UMN Music Announces Eighth Blackbird Residency

The University of Minnesota School of Music is thrilled to announce an exciting residency with Chicago’s popular modern-classical sextet, Eighth Blackbird, taking place February 9 - 11, 2026. Eighth Blackbird will host several free events open to public attendance and privately mentor School of Music students, studios, and ensembles throughout the week. The residency culminates with a special co-performance by the University Wind Ensemble and Eighth Blackbird on February 11 titled “Vitality.” Viet Cuong’s work, Vital Sines, will be featured on the program.  

“The members of Eighth Blackbird have been leaders in new music for decades and we are thrilled to have them on campus to work with our students,” says Patrick Warfield, Director of the School of Music. “Every student interested in the new music landscape will learn from this incredible group of musicians.”

Eighth Blackbird’s mission is to move music forward by supporting the work of living composers and guiding the next generation of musicians. The School of Music is incredibly honored to provide this unique opportunity for our students to learn from some of the top artists in the United States of America. 

Participating members of Eighth Blackbird include:

• Lina Andonvoska, flutes
• Zachary Good, clarinets
• Maiani da Silva, violin
• Aaron Wolff, cello, 
• Matthew Duvall, percussion
• Lisa Kaplan, piano 

Eighth Blackbird Residency Events: Free and Open to the Public

Monday, February 9

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM 
Eighth Blackbird Session 
“Envisioning a Life in the Arts… or not”
Lloyd Ultan Recital Hall

What does it mean to live artistically, regardless of your final career destination? Eighth Blackbird shares insights on the evolution from student to innovator, exploring how the lessons of the practice room apply to any area of expertise. By examining the intersection of entrepreneurship and personal values, this session challenges students to treat their future as a unique creative production and define success on their own terms. 

7:30 - 9:00 PM 
Monday Music at Minnesota 
Improvisando I | Female Improvisers Night
Lloyd Ultan Recital Hall

Featuring Eighth Blackbird’s Lina Andovska (flutes), Kirsten Lies-Warfield (trombone), Sivan Cohen Elias (improvisation composition), and Maja Radovanlija (guitar)

Improvisando I is the first in a series of concerts featuring female improvisers, composers, and performers from the Twin Cities and the Midwest. 

Wednesday, February 11 

5:30 - 6:30 PM 
Eighth Blackbird Session 
“Modern Classical Music Explorations with Eighth Blackbird”
Ted Mann Concert Hall

Eighth Blackbird’s mission is To Move Music Forward—an exploration with no final destination. In this session, we explore the chamber music mindset, a transformative approach that fosters distributed agency, courageous programming, a chamber music engine, and the pursuit of '10th Performance' excellence. Navigating new or complex compositions, the global scores of our time are transfigured when chamber music philosophy serves as an internal compass for the large ensemble, pairing precision with unbounded interpretive freedom. And then there is the listener, experiencing how new challenges can dissolve the distinction between performer and audience, creating community with shared exploration.

7:30 PM
University Wind Ensemble and Eighth Blackbird Present “Vitality”
Ted Mann Concert Hall

Program Notes

“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 (1907/1998) 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

With Eighth Blackbird

Murder Ballades (2013) by Bryce Dessner 

V. Brushy Fork

A note about this program from the Director of Bands Dr. Emily Threinen:

I am deeply excited to present our upcoming UWE performance, “Vitality.” It is a program featuring music that is restless, imaginative, and reflective of the human spirit. The repertoire spans more than a century and explores compositional voices from across the globe. Whether drawn from cinematic intimacy, folk tradition, or virtuosic contemporary expression, each piece channels vitality not as spectacle alone, but as an essential condition of artistic life.

The program will begin with Björk Guðmundsdóttir’s Overture from “Dancer in the Dark,” a work that features the brass section through emotional immediacy, where fragility and strength coexist. Ralph Vaughan Williams’s second movement, “Scherzo alla Marcia” from Symphony No. 8 features the woodwinds (with brass) and offers a sharply etched vitality that is rhythmic, muscular, and wry, revealing the composer’s clarity and invention. Carlos Simon’s Sweet Chariot for full ensemble draws on the spiritual tradition with both reverence and celebration, transforming inherited material into something unmistakably present and personal. Percy Grainger’s Molly on the Shore bursts with kinetic joy and folk-inflected exuberance, while Ida Gotkovsky’s Poème du Feu unleashes fierce energy that is majestic, volatile, and uncompromising. 

The aural journey culminates with Viet Cuong’s Vital Sines, a concerto that places rhythmic precision and timbral electricity at its core. Featuring the extraordinary ensemble Eighth Blackbird, the work embodies vitality in a literal sense, as it is a timepiece of pulse, rhythm, and collective breath shared between six soloists and the wind band. The composer shares this fragment about the inception of the work:

“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 familiarity 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.”

Sponsored by the Band Department, 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!