In Saturday’s (7/31) San Jose Mercury News, Richard Scheinin writes, “Eighth Blackbird—which stars in Friday’s opening concert at the 48th annual Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz—is deadly serious about its whimsy, or maybe just whimsical in its musical seriousness. Over 14 years, it has grown to be a contemporary music supergroup, helping to overhaul conceptions of what it means to play classical music…. Blackbird has grown from renegade group to nonprofit institution, with a board of directors and a full-time administrator…. Amid all this activity, the process of memorizing complicated new works is a challenge—and assimilating the choreography and other extra-musical accouterments can become a distraction, admits flutist Tim Munro. ‘It’s one step backward, two steps forward,’ he says. ‘But I think what we represent is a different way of presenting new music. We try to present it in the most convincing way and the most interesting way that it can possibly be presented. And so we add stage movement, and we work with people from other disciplines. And we rehearse until our brains and ears and fingers bleed, so that we can bring across the most bracing performance possible.’”
Posted August 3, 2010
