Oberlin

eighth blackbird, the Chicago-based Pierrot sextet, is arguably the best-known and most popular contemporary music ensemble in the land. They have garnered three Grammy awards in the last five years and performed live at this year's Grammy awards show. Yes, these are niche awards within the grand Grammy scheme of things, and the performance was in the online-only portion of the awards ceremony. But the 'birds are as close to a household name as it gets for contemporary classical musicians.

New fans of eighth blackbird would do well to mine their full catalog of recordings for its abundant riches. A standout is Fred (from 2005), which celebrates the music of iconoclastic American composer Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938). This recording was made well before their Grammy fame and features the original lineup of flutist Molly Barth (replaced by Tim Munro), clarinetist Michael Maccaferri, violinist/violist Matt Albert (replaced by Yvonne Lam), cellist Nicholas Photinos, and pianist Lisa Kaplan. 

The Fred album's three selections - Pocket Symphony (2000), Les Moutons de Panurge (1969), and Coming Together (1971) - are representative samples of the work of a composer who defies categorization. As Rzewski states in the interview-style liner notes, "I never know what I am doing until I've done it, and even then I don't know what I have done."

Pocket Symphony was commissioned for eighth blackbird and places great demands on their virtuosity with complex cadenzas and improvisation required from each player. Les Moutons de Panurge is a formal game, modeled after the Rabelais tale of 65 sheep on a ship at sea who follow their leader in jumping overboard to thwart a dishonest merchant.

In Rzewski's telling, the players start with a single note and keep adding notes to the phrase until they are playing a 65-note pattern. Then the process reverses, dropping a note each time a sheep jumps ship. As the pattern dissipates, each player drops out at a self-determined point, leaving one alone to play the final single-note run. The 'birds play the buildup with enthusiastic precision and then bring wild chaotic abandon to the denouement. 

The highlight of this CD is Coming Together, with Matt Albert narrating in his own dramatic arrangement. The work is a tribute to the victims of the 1971 Attica prison massacre in upstate New York. It sets the text of a letter sent by political prisoner Sam Melville to his brother shortly before he died in the prison uprising, which Albert recites over and over.

The music begins in an elegiac mood as Albert narrates in calm conversational tones: "I think the combination of age and a greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing of time." The mood slowly turns frenetic and violent, representing the brutal savagery of the official response to the prisoner rebellion. Albert's recitation becomes ever more frenzied and his bandmates echo his statements in a crashing crescendo: "I am deliberate -- sometimes even calculating -- seldom employing histrionics except as a test of the reactions of others. I read much, exercise, talk to guards and inmates, feeling for the inevitable direction of my life."

As good as this recording is, eighth blackbird's live performances of Coming Together are even more enthralling, setting the benchmark for their characteristic dramatic delivery of memorized works. Albert makes occasional guest appearances with the group to perform this signature work, an opportunity that fans should not pass up.