Navy Pier presents its newest free program, Winter Music Series, a four-part indoor music series showcasing an eclectic mix of live music from local artists and ensembles each Thursday evening in February.
Launched by six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory undergraduates, this Chicago-based super-group has gained international recognition since winning the 1998 Concert Artists Guild Competition. The group has commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by composers including Viet Cuong, Bryce Dessner, Jennifer Higdon, Amy Beth Kirsten, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Pamela Z and Steve Reich, whose Double Sextet won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.
Eighth Blackbird was named Music America’s 2017 Ensemble of the Year, were inaugural recipients of Chamber Music America’s Visionary Award and garnered the prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. In 2017 they launched the Blackbird Creative Lab, a mentorship program for emerging artists. The name Eighth Blackbird derives from Wallace Stevens’s aphoristic poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
