About our Featured Performers
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.
Today’s performance features Eighth Blackbird’s members Maiani da Silva, Matthew Duvall, and Lisa Kaplan.
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
Creative Output Includes: Chamber Ensemble Commissions and World Premieres | Theatrical Music Productions | Chamber Concertos with both Orchestras and Bands | An Extensive Recording Catalog
8BB values their role as curators and educators, and has expanded in recent years to represent multiple mission-driven initiatives: Eighth Blackbird | Blackbird IV | The Blackbird Creative Lab | The Chicago Artists Workshop | Blackbird Productions | Artists-in-Residence with the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture
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.”
Matthew Duvall and Lisa Kaplan, Artistic co-Directors
eighthblackbird.org
About Elemental Music
Elemental Music was founded in 2004 as a program of the Maestro Foundation and has since blossomed into a vibrant musical community serving young musicians across the westside. Acquiring its own non-profit status in 2010, the organization is now celebrating its 21st season of inspiring creativity, connection, and joy through music. From strings, band, guitar, and choir to full orchestra, chamber music, early childhood classes, and even in-school general music classes, Elemental Music offers diverse ensemble and lesson programs designed to nurture talent and build confidence. This season, nearly 70% of Elemental Music students benefit from need-based scholarships or tuition-free programming.
Today’s performance features students in grades 6–12 who are enrolled in Elemental Music’s Chamber Music Institute.
About our Composers
Carolina Heredia
Carolina Heredia (b. 1981-Córdoba, Argentina) composes acoustic and electronic music, specializing in interdisciplinary collaboration and intermedia art. She has a musical background in Western European Classical and Electronic, South American folk, and popular music.
Her composition awards include the 2015 Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the2019 Barlow Music Composition Commission, the 2018 Missouri Music Teachers Association Commission, and the 2017 John Corigliano Composition International Competition at ChamberMusic OC. Her works have
been published by Hal Leonard, and released by Orchid Classics, Navona Records, and Albany Records. Her music has been performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Green Umbrella Series, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra series, the NYC SONIC Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Lake George Music Festival, and the Bowdoin Music Festival, among others.
Carolina holds a Doctorate in Music Composition and was a Research Fellow for the Institute of Humanities at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Missouri and later an Assistant Professor in Music Composition and Associate Director for the Mizzou New Music Initiative before taking the position of Director of Programs for the American Composers Forum. Shei currently based in Los Ángeles, California.
About her piece, Woven:
In my initial conversations with Tessa, Roen, and Zach, we acknowledged the many communities we might be part of and the different kinds of music styles, practices, and roles coexisting in these various communities. We also explored our interconnectedness with the music of the past and the present, and the roles artists have in local and global communities. As we got to know each other and explored themes for the commission, the trio shared with me that music felt like an essential part of who they are, providing them with a unique sense of fulfillment and accomplishment arising from their dedication to overcoming challenges.
I decided I wanted to capture the beauty and difficulties inherent in musical practice. Woven reflects on musicians' drive, dedication, and love, which are necessary to master this language and share it with others. I expressed this musically in the repeated patterns with minor variations, evoking the discipline in practice, the attention to detail, and the improvement through practice. The hocketed and contrapuntal textures, as well as the title of the work, allude to the ideas about community and interconnectedness. I used tonal extended harmonies and post-tonal techniques to evoke some of the popular music the trio expressed preference for, as listeners, and to describe the wide spectrum of emotions involved in taking this path full of challenges, but also of joy.
I’m grateful for this opportunity as working with young people reconnects me with a “beginner’s mind,” reminding me of some essential truths. The trio's thoughts resonated with me, as I, too, was dedicated to my instrument as a child. I remember I felt that creating a world of sound with others, one that did not necessarily need words to appeal to deep feelings and ideas, was magical. I also realized that those feelings and ideas could be affected in the process of creating, performing, or listening to music. On the path to becoming a professional musician, there is a risk of forgetting that music is an essential human experience with an undeniable power over us and others. We may use that power to connect and assist ourselves and others in becoming more aware, empathetic, and generous with each other.
- Carolina Heredia
Sakari Dixon
Photography by William Vasta, 2014.
Recently featured in the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra EarShot New Music Readings, Sakari Dixon (b. 1992) seeks to incorporate her collaborators’ unique artistry in each of her works. Her piano quintet Obsidian, rippled in moonlight, gleams and her string octet Fire Season, both written for Salastina, embody stark contrasts that convey her fascination with metamorphosis as a natural element of life. Described as “thrilling and powerful” (Journal of the American Viola Society), El príncipe sombrío y los recuerdos de su niñez remains a popular choice among violists. Her suite of unaccompanied works, Bagatelles for Strings, was commissioned for the 36th Annual Irving M. Klein International String Competition, where it premiered on The Violin Channel. Other recent premieres include commissions for Derek Bermel, HOCKET, and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra.
A University of Redlands alum, she studied with violist Kira Blumberg and composer Anthony Suter. Additional mentors include violist Mark Braunstein and composers Reena Esmail, Derrick Skye, Saad Haddad, and Gabriela Lena Frank. Ms. Dixon thrives on close collaboration with others; her fellowships in the Third Coast Percussion Creative Currents Partnership, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, the Composers Conference, and JACK Studio inspire many of her recent works for chamber ensembles.
As a New Music USA Program Council member and a Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Composer Teaching Artist Fellow, Sakari Dixon’s desire to empower youth catalyzes much of her work. In fact, she founded the You(th) Can Compose! Summer Workshop, a personalized, online program for beginners. She currently splits her teaching hours between mentoring young students in her private studio and instructing classrooms both online and around Southern California.
Her recent works for MUSICA! (El Sistema USA), the San Bernardino County Music Educators Association, Heritage Intermediate School, and the Portland Youth Philharmonic exemplify her desire to nurture artistic relationships with virtuosi and novices alike. She aspires to give children from all backgrounds access to contemporary music and composition in hopes that they may develop a better appreciation of both new and old concert music, cherish it, and engage with it throughout their lives.
Juhi Bansal
“Radiant and transcendent”, the music of Juhi Bansal weaves together themes celebrating musical and cultural diversity, nature and the environment, and strong female role models. Her music draws upon elements as disparate as Hindustani music, the spectralists, progressive metal, musical theatre and choral traditions to create deeply expressive, evocative sound-worlds. As an Indian composer brought up in Hong Kong, her work draws subtly upon both those traditions, entwining them closely and intricately with the gestures of western classical music.
Recent projects include Love, Loss and Exile, a song cycle on poetry by Afghan women commissioned by Songfest; Songs from the deep, a new orchestral work inspired by humpback whale songs commissioned by the Oregon Mozart Players; and Waves of Change, a digital operatic short on womanhood, identity and clash of cultures inspired by the story of the Bangladesh Girls Surf Club. Working across orchestra, choral music, opera, chamber music, art song and electronics, recent seasons have included commissions from the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Virginia Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Beth Morrison Projects, Choral Arts initiative, New York Virtuoso Singers and more. Her music has been featured on several Grammy nominated albums, and is regularly performed throughout the U.S. Europe and Asia.
A conductor as well as composer, she has been awarded fellowships by the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera, the Atlantic Music Center, Seasons Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival Composer’s Symposium, and the Pacific Music Festival. She frequently premieres the work of other composers and accompanies singers at the piano.
About her piece, Cast a stone across the waters:
Written for the students of the Elemental Music Chamber Music Institute, Cast a stone across the waters takes inspiration from the shapes created by an object falling into calm water. The piano creates a texture of shimmering stillness, and violin and cello take turns starting ripples and cascades that spread through the ensemble. As the piece continues, the roles shift; each of the instruments takes turns beginning the ripples, and the others follow and grow, expanding like circles from an initial spark.
- Juhi Bansal
Wenbin Lyu
Wenbin Lyu (he/him) is a Chinese composer and guitarist based in Cincinnati. His compositions blend contemporary Western techniques with ancient Oriental culture, drawing inspiration from nature, science, and video games. Known for being fast, loud, and highly rhythmic, Lyu's compositions are always designed to be fun.
Lyu has received fellowships from prestigious institutions and festivals, including the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Tanglewood Music Center, Blackbird Creative Lab, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ohio Arts Council, and China National Symphony Orchestra. His works have been featured at over 70 music festivals and conferences, such as the SCI, RED NOTE, NMG, Alba, MATA, ICMC, NYCEMF,EMM, MOXsonic, SPLICE, SEAMUS, and IRCAM. He has collaborated with acclaimed ensembles, including the Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Beijing Symphony, Tianjin Symphony, Fifth House Ensemble, Akropolis Quintet, Sandbox Percussion, International Contemporary Ensemble, Capitol Quartet, Sinta Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, Icarus Quartet, Society for New Music, Tacet(i),Hub New Music, Transient Canvas, Hypercube, and Eighth Blackbird.
In recognition of his academic achievements, Lyu was awarded the China National Scholarship in 2016 and the Donald Martino Award for Excellence in Composition in 2020. He is also the recipient of an ASCAP Young Composer Award and five The American Prize awards. Additionally, two VR movies he composed premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2016. Lyu serves as a composer-in-residence at HAcappella, based at Harvard University since 2018.Lyu (DMA) holds degrees from the China Conservatory, New England Conservatory, and Cincinnati College-Conservatory. Currently, he serves as faculty at Northern Kentucky University, Earlham College, Xavier University, and CCM.
About his piece, Duck & Roll:
Duck & Roll is a piano trio composed in late fall of 2024 for the Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies (which is the best ensemble name I have ever seen). This piece is highly rhythmic, loud, and fast, and it also showcases extended techniques on each instrument. The title, Duck & Roll, is quite random, inspired by the ensemble’s name and the instrument I recently studied—the duck call (which sounds just like a duck). The clarinet player also doubles on the duck call to add some duckie flavor to the piece. Therefore, you might hear some quack, quack, and more quack.
- Wenbin Lyu
Thomas Kotcheff
Thomas Kotcheff (b. 1988) is a Los Angeles based composer and pianist. His music has been described as “truly beautiful and inspired” (icareifyoulisten.com) and “explosive” (Gramophone magazine). His compositions have been performed internationally by The Riot Ensemble, Seattle Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Wild Up, Sandbox Percussion, Trio Appassionata, Argus Quartet, Lyris Quartet, Alinde Quartett, USC Thornton Edge, The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, HOCKET, Peabody Percussion Group, Latitude 49, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble amongst others.
Thomas has won numerous awards and honors including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Presser Foundation Award, New York Youth Symphony's First Music Commission, Aspen Music Festival's Hermitage Prize, a BMI Student Composer Award, a SCI/ASCAP Student Commission, multiple awards from the National Association of Composers USA, and the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Competition amongst others.
Thomas has been a composition fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic's National Composers Intensive, the Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence, the Aspen Summer Music Festival and School, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Bennington Chamber Music Conference, and attended The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and the MusicX festival with Eighth Blackbird. He has been artist in residence at The Byrdcliffe Art Colony, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, The Avaloch Farm Music Institute, The Studios of Key West, and The Hermitage Artist Retreat.
Thomas composed and orchestrated music for the Academy Award, Golden Globe, and GRAMMY winning score to Oppenheimer directed by Christopher Nolan. Thomas’s additional film credits include Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Haunted Mansion, Origin, Bob Marley: One Love, and The Wild Robot amongst others.
As a new music pianist, Thomas has dedicated himself to commissioning and premiering new piano works. His playing has been described as “dazzling” by Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times and “outstanding” by Steve Smith of Night after Night. In 2020, Thomas released the world premiere recording of Frederic Rzewski’s 75-minute solo piano work Songs of Insurrection in which Rzewski hailed his performance as “magnificent.” His 2024 album Re/Sounding: An American Songbook for Piano was released on the Coviello Contemporary label and is the culmination of a 6 year collaboration with composer Jordan Nelson. He is the pianist and founding member of the Los Angeles based piano duo HOCKET and he is currently a Core Artist with Piano Spheres.
Thomas currently serves on the music theory and ear training faculty at the Colburn School. He holds degrees in composition and piano performance from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and The University of Southern California.
April Dawn Guthrie
April Dawn Guthrie is a composer/cellist/vocalist and Cherokee Nation citizen who finds hope in dissenters lost in our histories, stories of the forgotten, and in equalities which are grey and not easily definable. In 2024, her song and score for the play “a home what howls (or the house what was ravine),” inspired by the displacements of Chavez Ravine, world-premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Also in 2024, her chamber composition “ToyToyToypurina,” part of her suite "Our Founding Foremothers,” celebrating women who shaped American history, was selected for its New York premiere at the 2024 MATA Festival at Fotografiska. In 2019 her music for the world-premiere of “so go the ghosts of méxico,” reflecting the U.S./Mexico drug war, won Best Original Music/Songs of 2019 by Theatre Jones in Dallas, Texas.
Residencies/Commissions: Composer in Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Nautilus/New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, Wyoming Festival Fellowship, Hammer Museum LA Artists Residency, Center Theater Group Playwright Workshop, The Assembly’s Deceleration Lab, Westben's Performer/Composer Residency, International Contemporary Ensemble's Ensemble Evolution, Geffen Playhouse Writer’s Room. (music for theatre), All For One Solo Collective, The TANK NYC, Premiere Stages, Boston Court Theatre, La Baldi Residency Cultivate, Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab 2024.
As a cellist she has toured the world and worked with artists such as Björk, The Industry, WildUp, Wadada Leo Smith, Angel Olsen, Amanda Palmer, Blue Planet II, BBC's Big Cats, Perfume Genius, and the Alan Parsons Project.
April is currently composing an opera for "a home what howls..." and is continuing work on her upcoming Arts Capacity commission, which reflects on relationships with incarcerated siblings, set to premiere in several prisons across the country.
About her piece, 7000rpm:
"There's a point at 7,000 RPM... where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless. Just disappears. And all that's left is a body moving through space and time. 7,000 RPM. That's where you meet it. You feel it coming. It creeps up on you, close in your ear. Asks you a question. The only question that matters. Who are you?"
- Ford v Ferrari
When we play, when we create, may we all be so immersed in the sounds, noises overtake, and everything else disappears.
- April Dawn Guthrie, 2025