Composer. Co-director of New Amsterdam Records / New Amsterdam Presents.

Alex Pryrodny is a New York based pianist, composer, and improviser. A native of Ukraine, he has started playing piano at the age of 3 and by his early teens has won top prizes at several international competitions for classical pianists as well as the title of Ukraine’s best young composer. However his biggest passion has always been towards the art of improvisation; from childhood he has been imitating the styles of his favorite classical composers and made a regular feature of improvising on the themes from the audience in his concerts. 
	After immigrating to the US at age of 16, Alex has studied composition at the University of Maryland, jazz performance at the New School (B.M. in 2008) and privately with Fred Hersch, Hal Galper, Ari Hoenig and others. In 2012 Alex has been awarded the 2nd prize at Montreux Jazz Solo Piano Competition. He has released a solo piano album on Asiamuse label and has recently toured in Taiwan, Poland and Italy, including a performance at 2014 Venice Jazz Festival.  Alex cites Glenn Gould, Bill Evans, Brad Mehldau and Egberto Gismonti among his major influences among pianists and is working on bridging the gap between European polyphony and African polyrhythms in his music.

For John Luther Adams, music is a lifelong search for home—an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth.

Eighth Blackbird is “one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune). Launched in 1996 as a twinkle in the eyes of six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory undergraduates, this Chicago-based super-group has earned its status as “a brand-name…defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality….known for performing from memory, employing choreography and collaborations with theater artists, lighting designers and even puppetry artists” (Detroit Free Press).


Eighth Blackbird kicked off its 20th anniversary in 2016, quickly garnering a fourth GRAMMY Award as well as the prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, Chamber Music America’s inaugural Visionary Award, and Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year (2017). Anniversary celebrations continue throughout the 2016-17 season, culminating in the June 2017 launch of The Blackbird Creative Lab, an annual tuition-free two-week intensive for emerging artists at the Besant Hill School in Ojai, California.


Eighth Blackbird first gained wide recognition as the winner of the 1998 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and has since commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by dozens of composers including David T. Little, Steven Mackey, Missy Mazzoli, and Steve Reich, whose commissioned work, Double Sextet, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize (2009). A long-term relationship with Chicago’s Cedille Records has produced seven acclaimed recordings (most recently, Hand Eye) and four impressive GRAMMY Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance: for strange imaginary animals (2008), Lonely Motel: Music from Slide (2011), Meanwhile (2012), and Filament (2015).


Eighth Blackbird’s members (Nathalie Joachim, flutes; Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets; Yvonne Lam, violin & viola; Nicholas Photinos, cello; Matthew Duvall, percussion; Lisa Kaplan, piano) hail from the Great Lakes, Keystone, Golden, Empire and Bay states. The name “Eighth Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, aphoristic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917). Eighth Blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists' Representatives.

www.eighthblackbird.org

Grammy winning 8-voice band! throat-singers, yodelers, belters, classical singers, commissioners of music, collaborators, eaters of tasty food

Tenor based in Philadelphia PA; performs as soloist and collaborator throughout United States and internationally. Also works as a music editor, arranger, and teacher.

The Crossing is a Grammy Award-winning professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. It is committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir – most often addressing social issues – with the possibility of changing the way we think about writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir. Many of its over seventy commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues.

Highly sought-after for collaborative projects, The Crossing’s first such partnership was as the resident choir of the Spoleto Festival in Italy, in 2007. Since then, collaborators include the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Beth Morrison Projects, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Mostly Mozart Festival, National Gallery of Art, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum, Institute for Advanced Study, Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, and Northwestern University. The Crossing holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana. 

With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued 15 releases, receiving two Grammy Awards and three nominations in as many years. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, is the American Composers Forum’s 2017 Champion of New Music. They are the recipients of the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, three ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, and the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America.

www.crossingchoir.org
#ComeHearNow

The Crossing is represented by Alliance Artist Management. 

allianceartistmanagement.com

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