Hear six world premieres written and performed by our Lab composers and musicians after a two-week immersion in Yerkes. Inspired by astronomy and their experiences in our community, these musicians from around the world alongside Eighth Blackbird will set the Great Refractor Dome alight!

Hosted by the four-time Grammy Award winners Eighth Blackbird, the 2024 Blackbird Creative Lab has ticketed concerts for the first time. This year’s Lab welcomes a talented group of ensembles: AREPO, Sputter Box, and Versa. The faculty and performers for the June 7th and June 9th concerts include musicians Lisa Kaplan, Matthew Duvall, Maiani da Silva, Aaron Wolff, Lina Andonovska, and Zachary Good along with composers Viet Cuong and Jonathan Bailey Holland. Director Chris Murrah, technical director Matt McCabe, and Lab Director Garrett Obrycki return this year. The members of 8BB value their roles as curators, educators, and mentors. Beginning exclusively as a chamber music ensemble, 8BB has expanded in recent years to represent numerous mission-driven initiatives. At Yerkes Observatory, Eighth Blackbird hosts this bold initiative, an inclusive two-week professional development immersion for performers and composers plus an ongoing community of practice for contemporary classical musicians and composers. The Lab fosters expansive artistic vision, collaboration, mentorship, and building a viable life as an artist. It continues its mission beyond the two-week collaboration to find opportunities for its network of alumni to present in professional engagements.

Hear six world premieres written and performed by our Lab composers and musicians after a two-week immersion in Yerkes. Inspired by astronomy and their experiences in our community, these musicians from around the world alongside Eighth Blackbird will set the Great Refractor Dome alight!

Hosted by the four-time Grammy Award winners Eighth Blackbird, the 2024 Blackbird Creative Lab has ticketed concerts for the first time. This year’s Lab welcomes a talented group of ensembles: AREPO, Sputter Box, and Versa. The faculty and performers for the June 7th and June 9th concerts include musicians Lisa Kaplan, Matthew Duvall, Maiani da Silva, Aaron Wolff, Lina Andonovska, and Zachary Good along with composers Viet Cuong and Jonathan Bailey Holland. Director Chris Murrah, technical director Matt McCabe, and Lab Director Garrett Obrycki return this year. The members of 8BB value their roles as curators, educators, and mentors. Beginning exclusively as a chamber music ensemble, 8BB has expanded in recent years to represent numerous mission-driven initiatives. At Yerkes Observatory, Eighth Blackbird hosts this bold initiative, an inclusive two-week professional development immersion for performers and composers plus an ongoing community of practice for contemporary classical musicians and composers. The Lab fosters expansive artistic vision, collaboration, mentorship, and building a viable life as an artist. It continues its mission beyond the two-week collaboration to find opportunities for its network of alumni to present in professional engagements.

This intimate musical performance by four-time Grammy Award winners Eighth Blackbird will feature works by living composers. The show will happen in the Observatory's biggest dome underneath the largest refracting telescope in the world!

Hailed as “one of the smartest, most dynamic ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune), Eighth Blackbird has been operating for 27 years beginning in 1996 as a group of six undergraduates and continuing under the leadership of two founding members, Lisa Kaplan, Pianist and Executive Director, and Matthew Duvall, Percussionist and Artistic Director. 8BB is firmly entrenched in the fabric of creative music, cited as “a brand-name defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality” (Detroit Free Press).

Their 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, and the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards Performance of the Year.

This performance in the Great Refractor Dome is a blending of interdisciplinary art with oscillators, think balloons, magnets, and musicians from Blackbird Creative Lab. Presented by Passepartout Duo, this palette of electro-acoustic textures and shapeshifting rhythms promises to be ethereal.

Passepartout Duo is formed by pianist Nicoletta Favari (IT) and percussionist Christopher Salvito (US/IT). Their from-scratch approach has materialized itself in a series of discographic releases. Their most recent Circo Pobre (2022) and Daylighting (2021) are both LPs exploring different ways of approaching sound synthesis and electronic musical interfaces, respectively realized through electromagnetism and textile fibers. Their 2020 LP, Vis-à-Vis, features compositions written for a portable wood and metal instrumentation that accompanied the duo during a month-long train journey across Central Asia. A residency at AIR Niederösterreich (AT) also provided the duo with time to combine writing for acoustic piano and synthesizer through their EP titled Epigrams, exploring the Ernst Krenek Institut’s Buchla 100 Series.

Passepartout Duo has been the recipient of dozens of artist residency opportunities around the world including The Watermill Center (US), the Swatch Art Peace Hotel (CN), the Rogers Art Loft (US), and the Embassy of Foreign Artists (CH). Their multidisciplinary approach has also led them to exhibit both their own creations and their collaborations with fellow artists at venues such as Casino Luxembourg (LU), the Nakanojo Biennale (JP), Aarhus Artspace (DK), and Fanrong Museum (CN). The duo was selected for SHAPE+ Platform’s roster of artists 2022-2023.

Join us for an evening of discourse and music in which we'll showcase the extraordinary minds of renowned composers Jonathan Bailey Holland and Viet Cuong, faculty members at this year's Blackbird Creative Lab. Lab musicians will perform pieces from each esteemed composer!

PAY WHAT YOU WANT OR PAY WHAT YOU CAN! Ticket Info: $50 suggested price. $25 community special rate. $100 reserves your ticket + a donation to Blackbird Creative Lab and Yerkes Future Foundation. $200 reserves your ticket + donation. $300 reserves your ticket + donation. For the $300 ticket + donation, you also get special invitations to behind-the-scenes events and meet the musician evenings. We'll reach out individually for those. If you would like to donate above and beyond this, simply click the Donate option in your transaction. Both BCL and YFF are 501c3 nonprofits who are grateful for your generosity and participation!

Composer Jonathan Bailey Holland has written music that has been performed across the country and around the world from Los Angeles to Atlanta to Philadelphia and beyond. He has been commissioned and performed by orchestras and ensembles such as the the Abeo Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, der/gelbe/klang, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Network for New Music, Present Music, Radius Ensemble, Plymouth Music Series, and more. He is currently the dean of the Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music, as well as the Kay Davis Professor of Music, at Northwestern University. He has served on the faculty of Berklee College of Music, Boston Conservatory, Curtis Institute of Music, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. He also previously served as the Jack G. Buncher Head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University. Jonathan is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. He has been awarded the Fromm Commission from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, a Brother Thomas Award and a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation, amongst other honors and awards. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Curtis Institute of Music and a a PhD from Harvard University.

Composer Viet Cuong has been called “alluring” and “wildly inventive” by The New York Times. The music of this innovative, American composer has been performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Atlanta Symphony, Sandbox Percussion, Albany Symphony, PRISM Quartet, and Dallas Winds, among many others. His music has been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center. Passionate about bringing these different facets of the contemporary music community together, his recent projects include a concerto for Eighth Blackbird with the United States Navy Band. Cuong also enjoys exploring the unexpected and whimsical. He is often drawn to projects where he can make peculiar combinations and sounds feel enchanting or oddly satisfying. His works include a snare drum solo, percussion quartet concerto, and double oboe concerto. He is currently the Pacific Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence and serves as Assistant Professor of Music Composition at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Cuong holds degrees from Princeton University (MFA/PhD), the Curtis Institute of Music (AD), and Peabody Conservatory (BM/MM).