| Chicago sextet combines Van Halen
with Paganini. 'Nuff said. When you go to a concert by a small classical ensemble, you may expect to hear Mozart or Beethoven. With the sextet Eighth Blackbird, you never know what to expect. The Chicago-based sextet, which prides itself on broadening the repertoire for small ensembles by commissioning original works and exploring new and unusual sounds, will present an assortment of new music on Sunday, from a glam rock anthem to music for a culture that never existed. "I think it's really a broad range of styles," says Nicholas Photinos, Eighth Blackbird's cellist. The group, which formed in 1996 while the members were undergraduates at Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory, has won awards for adventurous programming three times. With a program like Sunday's, it isn't hard to see why. For example, in the sextet's piece "The Glam Seduction," the 1980s rock music of Eddie Van Halen meets the instrumentation of Niccolo Paganini, a 19th-century violinist who was known for stunning, fast-fingered compositions. The piece, composed by Los Angeles composer D.J. Sparr, even includes a guitar solo from rock band Van Halen's 1978 song "Eruption" transcribed for violin. The result - Paganini on coke. "I think it's kind of his homage to glam rock," Photinos says. "And I think the similarities are just the sense of melodrama. It's as if we were to play an 80's hairband piece." Compare that to the piece by composer Steve Mackey, "Indigenous Instruments," which is an attempt to capture the flavor of indigenous, tribal music for an imaginary culture. Mackey describes the last movement of the work as "the moaning of some strange imaginary animal," which is achieved in part by the violinist tuning the G string down more than an octave. "It's very quirky," Photinos says, "but it does work in the sense that it sounds like if you went to Mars, the music they play there." Then there's the piece by Vancouver-based composer Gordon Fitzell titled "Violence," in which the composer explores "aesthetic violence." At first the piece evokes the feeling of a beautiful landscape, Photinos says, but morphs into a violent cacophony of sounds. Other pieces include "Dramamine," by David M. Gordon, which features a piano with screws in the strings; "Qi" by Chinese composer Chen Yi; "Variations" by David Schober; and "Mei" by Japanese composer Kazuo Fukushima. Needless to say, it's not your typical program, but Eighth Blackbird - comprised of flautist Molly Alicia Barth, clarinetist Michael J. Maccaferri, violinist Matt Albert, cellist Nicholas Photinos, pianist Lisa Kaplan, and percussionist Matthew Duvall - isn't your typical sextet, Photinos says. "We're really trying hard to create an identity for the group," Photinos says. "Our model is more of a string quartet where we rehearse pieces for a long period of time and really live with them." This allows the sextet to perform pieces outside of the typical repertoire, he says, including many pieces that have never been heard before. Their image may not resemble most classical groups either. The group of youthful musicians performs in casual business dress, not the standard wardrobe of black tuxedos and dresses. Casual, unique, and young, Eighth Blackbird hopes to turn people on to contemporary classical music, which is often considered too inaccessible for most audiences. "Our mission, I would say, is to present contemporary music that we like in as many ways as possible," Photinos says. "We develop pieces slowly to come to a greater understanding of them and really present them in the best light to the audience." From: http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/diversions04/042304_diversions_black.shtml |