Singing in the Dead of Night eighth blackbird

• David Lang (1957):
• 1 These Broken Wings, Pt. 1 03:35
• Michael Gordon (1956):
• 2 The Light of the Dark 11:34
• David Lang:
• 3 These Broken Wings, Pt. 2 "Passacaille" 05:46
• Julia Wolfe (b. 1958):
• 4 Singing in the Dead of Night 18:47
• David Lang:
• 5 These Broken Wings, Pt. 3 "Learn to Fly" 05:45
• Total Runtime 45:27

Info for Singing in the Dead of Night

Groundbreaking new-music sextet Eighth Blackbird, winners of four Grammy Awards for their previous Cedille Records albums, are heard in the world-premiere recording of a collaborative, all-instrumental program of intensely rhythmic works written expressly for the Chicago-based ensemble by the founders of the celebrated Bang on a Can composers collective.

Each piece on Singing in the Dead of Night takes its name from Paul McCartney’s lyrics to The Beatles song “Blackbird” — but this music exists in another realm altogether.

Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Wolfe’s title track conjures a dark, silent solitude from which creative inspiration emerges. Michael Gordon’s music melds “the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism” (The New Yorker). In The Light of the Dark, he evokes the wild spontaneity of an uninhibited, late-night jam session. Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang’s three-movement These Broken Wings, a “glamorously beautiful suite” (The Guardian), takes flight via Eighth Blackbird’s boundless stamina and high-voltage virtuosity.

Eighth Blackbird sequences the component pieces in the unconventional, composer-approved concert order they’ve employed since the collaborative work’s 2008 premiere: They play the Gordon and Wolfe works in between movements of the Lang, whose piece thus frames the program.

Eighth Blackbird

eighth blackbird
combines the finesse of a string quartet, the energy of a rock band and the audacity of a storefront theater company. The Chicago-based, three-time Grammy-winning “super-musicians” (LA Times) entertain and provoke audiences across the country and around the world.

Colombine’s Paradise Theatre is eighth blackbird’s new staged, memorized production. Composer Amy Beth Kirsten challenges the sextet to play, speak, sing, whisper, growl and mime, breathing life into this tale of dream and delusion. Performances have taken place at the University of Richmond, as well as DC’s Atlas Arts, and it has been called a “Tour de Force” by the Washington Post.

The 2013/14 season’s acoustic program, Still in Motion, features new works by The National’s Bryce Dessner (the folk-inspired Murder Ballades), Steve Mackey (music from his Grammy-winning Slide) and Australian composer Brett Dean (the searing Old Kings in Exile). eighth blackbird brings this show to Ohio, Missouri, Idaho, Oregon, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York and California.

Other highlights include debuts with the Cincinnati Symphony (where the ensemble is an Artist in Residence) and New World Symphony; residencies at UCLA, SUNY Purchase, Baylor and Duke; a collaboration with Oberlin College’s CME; and a debut on the Lincoln Center’s Atrium series.

eighth blackbird holds ongoing Ensemble in Residence positions at the Curtis Institute of Music, University of Richmond, and University of Chicago. A decade-long relationship with Chicago’s Cedille Records has produced six acclaimed recordings. The ensemble has won three Grammy Awards, for the recordings strange imaginary animals, Lonely Motel: Music from Slide and Meanwhile.

eighth blackbird’s members hail from America’s Great Lakes, Keystone, Golden and Bay states, and Australia’s Sunshine State. There are four foodies, three beer snobs and one exercise junkie. The name “eighth blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, aphoristic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917). eighth blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists.

This album contains no booklet.