Recording Reviews

16 December 2011

The Globe and Mail

A mind-messing stay at the Lonely Motel

Slide was a semi-staged multimedia piece about a psychologist involved with studies in deception, who is also being consumed by the aftermath of a failed relationship. The piece, written by Steve Mackey (music) and Rinde Eckert (text), was premiered by the American chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird at California’s Ojai Music Festival in 2009, and toured the U.S. in 2010. This remarkable album, which was nominated earlier this month for three Grammy Awards, is a condensed version of the piece, with Eckert joining the ensemble as tenor and speaker and Mackey playing electric guitar.

WQXR

Slide: Q2's Album of the week

Can one call a recording that is selections from a larger theater work a “concept album?” Or is such a term redundant when every theatrical recording is more or less conceptual in its inherent unifying themes?

Audiophile Audition

STEVEN MACKEY: ‘Lonely Motel: Music from Slide’

Steve Mackey’s music has developed into a very theatrical art form; a blend of storytelling that is not quite operatic with a drive and feel that is not quite rock and I find the more I listen to it, the more I like it. Such is the case with Slide, a multidisciplinary work by Mackey with singer/librettist and frequent collaborator Rinde Eckert. Slide was written for the 2009 Ojai (California) Festival – highly recommended for any fans of new music and great performers – and is based on the work of an actual psychological experiment conducted by a scientist who, in this piece, is named simply Renard.

The Classical Review

Review: Lonely Motel, Music from Slide

One of the highlights of the 2009 Ojai Music Festival was the premiere of Slide, a music theater piece composed by Steven Mackey to a libretto by Rinde Eckert, and performed by the Chicago-based new music sextet, eighth blackbird. Following performances elsewhere in the United States, the work was re-fashioned into a concert version and taken into the recording studio in March last year by the ensemble’s enterprising hometown label, Cedille Records. Lonely Motel: Music from Slide is the pulsing, powerful, prickly, provocative and often surprisingly poignant result.

American Record Guide

HIGDON: On a Wire CD review

This is the initial release for the Atlanta Symphony’s new ASO Media label. 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Higdon has had previous involvement with Spano and the Atlanta Symphony (check indexes). On a Wire (no date) is an involving concerto for the sextet Eighth Blackbird (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion), whose name generates the title. The 25-minute piece alternates between pensive and somewhat fragmented passages and energetic, intense, virtuosic music which is both spirited and engaging.