CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
eighth blackbird

Zankel Hall
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Pre-concert talk starts at 6:30 PM in Zankel Hall: Steve Reich and members of eighth blackbird in conversation with Ara Guzelimian, Provost and Dean, The Juilliard School.

eighth blackbird
Susan Marshall, Stage Direction

STEVE REICH Double Sextet (NY Premiere, Co-commissioned by The Carnegie Hall Corporation)
DAVID LANG
MICHAEL GORDON
JULIA WOLFE singing in the dead of night (NY Premiere; with stage direction by Susan Marshall)

Nonesuch at Carnegie

The Trustees of Carnegie Hall gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the James R. and Frederica Rosenfield Foundation in support of the 2007–2008 season.

Carnegie Hall commissions in the 2007–2008 season are made possible, in part, by a grant from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Program Notes:

STEVE REICH Double Sextet
Born October 3, 1936, in New York.

Double Sextet was commissioned by eighth blackbird through the generous support of The Carnegie Hall Corporation, The Abe Fortas Memorial Fund of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Liverpool Cultural Company–European Capital of Culture 2008, The Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond, Orange County Performing Arts Center, and The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music–Music 08 Festival. Completed in October 2007, Double Sextet was first performed on March 26, 2008, by that group at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Tonight’s performance marks the New York premiere of Double Sextet.

There are two identical sextets in Double Sextet. Each one is made up of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano. Doubling the instrumentation was done so that, as in so many of my earlier works, two identical instruments could interlock to produce one overall pattern. For example, in this piece you will hear the pianos and vibes interlocking in a highly rhythmic way to drive the rest of the ensemble.

The piece can be played in two ways; either with 12 musicians, or with six playing against a recording of themselves. In these premiere performances you will hear the members of eighth blackbird, who commissioned the work, playing against their recording.

The idea of a single player playing against a recording of themselves goes all the way back to Violin Phase (1967) and extends though Vermont Counterpoint (1982), New York Counterpoint (1985), Electric Counterpoint (1987) and Cello Counterpoint (2003). The expansion of this idea to an entire chamber ensemble playing against pre-recordings of themselves begins with Different Trains (1988) and continues with Triple Quartet (1999) and now to Double Sextet. By doubling an entire chamber ensemble one creates the possibility for multiple simultaneous contrapuntal webs of identical instruments. In Different Trains and Triple Quartet all instruments are strings to produce one large string fabric. In Double Sextet there is more timbral variety through the interlocking of six different pairs of percussion, string, and wind instruments.

The piece is in three movements—fast, slow, fast—and within each movement there are four harmonic sections built around the keys of D, F, A-flat, and B, or their relative minor keys b, d, f and g-sharp. As in almost all of my music, modulations from one key to the next are sudden, clearly setting off each new section.

—Steve Reich


DAVID LANG / MICHAEL GORDON / JULIA WOLFE singing in the dead of night
Lang: Born January 8, 1957, in Los Angeles, California
Gordon: Born in July, 20, 1956, in Miami, Florida.
Wolfe: Born December 19, 1958, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

singing in the dead of night was commissioned by eighth blackbird through the generous support of the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Millennium Park, Chicago; Jebediah Foundation; Frederica and James R. Rosenfield (specifically towards work of David Lang); San Francisco Performances; and University Musical Society / University of Michigan. Tonight’s performance marks the New York premiere of this work.

Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe are together the co-founders and co-artistic directors of the music organization Bang on a Can. They describe the origins of singing in the dead of night:
When the three of us met to figure out how to structure this collaboration, we began by thinking about eighth blackbird. We loved that they play so well, that they are so dedicated, so musical, so friendly, but what we really loved was that they move. They are physical; they move in space. They use their bodies on stage to show things in the music that the notes alone can’t show you. This excited us, and we wondered what it would be like if we invited our friend, choreographer Susan Marshall, to shape the movements of the players. We then wrote separate and very different pieces of music, which can be played together or on their own, with or without physical movement. What links the works is that each of us left room for Susan in the scores, giving her and the blackbirds the opportunity to do the things they all do so well. We hope you enjoy it.

David Lang writes:
The three movements of these broken wings concentrate on three different physical and musical challenges. The first movement consists of music that requires incredible stamina and intense concentration. Sad, falling gestures dominate the slow second movement, and I gave the vague but hopefully inspiring instruction that the players should drop things when they are not playing. In the last movement I wanted to make a music that danced and pushed forward, in the hope that it would encourage the musicians to do so as well.

In Michael Gordon’s the light of the dark, a fast, wild, late-night drunken jam session spirals out of control. A funky opening cello solo slips and slides around the instrument, colliding with high, jaunty wind figures, swirling virtuosic tunes, and unpredictable metallic crashes. In the chaos, players grab any nearby instrument to play, including a harmonica, accordion, and guitar; at one point, a noisy Mariachi band gathers around the piano.

Julia Wolfe writes:
The title singing in the dead of night conjures up the still and surreal nighttime experience of being the only one awake. Out of the silence often comes inspiration—finding one’s way to a human song, symphony of sound. Singing in the dead of night is it’s own metaphor—beginnings always beginning in “the dead of night”—in the void into which a creation is made. The virtuosity and intensity of the music are inspired by the high voltage performers of eighth blackbird. The silences, leaves, and density are there for the thoughtful and exquisite Susan Marshall.

Susan Marshall writes:
The composers and I felt strongly that the movement should come directly from the act of music making; not as ornament, an unessential extra layer. This led David, Michael, and Julie to make some unusual musical choices, including the use of leaves, and struck or dropped metal objects. The challenge was to find expressive imagery connected to the act of sound production, but which was also metaphorically loaded. I wanted to stay out of the literal realm, of “acting” or creating a “story.” In many ways, working with eighth blackbird was not dissimilar to working with dancers, except for the fact that we were somewhat constrained by the reality that the musicians had to be able to play the music. I found eighth blackbird open to everything I suggested—sometimes even more open than I was about how far we could go.

Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

eighth blackbird
eighth blackbird continues to deliver ever-increasing audiences provocative and engaging performances. It is widely lauded for its performing style—often playing from memory with virtuosic and theatrical flair—and for its efforts to make new music accessible to wide audiences. The sextet has been the subject of profiles in the New York Times and on NPR’s All Things Considered; it has also been featured on Bloomberg TV’s Muse, CBS’s Sunday Morning, Saint Paul Sunday, Weekend America, and The Next Big Thing, among others. The ensemble is in residence at the University of Richmond in Virginia and at the University of Chicago.

The centerpiece of eighth blackbird’s 2007–08 season is its kinetic program, The Only Moving Thing, featuring new commissions by Steve Reich, and maverick composers David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe. The group is also premiering Mirrors, a ground-breaking new multimedia work by composer Tamar Muskal and interactive digital artist Danny Rozin, as well as a new work by Stephen Hartke as part of the group’s “Sound Mirror” program. This season, eighth blackbird makes their debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, returns to the Kennedy Center, and is in residence at DePauw University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. eighth blackbird also inaugurates its hometown series at the Harris Theater at Millennium Park.

In previous seasons the sextet has appeared in South Korea, Mexico, Canada, Amsterdam, and throughout North America, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the La Jolla Chamber Music Society. The group has performed as soloist with the Utah Symphony and the American Composers Orchestra. During the summer eighth blackbird has appeared several times at Cincinnati’s Music X, the Great Lakes Music Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. The members of eighth blackbird have also appeared at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, and in 2006 made their debut at the Ojai Music Festival, where the group was named Music Director for the 2009 season.

Since its founding in 1996, eighth blackbird has been active in commissioning new works from eminent composers like George Perle, Frederic Rzewski, Joseph Schwantner, Paul Moravec, and Stephen Hartke, as well as ground-breaking works from Jennifer Higdon, Derek Bermel, David Schober, Daniel Kellogg, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and the Minimum Security Composers Collective. The group received the first BMI / Boudleaux-Bryant Fund Commission and the 2007 American Music Center Trailblazer Award, and has received grants from BMI, Meet the Composer, the Greenwall Foundation, and Chamber Music America, among others.

The ensemble is enjoying acclaim for its four CDs released to date on Cedille Records. The first, thirteen ways, was selected as a Top 10 CD of 2003 by Billboard magazine. The group’s fourth CD, titled strange imaginary animals, was released in November 2006. In 2006 the group debuted on the Naxos label in a performance of The Time Gallery, commissioned by eighth blackbird from 2004 Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Paul Moravec.
The members of eighth blackbird hold degrees in music performance from Oberlin Conservatory among other institutions. The group derives its name from the Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” The eighth stanza reads:

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know

Susan Marshall, Stage Direction