Customer Reviews

Strange Imaginary Animals

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is definately Eighth Blackbird's strangest release thus far. This recording includes many cage rattling works in the new music world I've ever heard. While there are many works on this album that are exciting additions to the new music scene, there are a few cuts on this album that are either out of place or simply unmoving.

The Jennifer Higdon work on this recording, "Zaka" is easily the strongest track. The piece is very rhythmically exciting and Higdon uses a lot of interesting colors throughout the piece. The way the piece unfolds is absolutely captivating. We hear pianos being strummed, mutted piano sounds, screaming winds and fantastic percussion work. This piece is really the cornerstone of the record, and it's worth buying for the 13 minutes of excitement that this piece exhibits. Unfortunately, the record goes downhill from here.

The next works, Gordon Fitzell's "Violence" and Steven Mackey's three movement "Indigenous Instruments" are both fine pieces, but do not possess the accesability and ease of listening that Higdon's work does. Violence is a stream of generally quiet sounds and light timbres. The piece really depicts the destruction instead of the aggression of violence. Indigenous Instruments has many pleasing moments in it, but unfortunately, there are many places where I get lost in the music.

The last three tracks on the album constitute the weakest parts of the album. David M. Gordon's "Friction Systems" is 15 minutes of outright unpleasing dissonance. Not that dissonance doesn't have a place in music, but where there is tension, there needs to be release of some kind. Fitzell's other piece on the album, "Evanescence" isn't even dissonant, it's just noise. It's too hard to tell what actual instruments are being used here. The last cut, credited to Dennis DeSantis just seems out of place. It seems to be some electronic remix of other material on the album. It sounds like it belongs on some bad electronica album. It just doesn't belong.

More and more, I'm discovering that Eighth Blackbird is a very hit or miss ensemble. Their Rzewski album is absolutely spectacular. It's a shame that none of the others really match up to its prowess, this one included. While there are a few great pieces on this album, there are a few that just don't work. At least the material progresses from strong to weak. So put it in your CD player, enjoy the Higdon and when something starts smelling funny, then you know when to turn it off.

I had the opportunity to see eighth blackbird live on April 2, 2011 at Kennesaw State University north of Atlanta. It was a great concert! The group has a fantastic sense of theater, a kinetic presentation quite distinct from most classical music. And the group's repertoire and sound is distinctly American, strongly post-minimalist, and more indirectly reflecting a jazz influence, especially in its strong percussiveness. That night they played "Music in Similar Motion" by Glass, an excellent Reich-influenced piece by Stephen Hartke, and two choral pieces by the young Nico Muhly, one a commissioned world premiere for a KSU ensemble, with Muhly in attendance. They also performed John Cage's "Aria," with woodwind player Tim Munro singing the wild vocals, which was quite a spectacle!

This recording, which I picked up after the show, won a 2007 Grammy Award for contemporary chamber music. It was recorded at Ball State University in August, 2005. Of the six compositions, I find four to be quite compelling, and the other two not quite as much. "Zaka" (2003 -- 12'50) leads off, a rhythmic piece by Jennifer Higdon. Definitely one of the disc's strongest pieces, it gets things off to a high-energy start, and clearly demonstrates the group's strengths of tight interplay and percussive quality that are so evident in their live performance. Gordon Fitzell's "violence (2001 -- 9'46) is a low-key piece that doesn't work nearly as well. The violence must be repressed, because there is nothing in the writing that would indicate that concept to the listener. Steven Mackey's "Indigenous Instruments" (1989 -- 17'34) is the oldest work here. In three parts, it is often humorous, but I find that it doesn't work for its entire length.

David M. Gordon's "Friction Systems (2002; rev. 2005 -- 14'37) begins and ends with an insistent staccato hammering on piano and percussion. Just short of the 3-minute mark it opens into a mysterious nocturne, with touches of gamelan in the percussion. At about the 9-minute mark there is a brief electronic passage. I find the contrasting sections to be quite effective. Fitzell makes another appearance with "evanescence" (2006 -- 11'18), and this piece is much better. It begins with the acoustic instruments playing hard-to-recognize extended techniques, whispering and scraping, and the sound of the ensemble is gradually subsumed by electronics, which develops and transforms the acoustic sounds, builds, and then ebbs away like a pulsed signal sent into space... Finally, "strange imaginary remix" (2006 -- 5'33) by Dennis DeSantis is a funky, syncopated electronic piece that will have your toe tapping at a minimum, unless you get up and start dancing. Characteristic of the group, piano and percussion feature strongly here, but transformed by electronics. This is not your standard classical chamber music sound!

The lineup here is Lisa Kaplan on piano, Matthew Duvall on percussion, Matt Albert on violin, Nicholas Photinos on cello, Michael J. Maccaferri on clarinets, and Molly Alicia Barth on flutes. The award-winning production and engineering is by Judith Sherman. Cedille's package is outstanding, with whimsical illustrations on the cover and throughout the fold-out insert by David M. Gordon. But there is one major mystery -- there is no attribution, in fact no mention at all, of the electronics! I have to think, considering that they were 100% acoustic when I saw them live, that it was not the members of eb who provided the excellent electronics on the last three tracks. Someone did, and s/he deserves credit!

(verified purchase from eighth blackbird on tour)

After listening to this CD several times, Eighth Blackbird's music has gotten under my skin and now I realize how original and exciting this music really is. This seems to be a promising path for modern classical music where different musical genres are fused together to create a truly unique aesthetic. "Indigenous Instruments" seems to be the product of Brian Eno meeting Milton Babbit while "Friction Sytems" sounds like a 21st century Prokofiev.

I like everything about this CD, and now there are two more reasons to like it:

1. This CD just received a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance.

2. Producer Judith Sherman was also awarded a Grammy for Best Classical Producer.