Thirteen Ways

Thirteen Ways is Eighth Blackbird’s commercial recording debut album on Cedille Records, featuring music by four of America’s most gifted composers:David Schober (b. 1974), Thomas Albert (b. 1948), Joan Tower (b. 1938), and George Perle (b. 1915). Tower’s sparkling Petroushskates is a vibrant homage to Stravinsky; Schober’s elegantly crafted Variations, by turns ethereal and insistent, garnered the 1999 Wayne Peterson Prize from San Francisco State University; Perle’s Critical Moments II, one of the ensemble’s recent commissions, is “remarkably fresh in its spiky crystalline fragments, rapid atonal flurries and muted wisps of sound” (Los Angeles Times); and Albert’s kaleidoscopic Thirteen Ways is as evocative and stimulating as the poem that inspired it.

Performers

Molly Barth, flutes
Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets
Matt Albert, violin & viola
Nick Photinos, cello
Matthew Duvall, percussion
Lisa Kaplan, piano

Album Details

Total Time: 55:30
Producer and Engineer: Judith Sherman
Assistant Engineer: Hsi-Ling Chang
Editing: Track 1: Bill Maylone
Editing Assistants: Tracks 2-10 Hsi-Ling Chang
Tracks 11-24 Jeanne Velonis
Mastering: Bill Maylone
Recorded:
Track 1: October 3, 2002 Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, Evanston, IL
Tracks 2-11: July 15 & 16, 2002
Tracks 12-24: July 13-14, 2002 Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center, SUNY Purchase, NY.
Front Cover Photograph: © Andy Whale/Stone
Graphic Design: Melanie Germond & Pete Goldlust
Notes: eighth blackbird & the composers

© 2003 Cedille Records/Cedille Chicago