the group was then backed by its own pre-recorded performance of the
second sextet’s material. The additional performers – skilled
youngsters from the renowned conductor-less Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble – are trained and directed by Timothy Weiss.
Les Moutons de Panurge, Rzewski’s rarely heard experiment in ensemble dynamics, and a multimedia interpretation of Reich’s duo, Cello Counterpoint
(2003), make up the remainder of the program. Soon after the New Year,
eighth blackbird and its Oberlin collaborators take this
characteristically challenging program to the West Coast, visiting San
Francisco and Seattle.
the kitchen presents eighth blackbird
November 13, 14, New York, NY
The Kitchen
with members of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble
512 West 19th Street
Tickets: $15
www.thekitchen.org
a selection of future eighth blackbird concerts:
Nov 18 Harris Theater; with Glenn Kotche (Chicago, IL)
Nov 21 Cornerstone Festival; The Only Moving Thing: UK debut (Liverpool, UK)
Nov 23 De Doelen; The Only Moving Thing: Rotterdam debut (Rotterdam, NL)
Feb 19, 2009 Harris Theater; with Hilliard Ensemble (Chicago, IL)
March 27 Theatre Haus der Berliner Festspiel: The Only Moving Thing (Berlin, Germany)