Current Projects
Vital Sines
Concerto for Eighth Blackbird and Wind Ensemble or Orchestra (2022, ‘23)
Orchestral version commissioned by the Pacific Symphony (Carl St. Clair, Music Director)
Original version for wind ensemble commissioned for Eighth Blackbird through the generous support of the U.S. Navy Band
composition as explanation
composition as explanation is a nod to Gertrude Stein’s candid and circular 1926 lecture. Lang integrates composition and innovative aspects of theater, performance, and choreography. To create actors out of Eighth Blackbird, Lang sought out director Anne Bogart, co-artistic director of SITI Company. With Bogart at the helm, Lang envisions a new kind of musical artist, one with the formal training of actors on stage. composition as explanation empowers musicians to become more than the conduits that deliver music to the listener.
The Spaces Between
Written for Eighth Blackbird (2026)
Commissioned by the Gilmore Piano Festival
The Spaces Between plays with the architecture of filling gaps left by other instruments, creating dialogues between different voices and generating a kinetic need to fill a void, as if struggling to find stillness within itself. One instrument’s rest becomes another’s call, creating a texture of constant motion through perpetual exchange. The work also journeys through contrasting worlds, as virtuosic passages give way to shadowed, dreamlike territories and sonic landscapes that delve into hidden chambers of the psyche but don’t stay there too long. Instead, the piece moves through and returns, transformed, with more vibrancy, lightness, and playfulness. Latin and American musical gestures appear throughout, but as traces rather than declarations.
Mirrored Pool
The Mirrored Pool is a mask and puppetry performance created by puppet master Tom Lee. In a wordless dream space at the edge of a shallow pool of water, Puppeteer and Puppet are presented as evocatively designed characters who switch back and forth between perceived identities as lovers, rivals, and caretakers. The performance is an exploration of virtuosic puppetry and mask performance, but also of the audience’s perceptions and prejudices about character and self.
Eighth Blackbird enters into this collaboration from their own deep musical explorations and experiments with puppetry. Lisa Kaplan and Matthew Duvall help create a soundscape that is manipulated by touch and gesture and channels the materiality of the shallow pool of water and mirrored moon that create the setting for the piece. At some points, each musician becomes a puppeteer, mask wearer and conjurer for this deeply experiential performance.
Eighth Blackbird x San Fermin: “Start at the End”
Featuring the music of Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Eighth Blackbird and San Fermin explore a world where every conclusion is a catalyst, and the end is simply the beginning.
In this intimate evening of chamber music and songs, genre distinctions are disregarded in favor of storytelling, and a recognition of the alchemical power of music to transform loss into something life-affirming and communal. What emerges is not a linear arc but a cycle—an ending that generates motion, a farewell that becomes the energy required to begin again.
Eyrie Festival 2025
The Eyrie Festival is the culminating celebration of the Blackbird Creative Lab community, produced by Eighth Blackbird. This landmark gathering brings together more than fifty composers and performers from across the Lab’s history—alumni, faculty, and special guests—for two days of innovative, collaborative performance.
The Eyrie Festival operates on a 3-year cycle in alignment with the Blackbird Creative Lab. The next Eyrie Festival is projected to be held in 2028.
