If you go
› What: Eighth Blackbird in inSight Patten Performances series.› When: 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6.› Where: UTC Fine Arts Center, 752 Vine St.› Admission: $29 adult, $24 seniors, $15 students.› Phone: 423-425-4269.› Website: www.utc.edu/tickets.
Eighth Blackbird, lauded by the Chicago Tribune as “one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet,” will entertain Monday night, Feb. 6, in the inSight Patten Performances series at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Termed “super-musicians” by the Los Angeles Times, the four-time Grammy-winning sextet has been said to possess the finesse of a string quartet, the energy of a rock band and the audacity of a storefront theater company. With a style defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality, the musicians often perform from memory, employ choreography and collaborate with theater artists, lighting designers and even puppetry artists in their shows.
Here are five fast facts about Eighth Blackbird.
1. The group began in 1996 as six Oberlin Conservatory students: Nathalie Joachim (flutes), Michael J. Maccaferri (clarinets), Yvonne Lam (violin and viola), Nicholas Photinos (cello), Matthew Duvall (percussion) and Lisa Kaplan (piano). They gained wide recognition in 1998 as winners of the Concert Artists Guild Competition.
2. They have commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by composers including David Lang, Steven Mackey, Missy Mazzoli and Steve Reich, whose Double Sextet won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.
3. A long-term relationship with Chicago’s Cedille Records has produced seven acclaimed recordings and four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance, most recently in 2016 for “Filament.”
4. They marked their 20th anniversary in 2016 with three notable achievements: a MacArthur Award for Effective and Creative Institutions, a one-time grant of $400,000 in recognition of their leadership and success; Chamber Music America’s inaugural Visionary Award; and Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year for 2017.
5. They took their name from the eighth stanza of a Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” It reads: “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.”