"It's more than 30 years now since composers, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon and David Lang founded the new-music collective Bang on a Can, which through its commissions and performances has become one of the most vital forces in American contemporary music ... The three composers made movement an integral part of these pieces, inviting the choreographer Susan Marshall to work with the players, and in deference to the group's name, took the titles of their individual contributions from lines in one of the most beautiful of all Beatles songs, Blackbird. The visual aspects are of course lost on disc, but played with such fabulous precision and exuberance by the Blackbirds, the three works still stand up very well indeed, both individually and in sequence".
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Gapplegate Classical-Modern music review

d. 30. juni 2020

Grego Applegate Edwards

d. 30. juni 2020

"The virtuoso abilities of the ensemble commingle with the broad vision of the three composers to create a cooperative whole that never becomes tiresome, wears well over time and creates a complexity far above the individual components taken singly. It is a distinctive forward step in the New Modern-Post Era. It emerges without undue effort, naturally and without pretense. Highly recommended".
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Presto classical

2020

"Groundbreaking new-music sextet Eighth Blackbird, winners of four Grammy Awards for their previous Cedille Records albums, are heard in the world-premiere recording of a collaborative, all-instrumental program of intensely rhythmic works written expressly for the Chicago-based ensemble by the founders of the celebrated Bang on a Can composers collective. Each piece on Singing in the Dead of Night takes its name from Paul McCartney's lyrics to The Beatles song "Blackbird" - but this music exists in another realm altogether ... Julia Wolfe's title track conjures a dark, silent solitude from which creative inspiration emerges ... David Lang's three-movement These Broken Wings, a "glamorously beautiful suite" (The Guardian), takes flight via Eighth Blackbird's boundless stamina and high-voltage virtuosity".
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BBC music magazine

2020 September

Jeremy Pound

2020 September

"From thrillingly energetic to mesmerising and, at times, even a little bewildering, this is an imaginatively conceived and superbly played disc. Julia Wolfe's title track is the pick".

Informationer og udgaver

2020

Musik (cd)Eighth BlackbirdCedille Records