Eighth Blackbird - Singing in the Dead of Night review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 100

(Cedille)
Three Bang on a Can composers tease lines from a Beatles song into sparky, fierce, unpredictable works, played with exuberance

It’s more than 30 years now since composers, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon and David Lang founded the new-music collective Bang on a Can, which through its commissions and performances has become one of the most vital forces in American contemporary music. The three have subsequently gone in quite different directions, but they have remained the artistic directors of the group, and continue to collaborate regularly on projects that, as Lang writes, “have a broad scope, broad enough to include the musical opinions of three related but very independent composers”.