EIGHTH BLACKBIRD (8BB) moves music forward through innovative performance, advocacy for music by living creatives, and its growing legacy of guiding an emerging generation of artists.
Accolades include: Four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance | The MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions | The Concert Artists Guild Competition Grand Prize | The Musical America Ensemble of the Year | The Chamber Music America Visionary Award | The APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards Performance of the Year.
Creative Output Includes: Commissions and world premieres of hundreds of works by established and emerging composers | fully produced theatrical chamber music productions | chamber ensemble concertos with both orchestras and bands | an extensive recording catalog
In addition to chamber music performance, the members of 8BB value their roles as curators, educators, and mentors. Beginning exclusively as a chamber music ensemble, 8BB has expanded in recent years to represent multiple mission-driven initiatives: Eighth Blackbird | Blackbird IV | The Blackbird Creative Lab | The Chicago Artists Workshop | Blackbird Productions.
The name “Eighth Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, imagistic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.”
Eighth Blackbird is managed by Epstein Fox Performances LLC. eighthblackbird.org.
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Matthew Duvall, Artistic Director
Lisa Kaplan, Executive Director
composition as explanation Cast
- Dalia Chin, flutes
- Zachary Good, clarinets
- Maiani da Silva, violin
- Ashley Bathgate, cello
- Matthew Duvall, percussion
- Lisa Kaplan, piano
- Text: Gertrude Stein
- Music: David Lang
- Direction: Anne Bogart
- Lighting and Set Design: Brian Scott
- Audio Engineering and Design: Matthew McCabe
Matthew Duvall proudly endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Accessories. Lisa Kaplan is a Steinway Artist.