eighth blackbird’s “super-musicians” (Los Angeles Times) combine the finesse of a string quartet, the energy of a rock band, and the audacity of a storefront theater company. The Chicago-based, three-time GRAMMY Award-winning sextet has provoked and impressed audiences for 20 years across the country and around the world with impeccable precision and a signature style. “One of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune), eighth blackbird began in 1996 as a group of six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory students and quickly became “a brand-name…defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality….known for performing from memory, employing choreography and collaborations with theater artists, lighting designers and even puppetry artists” (Detroit Free Press). Over the course of two decades, eighth blackbird has commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by dozens of composers including David T. Little, Steven Mackey, Missy Mazzoli, and Steve Reich, whose commissioned work, Double Sextet, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize (2009). A long-term relationship with Chicago’s Cedille Records has produced six acclaimed recordings and three impressive GRAMMY Awards: for strange imaginary animals (2008), Lonely Motel: Music from Slide (2011) and Meanwhile (2013). eighth blackbird recently released Filament (Cedille Records, September 2015), which centers around a live recording of Philip Glass’s early masterpiece, Two Pages. The album includes music by Bryce Dessner (Murder Ballades), Nico Muhly (Doublespeak), and Son Lux, whose remixes gather sounds from the others’ compositions, stringing together the musical “filament” the album with the addition of the voice of Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond). The name “eighth blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, aphoristic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917). eighth blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists.