En Vivo Concert Series: Eighth Blackbird & Viet Cuong
UT San Antoniuo School of Music & UTSA Arts present Grammy-award winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird performing Vital Sines by distinguished guest composer Viet Cuong. This program also features UTSA Symphonic Band (Dr. John Zarco) and UTSA Wind Symphony (Professor Ron Ellis). The program will also feature works by student composition contest winners: Javier Lopez (Symphonic Band) and Jaden Hernandez (Wind Symphony)
Eighth Blackbird
The inconic Eighth Blackbird moves music forward through innovative performance, advocacy for music by living creatives, and its growing legacy of guiding an emerging generation of artists. The name “Eighth Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, imagistic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: “I know noble accents / And lucid, inescapable rhythms; / But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know.” Ensemble includes Lina Andonvoska (flutes), Zachary Good (clarinets), Maiani da Silva (violin), Aaron Wolff (cello), Matthew Duvall (percussion), and Lisa Kaplan (piano).
The ensemble’s accolades include Four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance, The MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, The Concert Artists Guild Competition Grand Prize, The Musical America Ensemble of the Year, The Chamber Music America Visionary Award, The APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards Performance of the Year.
Viet Cuong
Described as “alluring” and “stirring” by The New York Times, the “arresting” (Gramophone), “irresistible” (San Francisco Chronicle), and “exhilarating” (Chicago Tribune) music of Vietnamese-American composer Viet Cuong (b. 1990) has been commissioned and performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Kronos Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, WindSync, PRISM Quartet, and Dallas Winds, among many others. Cuong’s music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center, as well as on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk and PBS NewsHour. His works for wind ensemble have garnered over a thousand performances worldwide, including at Midwest, WASBE, and CBDNA conferences.
