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eighth blackbird to join Akron Symphony in Higdon premiere on January 15
by Mike Telin & Daniel Hathaway
When the League of American Orchestras sent out an all points bulletin inviting orchestras to join in a commissioning project for a new piece by Jennifer Higdon featuring the contemporary music sextet eighth blackbird, the Akron Symphony’s director of artistic planning, Renee Dee, was immediately taken with the idea. “It looked very interesting to me. I forwarded the email to our music director, Christopher Wilkins, and he said ‘Hell, Yes!’“I love Jennifer’s music”, Wilkins told us in a telephone conversation. “I’ve known her for some number of years and several of her pieces have been on my ‘bucket’ list. I love her, love eighth blackbird. Their whole way of presenting new music is so appealing to everybody — it really is the way to go for all of us. So we just jumped on the opportunity”.
Jennifer Higdon’s On a Wire was co-commissioned by a consortium including the Atlanta Symphony, the Akron Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival, the Cincinnati Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, the West Michigan Symphony and the Vermont Symphony. The work was first performed by Robert Spano, eighth blackbird, and the Atlanta Symphony in June of last year during the League of American Orchestras Conference, and Dee was in attendance. “It was great to have face time with the group and with Jennifer. I have always admired her work so much. I felt very comfortable that I would like what she had written. and it was wonderful to hear the piece for the first time. And eighth blackbird is so great. The amount of energy that they have is amazing and they bring that with them on stage.”
On a Wire’s premiere in Akron on January 15 at 8 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall will also celebrate local connections. As Wilkins notes, “eighth blackbird was formed at the Oberlin Conservatory, and Jennifer has Ohio roots” (she studied flute at Bowling Green State University, where she met Oberlin graduate Robert Spano, who happened to be teaching a conducting course). “That’s all frankly coincidental, but it’s all the more attractive because of it”.
Coincidence or not, helping give birth to a new orchestral piece is an important activity. Renee Dee: “Commissioning is part of the overall artistic mission of the Akron Symphony. The purpose is to find things that bring relevance to whatever realm, whether that is the community, or the occasion, or the art form in general, and if you succeed in that, you also receive the benefit of building a legacy”.
Speaking of relevance, more often than not, a new piece gets plopped down into a program with little regard to its context or relationship to neighboring works. Not so in Akron, where Christopher Wilkins has thought long and hard about how to frame On a Wire, and has come up with a playlist full of avian references — after quizzing the composer about what she meant by the title.
“I first emailed Jennifer and said, ‘OK, “On a Wire”: does that refer to a piano string, or does it refer to a high wire act — you know, virtuosity — or does it refer to blackbirds sitting on a wire?’ And she answered 'Yes'. “So I went back and looked at the poem that eighth blackbird's name comes from, the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens' 'Thirteen Ways of Looking a Blackbird', and what was in my mind was the idea of birds — not so much representing flying creatures but the mystical nature of birds. (Of course at some point I had Messiaen in the program too!) The idea was not so much bird sounds but the mystical connection they make between this world and the next. As it turns out, the pieces relate through birds, they relate through nature, they relate through their coloristic qualities and they're all from the last century.”
On Saturday evening, the Akron Symphony will begin with Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, an evocation of a poem by George Meredith, with concertmaster Alan Bodman as violin soloist. The program will continue with Stella Sung’s The Phoenix Rising, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and the first two movements of Michael Gandolfi’s The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. Higdon’s work will cap off the evening.
Sung is affiliated with Wilkins’ other orchestra, the Orlando Philharmonic. “She has been our composer in residence for four years, and has done a number of pieces for us, the majority of which have had some element of combined media. She's actually not in the music department at the University of Central Florida, but in the digital media department. She oversees the whole school of musical composition for digital media. Most of her students go on to design music for gaming — that's a big deal down here. This piece we did not commission, but the theme seemed perfect. It ends with music that sounds very much like The Lark Ascending, but it begins with a cataclysm, the moment of conflagration, the destruction of the Phoenix. Unlike most pieces, it starts with great tension, which is released throughout the course of the work. It's a nice counterpart to the Vaughan Williams”.
Gandolfi’s work seems to be ever expanding and might never be finished. “Incredible piece! He was inspired by a sculpture garden in Scotland and he just took the idea in a million different directions. The whole thing is really interesting. Each piece has its own cosmic theme. We would have done more of it, but there isn't room and we didn't want to overwhelm the Higdon with too much music coming before it. It fit the theme in a number of ways”.
In an unusual gesture designed to draw the audience into the process, Wilkins is holding an open rehearsal on Friday, January 14 at 8 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall when you can experience the assembly of a new work before your very ears.
Christopher Wilkins is very laid back about the evening. “It's really designed to be a vehicle for eighth blackbird — and for Jennifer, who will be there. I just proposed to them kind of an outline and then we'll cut them loose in talking about it and demonstrating it with kind of a skeletal idea of how to help those in attendance to understand how the piece is put together and the coloristic vocabulary that she invented out of these instruments. Of course the prepared piano is a very important part of the piece — and they all get involved in playing prepared piano, which is kind of neat. And how some of those sounds are imitated in the orchestra, with a bit about structure and the thematic nature of the piece.
“Of course, we do need to rehearse it, because that's the first time we'll all be together. That will end the formal part of the evening, but anyone who wants to stay and listen to the rest of the rehearsal will be welcome to do so. So it's a workshop, I would say. It's kind of a showcase of the piece, but rather open ended in terms of who's going to speak when. Everyone will have their chance, and we'll just see where it goes.”
Our preview of the Akron Symphony’s January 15th concert continues in a telephone interview with eighth blackbird’s flutist, Tim Munro.
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