Kirkland’s been buzzing with exciting, edgy classical music offerings in recent months. In October, renowned composer Philip Glass paid a visit, presenting a recital at the Kirkland Performance Center (KPC). Last Tuesday, KPC scored another hit with a performance by Chicago-based contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird. The Grammy-winning sextet is making waves internationally with their commitment to new music and emerging composers. Tuesday’s concert was the ensemble’s first solo performance in the Seattle area. Based on the enthusiastic response they received, it won’t be a surprise to see them drawing crowds at larger local venues in the future. Seattle, look out — is suburban Kirkland becoming a hot spot for avant-garde classical music in the Puget Sound region?
Founded in 1996, eighth blackbird brings together strings (violin/viola and cello), woodwinds (flute and clarinet), piano, and percussion in an exploration of the diverse contemporary soundscape. It’s amazing how many different sounds and rhythms these six musicians can produce! Though Tuesday’s concert drew upon material spanning the past thirty decades of classical music, sonic textures and rhythmic patterns were the common themes of the evening.
Nowhere were these themes more present than in the concert’s crowning achievement, a performance of Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, which occupied the entire second half of the program. Commissioned by eighth blackbird, the piece can either be performed by twelve musicians or by a sextet accompanying a recording of themselves. eighth blackbird opted for the latter approach, performing alongside a recording they made several years ago. The choice to play with a recording gave the performance a haunting effect, as if the ensemble was being shadowed by a phantom doppelgänger sextet.
The Double Sextet layers string and woodwind sounds over undulating harmonic and rhythmic patterns in the piano and percussion, creating a thick, densely-woven sonic blanket. Key changes are momentous, exciting events that pop the listener out of the current texture and into another. The momentum of the piece is driven by the constant action in the percussion and pianos, which move through cycles of arpeggios and chords. Pianist Lisa Kaplan and percussionist Matthew Duvall gave a dazzling performance, blending with the other members of the ensemble as well as the recorded piano and percussion parts. Some of the most exciting moments happened during deliberate tension between the recorded piano and live piano, especially when patterns shifted slightly out of alignment, creating a mesmerizing echo effect.
In contrast to the Double Sextet, which firmly establishes a pattern before making a monumental shift to the next, Andy Akiho’s erase hops from soundbite to soundbite. Composed in 2011, the piece is the winner of eighth blackbird’s composition competition, beating out a whopping 503 other entries. It’s easy to see why Akiho’s work was selected. In an era where extended techniques are now commonplace in classical music — piano strings are plucked, flute keys are tapped, and cellists drum out rhythms on the sides of their instruments — Akiho still manages to stretch our notions of how instruments can produce sound. erase is an artfully curated noise collage that mimics today’s sampled music, full of loops, scratches, beats, and snippets of melodies.
Watching eighth blackbird perform erase was both a sonic and visual delight. Akiho’s background as a percussionist is evident in the work, which emphasizes the percussive qualities of each instrument. As a result, the performance had a strong element of physical finesse, particularly Kaplan on the piano and Duvall on percussion. Many sections of the piece had Kaplan leaning inside the piano to pluck or tap rhythmic patterns on the strings. It was enthralling to watch Duvall jump between percussion instruments, using unconventional techniques to generate all sorts of unexpected beats and sounds. The vibraphone was played using a myriad of different methods, ranging from rapping the bars with a long piece of plastic tubing to snapping a rubber band attached to the side of the instrument.
In addition to their abilities as performers, the members of eighth blackbird are skilled arrangers as well. Their talent was on display at Tuesday’s concert in the form of two of Ligeti’s Études, arranged for the sextet from their original solo piano format. Arranged by Kaplan and flutist Tim Munro, the Études retain the technical virtuosity and brilliant colors of the originals, but add an entire new dimension of textures that even the piano’s enormous range simply can’t access. Munro and clarinetist Michael J. Maccaferri were joined by violinist Yvonne Lam and cellist Nicholas Photinos for a series of creeping glissandos that added an eerie quality to the haunting sixth Étude. The ethereal, mysterious quality of the arrangement was evocative of Ligeti’s Atmosphères, an orchestral work featured prominently in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
A trio of brief, quirky pieces rounded out Tuesday’s program. The concert began with the first movement of Derek Bermel’s Tied Shifts, a densely-layered work that the ensemble performed from memory. The musicians moved around the stage during the performance, clustering in groups of twos or threes to emphasize duet and trio sections in the score. In addition to Tied Shifts, eighth blackbird performed two pieces that featured the human voice. Philip Glass’ Knee Play 2 from the 1975 opera Einstein on the Beach juxtaposed Yvonne Lam’s solo violin against a layer of recited texts. Tom Johnson’s Counting Duets was a humorous series of number games for two voices, described by Kaplan as “Sesame Street on crack”.
The evening concluded with a post-concert Q&A session with the ensemble. The crowd, a diverse group of students, Kirkland locals, and contemporary music fans, peppered the musicians with questions, resulting in a lively conversation. It was the perfect way to end a musical evening that balanced challenging new repertoire, musical virtuosity, and light-hearted fun.
Performances like last Tuesday’s have the potential for wide appeal, stretching listeners’ ears while demonstrating that contemporary classical music can be exciting, playful, and decidedly not stuffy. Touring ensembles like eighth blackbird add an inspiring voice to the growing local community of musicians who are exploring new classical music and bringing contemporary sounds to new audiences. New music can pose a risk for classical music organizations, many of which opt to stick with the tried and true classics. eighth blackbird’s appearance at Kirkland Performance Center is a bold and encouraging step that I hope is a sign of more to come.
If you missed eighth blackbird’s concert last week, check out Douglas Detrick’s AnyWhen Ensemble, another outstanding group whose music blends jazz, classical, free improvisation, and folk. They’ll be performing at Cornish College of the Arts this Friday, February 1.
