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SLIDE
Featuring:
eighth blackbird – flutes, clarinets, violin/viola, cello, piano, percussion
Conceived, written and including performances by:
Composer/Guitarist – Steve Mackey
Actor/Singer – Rinde Eckert
** Booked in cooperation with Nicole Borelli Hearn, Opus3Artists
Slide, a concert-length music/theater work featuring eighth blackbird, actor/singer Rinde Eckert, and composer/performer Steve Mackey, is a multidisciplinary work about the seduction and manipulation of the American psyche.
This multimedia work was inspired by a published psychological experiment in which subjects were asked to view a series of out-of-focus slides, then identify the images when they were brought into focus. They were then asked to guess the images depicted on another series of out-of-focus slides before the slides were brought into focus. The slides were then brought into focus and the subjects asked to correctly identify the image. It took them longer to identify the actual image when they had previously guessed what it was. In a third part of the experiment a shill was employed whose job it was to disagree with the subject’s guess with regard to the out-of-focus slide. Put on the defensive, the subjects took even longer to properly identify the image of the in-focus slide (up to 30 seconds in one notable example).
Since we live in the age of projected images, we face a similar dilemma every day. Slide uses the results of this experiment as a metaphor of today’s reality in America where images are used to seduce, persuade, and misdirect, with the objective of selling a product, whether it be a tangible consumer product or something intangible as in politics, where we are confronted with unclear political pictures and assured by the shills of various camps that what appears to be out-of-focus or in need of clarification is, in fact, quite clear. This metaphor has psychological ramifications as well – we make decisions based on habit or convention that make it difficult for us to see clearly.
Rinde Eckert plays Renard, the enigmatic psychologist who runs the experiment. Steve Mackey and the members of eighth blackbird will be called upon to take various roles within the story, either as facilitators within the experiment or characters within the drama, as Renard attempts a clear description and analysis of his experiment.
The music will be composed in close collaboration with each individual performer and all the music will be memorized in order to blur the distinctions between composer and performer, actor and musician, musician and set, set and instrument. The set will be suggestive of the experiment described above, with projected images playing a important role. The goal is an unmediated exploration/expression of sound, text, movement and image.
Slide is being created for both concert halls and theater spaces and touring in March 2010 and in February / March 2011.
JUNE 2008. PLEASE DESTROY ALL PREVIOUSLY DATED MATERIAL
2 Reviews from the Olaj Festival:
Eighth blackbird took over this year's Ojai Music Festival and packed
it full with more and more varied music (and music theater) than ever
before in the quirky, famous festival's 63-year history. The
blackbirds are examples of a new breed of super-musicians. They
brought to Ojai several of their like-minded, and in some astonishing
instances, similarly multi-tasking, multi-talented friends. Resident
at Ojai this year were three barrier-breaking artists interesting
enough to be subjects of their own festivals. The third resident
genius was the curious singer, actor Rinde Eckert. He was, along with
composer Steven Mackey, the co-creator, and central figure in the
centerpiece of the festival, “Slide,” which received its world
premiere on Friday night.
“Slide,” in many ways, epitomized the kind of new musical world that
eighth blackbird is ushering us into. Like most at Ojai this year,
Mackey is more than one kind of musician. He is an electric guitarist
and his music is influenced by rock and jazz. He is a Princeton music
professor, and his music equally includes subtle metric shifts and
rhythmic intricacies found in sophisticated contemporary classical
music. He doesn't completely manage the merger of raw rock and cooked
classicism in “Slide,” but the stylistic sliding is nonetheless
powerful and impressive. Unfortunately, he saddled himself with a
sophomoric theatrical concept - a lonely psychologist who studies how
people interpret images seen in and out of focus. This mirrors his
own soft-focus life.
The show, directed by Eckert, is an elaboration of a series of
elliptical songs. Mackey wailed away on his guitar and served as
effective narrator. Eckert enacted a sad sack who could boogie. The
blackbirds brought their irresistible élan. ” - Los Angeles Times -
June 16, 2009
”8bb gave a world premiere of “Slide,” a multimedia work written by
electric guitarist and composer Steve Mackey and performed by Mackey,
eighth blackbird, and actor/singer Rinde Eckert. Eckert, who was also
the librettist for “Slide,” has to be one of the most exciting figures
in music today. His acting is great, his singing is extraordinary, and
he commands the stage, expressing an encyclopedic range of feelings
and ideas. Even if not all the music in “Slide” was to everyone’s
liking—and there were times when the piece was truly a test of the
Ojai ethic of tolerance and curiosity—Eckert nevertheless left a
strong impression.” - Santa Barbara Independent – June 17, 2009
Link: http://www.eighthblackbird.com/slide
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