The young, yet immensely talented, classical music prodigies of Santa Monica are now ready to have their skills accentuated by world-renowned artists.
This coming spring, local music ensemble organization Elemental Music will introduce four-time Grammy Award-winning contemporary classical sextet Eighth Blackbird to its students. The legendary group will be working with Elemental’s Chamber Music Institute, consisting of middle and high school pupils, on a project that will culminate in a joint concert in April 2025.
Entitled “Blackbird Elementals,” the project commissions a collection of new composer works for the young musicians, with the six composers collaborating with Institute students on the pieces. Not intended to be “learning pieces,” the resulting music will stand on its own for ensembles across the globe to glean from.
For its part, Eighth Blackbird will be working directly with Institute pupils at least twice in the spring, in addition to playing together on April 27 at St. Matthew’s Music Guild. The sextet will be coaching each Institute group assigned to a commission piece, such as a violin trio, a woodwind trio and a “piano quintet” consisting of two violins, a viola, a cello and a piano.
In addition, the Chamber Music America Visionary Award-winners will be holding special workshops for all students with a “flex” piece that utilizes their combined talents. The workshops will work as rehearsals for the piece they will play together, Chamber Music Institute Director Emily Call said.
“I think they were excited about the opportunity to kind of branch out and work with younger students … they’ve always been pretty committed to working with the next generation … so it was a really good fit in that way,” Call said of Eighth Blackbird’s involvement.
The partnership began with a dinner between Elemental Music Executive and Artistic Director Josephine Moerschel and Eighth Blackbird Artistic Director Matthew Duvall. The two traded stories of their own work, and Duvall believed that the students’ efforts matched the sextet’s educational initiatives outside of the concert hall.
“This collaboration embodies Elemental Music’s mission to inspire the young musicians of tomorrow by giving them direct access to the composers and performers of today,” Moerschel said. “We are honored to bring in the incredible musicians of Eighth Blackbird to work alongside our teaching artists this season and foster the next generation of music-makers.”
Eighth Blackbird Co-Founder and Executive Director Lisa Kaplan added that she was reminded how “inspiring” it was to collaborate with professionals as a student, and wants to return the favor.
The six chosen composers, including Juhi Bansal and Sakai Dixon Vanderveer, have also been working with Institute students either in-person or over Zoom, asking students for feedback so they can have a direct impact on what’s being written.
“Students don’t normally have the opportunity to work with composers,” Call said. “A lot of the music that we play is written by people who aren’t living anymore … it’s so far removed from our current times, so to be able to bring in young composers (and) diverse voices, it really kind of helps the students realize that this is a living art form, and it lets them approach music in a way they haven’t necessarily before.”
Despite working with composers, the Institute students will learn to perform the pieces without their help, a standard for Elemental’s middle and high school levels. Out of everything Eighth Blackbird will be teaching, such as concert presentation and technical skills, the non-verbal communication needed between students to pull off a show is a crucial point of the learning process.
“It’s a very different experience to go on stage and not have the security blanket of someone in front of you, showing you where the downbeat is or where the next bar begins, so being able to have the communication skills without speaking on stage … I think they’re going to learn about body language and those kind of communication skills from (Eighth Blackbird), they’re just absolute pros,” Call said.
For more information on the program, visit elementalmusic.org.
