When:
May 17 and 18, 8 p.m.
Where:
Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted Street, Chicago
Four-time Grammy Award winners Eighth Blackbird showcases its six ensemble members with DISSOLVE, an evening featuring the musicians performing in smaller subsets that aim to highlight their playful, intimate, and spirited versatility. DISSOLVE is part of Steppenwolf’s spring LookOut series and includes the following works, as described by Eighth Blackbird:`
Quimbombó (2010) by Angélica Negrón, a Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist, features violinist Yvonne Lam, cellist Nick Photinos, flutist Nathalie Joachim, and percussionist Matthew Duvall; the work evokes distant personal memories through a festive, celebratory perspective presenting and deconstructing rhythms and melodic gestures from the Afro-Caribbean tradition of Puerto Rico.
Rot Blau (2009) by 2018–19 Rome Prize winner Jessie Marino is a tightly knit duo featuring pianist Lisa Kaplan and violinist Yvonne Lam in a whimsical theatrical piece.
Four Rain Beggings Songs (2017), by Welsh composer Alex Mills for flutist Nathalie Joachim and clarinetist Michael Maccaferri, was inspired by a Balkan folk song traditionally sung to pray for rain in times of draught, as part of a larger pagan ritual.
Madam Bellegarde (2018), composed and performed by flutist Nathalie Joachim, was inspired by her childhood memories of singing with her grandmother in Haiti and incorporates her grandmother’s recorded voice singing in Haitian Creole about being judged for living independently in the 1950s.
Less is More (2017) by Molly Joyce, commissioned by Elizabeth and Justus Schlicting for the inaugural Eighth Blackbird Creative Laboratory for Passepartout Duo, is performed during these concerts by pianist Lisa Kaplan and percussionist Matthew Duvall; Joyce “wanted to engage in perhaps two artistic ‘guilty’ pleasures of mine: pulse and light, and thus I composed a lighting part for the piece which I aimed to have equal importance to that of the live performers.”
Amygdala (2015) by Blackbird Creative Lab alumna Gemma Peacocke, performed by cellist Nick Photinos, is, according to Peacocke, “a kind of exploration of the way in which anxiety comes in waves, always lapping at the edges, and sometimes rising and overwhelming us.”
Dissolve, O My Heart (2011), by Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mead Composer-in-Residence Missy Mazzoli and performed by violinist Yvonne Lam, was inspired by Bach’s Partita in D minor and evolves “into an off-kilter series of chords that doubles back on itself, collapses and ultimately dissolves in a torrent of fast passages,” according to Mazzoli.
Eighth Blackbird’s musicians are Nathalie Joachim, flutes; Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets; Yvonne Lam, violin and viola; Nick Photinos, cello; Matthew Duvall, percussion; and Lisa Kaplan, piano.
Tickets:
$35 general admission,
$15 students,
Full price tickets available on the Steppenwolf website.
