University Wind Ensemble and Eighth Blackbird Present "Vitality"

Overture from Dancer in the Dark (2000/2023) by Bjork Guðmundsdóttir/arr. Henry Dorn 

Symphony No. 8 in D Minor (1956) by Ralph Vaughan Williams

II. Scherzo alla Marcia 

        Jerry Luckhardt, conductor

Sweet Chariot (2019) by Carlos Simon 

        Muhamad Yusri Bin Mohamed Ali, conductor

Molly on the Shore (1907/192 /1998) by Percy Grainger/edit. Mark Rogers

Poème Du Feu (1980) by Ida Gotkovsky 

I. Majestuoso 

II. Prestissimo 

--------Intermission-------- 

Thirteen Ways (1997) by Thomas Albert 

VIII. Steady, Rhythmic

Vital Sines: Concerto for Sextet and Wind Band (2022) by Viet Cuong

Eighth Blackbird, guest artists

Murder Ballades (2013) by Bryce Dessner 

V. Brushy Fork

“Vitality”

Overture from Dancer in the Dark 

(2000/2023) by Bjork Guðmundsdóttir/arr. Henry Dorn

Björk Guðmundsdóttir (b. 1965) is an Icelandic composer, singer, and multimedia artist whose work spans pop, classical, electronic, and experimental traditions. Emerging from Reykjavík’s alternative scene, she gained international recognition as a solo artist in the 1990s while continually pushing the boundaries of sound and form. Her music is known for its emotional directness, inventive use of technology, and close relationship to nature, film, and visual art.

Originally written for Lars von Trier’s film Dancer in the Dark, Björk’s Overture unfolds as a slow, immersive soundscape for strings. The music grows gradually from near stillness, relying on sustained harmonies and carefully layered textures rather than melody or rhythm. Its patient buildup reflects the emotional weight of the film’s story and the inner life of its protagonist.

Henry Dorn’s arrangement brings this music into the concert setting while preserving its quiet intensity and sense of inevitability. Heard on its own, the Overture functions less as an introduction and more as an atmosphere—inviting listeners into a world shaped by restraint, vulnerability, and emotional depth.

Compiled by Nahal Javan

Scherzo alla Marcia

Mvmt II of Symphony No. 8 in D Minor (1956) by Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song; this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, in which he included many folk song arrangements set as hymn tunes, and also influenced several of his own original compositions. 

Vaughan Williams spent most of his life in London and he studied the viola, piano and organ. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied composition at the Royal College of Music, as well as organ and piano with several teachers. He became good friends with Gustav Holst and they often shared their works in progress with each other. His work on the English Hymnal greatly influenced his musical career. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in France during World War I. From the 1920s onward, he was in increasing demand as a composer and conductor. 

Scherzo alla marcia is the second movement of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 8. The Scherzo alla marcia is scored only for wind instruments, balancing the following Cavatina, which is for strings alone. The work closes with a bold and percussive Toccata. The Scherzo contains three themes and a fugato section, including a lively trio. Contrapuntal writing permeates the work, reminiscent of the music of his contemporary Paul Hindemith.

Scherzo alla marcia has been labeled as a woodwind “clog-dance,” twisting and turning on the village green and superseded by a cheery trumpet tune - the archetypal British brass band. Light, witty, and brief, Vaughan Williams’ Scherzo alla Marcia could be used to balance a more serious or lengthy work in the concert program. Vaughan Williams’s contrapunctal approach obscures the downbeat, and performers may find themselves playing what feels right rather than what is actually written. It is worthwhile to draw attention to the humorously abrupt ending as Vaughan Williams’ abstraction of time may catch audiences by surprise.

Compiled by Emily Threinen and inspired by Paul Serotsky ©2009

Molly on the Shore 

(1907/1920/1998) by Percy Grainger/edit. Mark Rogers

Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was an Australian-born composer, pianist, and folk music collector whose work left a lasting mark on the wind band repertoire. Trained in Europe and active in Britain and the United States, he blended traditional folk melodies with bold rhythms and imaginative orchestration. Grainger was also an experimental thinker, exploring new instruments and compositional techniques, and his music is celebrated for its energy, individuality, and vivid sense of color.

Molly on the Shore is one of Grainger’s most celebrated wind works, based on two lively Irish fiddle tunes: “Molly on the Shore” and “Temple Hill.” Originally composed in 1907 and later scored for winds, the piece is marked by driving rhythms, irregular accents, and constant sense of motion. Rather than presenting the tunes straightforwardly, Grainger fragments and layers them, creating a dense, energetic musical texture.

Compiled by Nahal Javan

Sweet Chariot 

(2019) by Carlos Simon 

Carlos Simon (b. 1986) is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Simon is the Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the inaugural Boston Symphony Orchestra Composer Chair, and was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY award for his album Requiem for the Enslaved.  

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is perhaps one of the most well-known African American spirituals. As beautiful and rapturing as its melody is, it should be. However, its beauty and popularity is often overlooked by the song’s true meaning about death. The composer took fragments of the melody and combined it with the Gregorian chant from the Latin mass for the dead, In Paradisum. Its text is as follows: 

"May the angels lead you into paradise; 

may the martyrs receive you at your arrival 

and lead you to the holy city Jerusalem. 

May choirs of angels receive you and 

with Lazarus, once (a) poor (man), 

may you have eternal rest.”

Compiled by Muhamad Yusri Bin Mohamed Ali

Poème Du Feu 

(1980) by Ida Gotkovsky

Ida-Rose Esther Gotkovsky (1933-2025) was a French composer who showed great promise from a young age. Gotkovsky was raised in a musical family and began composing at the age of eight. She entered the National Conservatory of Music in Paris studying counterpoint with Nöel Gallon, harmony and analysis with Olivier Messiaen, and composition with Tony Aubin and Nadia Boulanger. Her works won many awards of distinction including the Prix Blumenthal (1958), the Prix Pasdeloup (1959), the Prix de Composition International de Divonne les Bains (1962), the Medaille de la Ville de Paris (1963), the Prix Lily Boulanger (1967), and many more. 

Gotkovsky composed Poème de Feu in 1980. About the piece, the composer writes:

Ever since the beginning of man, fire has been particularly revered. Legends on its origin abound, each one conferring upon it a sacred feature; legends making of fire a link between creature and his creator.

Thus the Celtic tradition brings us a myth close to Zarathustra's: During the ceremonies heralding in the new-year, men would light two hearths. The first one which had been watched and honoured all the year round would be coming to its end, while the second, according to the memorial and magic process composed by the two celestial and earthly elements, gave birth to the new Fire.

When the two glowing furnaces were blazing in all their splendour, the entire village, men, flocks and herds, in a long procession passed between the two Fires: The two movements of the poem. Everyone rejoiced to have mastered this divine gift.

This vision has inspired me. Poème du feu is an original work for a large wind orchestra. It is composed of two movements.

The first movement -- Majestuoso -- is a fire of gigantic proportions, the spring of life which makes us relive the first moments of creation.

The second movement -- Prestissimo -- being at the heart of human achievement, is a power of revelation, an impetuous power which raises man to the level of demiurge and which finishes in the Fire apotheosis and, in this way, granting Prometheus's wish.

Compiled by Rose Craig Tyler

Thirteen Ways

VIII. Steady, Rhythmic (1997) by Tom Albert

Composer Thomas Albert (b.1948) is also an extraordinary life-long educator. Thirteen Ways is composed of 13 movements, each an inspired reflection of their 13 poetic counterparts in "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens. Eighth Blackbird learned to play 'Thirteen Ways' in 1996. It's one of the first compositions the ensemble learned and the first piece Eighth Blackbird commissioned. Because Tom Albert, with ever a mischievous wink in his eye, is the father of founding violinist Matt Albert, Eighth Blackbird got a very good deal on the commissioning fee. Enigmatic, imagistic, joyful, gentle. This is the eighth of thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird in Wallace Stevens’ poem. And it is the verse that inspired Eighth Blackbird's name. 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: VIII 

I know noble accents | And lucid, inescapable rhythms; | 

But I know, too, | That the blackbird is involved | In what I know.

- Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

*recorded by Eighth Blackbird on Thirteen Ways (Cedille Records, 2003) 

Note by Matthew Duvall, Eighth Blackbird

Vital Sines

Concerto for Sextet and Wind Band (2022) by Viet Cuong

Viet Cuong (b. 1990) is 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 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 The Midwest Clinic, WASBE, and CBDNA conferences.

A composer known for his imagination and colorful voice, Cuong strives to blend the whimsical and profound by finding new expressive possibilities through unexpected instrumental pairings and textures. His works thus include concerti for tuba and dueling oboes, percussion quartets utilizing wine glasses and sandpaper, and pieces for double reed sextet, cello octet, and solo snare drum. This eclecticism extends to the variety of musical groups he writes for, and he has worked closely with ensembles ranging from middle school bands to Grammy-winning orchestras and chamber ensembles. His wind ensemble works are widely performed by leading groups such as the Dallas Winds, top U.S. military bands, and premier university ensembles at UT Austin, Michigan, Northwestern, North Texas, LSU, Miami, and Michigan State. Passionate about bringing all these different facets of the contemporary music community together, his notable works include Vital Sines, a concerto for Eighth Blackbird and the United States Navy Band; Re(new)al, a concerto for percussion quartet with a variety of ensemble accompaniments; and a saxophone quartet concerto entitled Second Nature.

When Eighth Blackbird was graciously contacted by CAPT Kenneth C. Collins and the US Navy Band with the invitation to create a new work, I picked up my phone and texted Viet:

Me📱:: Hey. Got a question. Concerto for 8BB and the US Navy Band. Wanna do it?

[🤔 *drinking ☕️ and waiting*] 

Viet📱:: I just spit out my drink YES 🙌  that is like a dream project omg 🎉

Me📱:: We have the best contracts 🙃

Viet📱:: lol yes we do thanks a million WOW 🫶

Me📱:: Wonderful, more soon 😉 (pour a new drink!)

Viet📱:: I shall, cheers! 🥂

The whole exchange, from getting the Navy Band invitation to 🥂 took 3 minutes. For those who may be unfamiliar with the commissioning process, this is not usual. Except that for Eighth Blackbird and Viet Cuong, it is. 

Eighth Blackbird operates an innovative professional development initiative for artists called The Blackbird Creative Lab. Viet was a Lab Artist at our first intensive in 2017 and we’ve been fast friends ever since. He amazed us then and came to mean more to us than we can describe. Commissioning him to write this concerto was no different from giving him a hug. 

Performing a composition, like acting a role in a play, is an interpretative practice. We didn’t compose the work, but we are tasked with making it authentic to us so that the experience for you is also authentic. But it’s particularly special when someone composes a work specifically for you. Viet composed Vital Sines knowing who we are and how we perform. We get to go beyond performing the concerto instrumental parts. We get to perform OUR parts, made for us. 

One indication of authenticity in the arts is personal relevance. We so often limit ourselves to asking “What did the artist mean?” and forget to ignore all that and ask ourselves the question that matters most: “What does this mean to me?” That answer is yours and something over which I hope you feel empowered to assume complete ownership. 

In this case, the answer for us is quite literal. We, all of us, find ourselves in this work, making this performance about as personal as it can get. And now it’s personal for you. You’re here, with us, and because Viet created Vital Sines, and we’re going to experience this together. 

Please continue reading. Viet has also shared some reflections with us…

Matthew Duvall, Eighth Blackbird 

Cuong completed Vital Sines in 2022. About the piece, the composer writes:

It would be difficult to overstate just how important the wind ensemble has been in my life. Band was where I found community and identity during a time in my youth when I feared that there was nothing out there for me. In fact, it was one of the only places during those teenage years where I felt confident in who I was. And it was ultimately this confidence that gave me the nerve to believe that I could one day make it as a composer. But my life in the wind ensemble world almost never was. I very nearly gave up my musical pursuits in a fit of childhood frustration at the age of 11. My father, though he had no musical ability himself, saw in it something important. Always one to look after my creativity, he steadied me and encouraged me to give it more time. It was not long before he was proven right, and music had become something vital to me. 

Since my father’s passing in 2021, I find myself thinking of that crucial moment, and how music was and remains my vital connection to him. In the last weeks of his life—spent in the disorienting whir of the ICU—I often struggled to speak. But when I could not, I would play him the pieces of mine that I knew were his favorites, hoping that the sounds, the sine waves, could find their way to his consciousness. Since his death, I have come to understand that my love for music is inseparable from the love I have for him. I still catch myself wanting to call him and play him my latest efforts.

This one, Vital Sines, is dedicated to my father’s memory as the guardian of my musical life, as well as the many moments during my life when I found sanctuary in music. The creation of this particular piece, though challenging, was a way of finding solace when I needed it most. Throughout the piece, I employ several musical sequences and chaconne forms, all of which use repetition as a means of development. The overarching structure of the piece thus bears a resemblance to the visual depiction of the sine wave, rising and falling like the tracing of breaths and heartbeats. There is of course comfort in the familiarly of continued repetition. But I also followed memories back to my teenage years in Band, when that community had the extraordinary ability to not just bring me comfort but heal my heart. What I then realized was that all the other musical communities I have become a part of since then, Band or not, hold this same healing power.

With this concerto for Eighth Blackbird and the US Navy Band, I am tremendously honored to bring together the Wind Band and New Music communities, both vital to me and so many others. Thank you to Eighth Blackbird and the US Navy Band for giving me an opportunity that I dreamed of for many years, as well as for your patience as I navigated this time in my life. Finally, thank you to my father for helping me find my way all those years ago. This one's for you.

Viet Cuong

*recorded by Eighth Blackbird and the U.S. Navy Band; the recording is available on the US Navy Band album Premieres available digitally on all major streaming platforms.

*Vital Sines was commissioned by the US Navy Band.

Murder Ballades

V. Brushy Fork (2013) by Bryce Dessner

We had a fun conversation here at UMN-TC about the query, “What if modern composition is no longer a genre?” The scope of that “new music” moniker,  which mayhaps once referred to new classical music compositions written in the western european tradition as a genre, is far too narrow to encompass the global influences informing creatives today. Our expansively diverse repertoire takes us from indie collaborations to french spectralism to Argentine protest music and the list continues and it is very long, and we’re so fortunate for it. We mostly try to just tell people that we play music. Here, we find ourselves in 1864 and an unresolved Civil War skirmish that resulted in a legacy of family bitterness along the John’s River in PIke County, Kentucky. No one knows exactly when it was written, but the ‘Brushy Fork of John’s Creek’ has been passed down from fiddler to fiddler until Bryce Dessner contributed his version, distinctive I suppose because, in part, for us he decided to make it harder (thanks Bryce). 

Matthew Duvall, Eighth Blackbird 

*recorded by Eighth Blackbird on Filament (Cedille Records, 2015)

*Murder Ballades was commissioned by Eighth Blackbird and Lunapark and funded by The Doelen Concert Hall, Rotterdam, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam, and Muziekgebouw Frits Philips, Eindhoven, with the financial support of The Van Beinum Foundation, The Netherlands, with additional support from Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

And lastly, thanks to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, with a shout out to the University Wind Ensemble. We are so grateful for the opportunity of time spent with you and all of your students. This is a wonderful way to spend a Wednesday evening, don’t you think?

- xoxo 8BB

University Wind Ensemble

The University Wind Ensemble comprises the university’s finest graduate and undergraduate woodwind, brass, percussion, keyboard, and harp musicians. The ensemble prepares a wide variety of repertoire composed from the early Renaissance through today. Traditionally, these ensembles perform on and off campus throughout the year and participate in special activities, events, and collaborations with featured guest artists. The University Wind Ensemble features internationally respected composers, student composers, faculty soloists, student soloists, guest conductors, and graduate teaching assistant conductors. University Wind Ensemble and University Symphony Orchestra are set on project-based rehearsal cycles. Placement in these ensembles is determined through an audition; all university students are eligible to audition.

Eighth Blackbird

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. 

Lina Andonvoska, flutes

Zachary Good, clarinets

Maiani da Silva, violin

Aaron Wolff, cello

Matthew Duvall, percussion

Lisa Kaplan, piano

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: Commissions and World Premieres of hundreds of works by established and emerging composers | Fully Produced Theatrical Chamber Music Productions | Chamber Ensemble Concertos with both orchestras and bands | An Extensive Recording Catalog

In addition to chamber music performance, 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 multiple mission-driven initiatives: Eighth Blackbird | Blackbird IV | The Blackbird Creative Lab | The Chicago Artists Workshop | Blackbird Productions. In 2025, Eighth Blackbird began a partnership as 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

8BB Website

Matthew Duvall proudly endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Accessories. Lisa Kaplan is a Steinway Artist. 

We are very excited to have the six musicians of Eighth Blackbird in residence at the University of Minnesota School of Music February 9-11. Their talent, experience, and humanity will bring energy and excitement to the School of Music and we will all grow in their presence. Many thanks to donors and supporters who have contributed to the “Friends of the Bands” fund, your support helps make such collaborations possible!