Olagón: A Cantata in Doublespeak

Eighth Blackbird is “one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune). Launched by six Oberlin Conservatory undergraduates in 1996, this Chicago-based ensemble first gained wide recognition in 1998 as winners of the Concert Artists Guild Competition. Over the course of two decades, the group has commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by composers such as David Lang, Steven Mackey, Missy Mazzoli, and Steve Reich; produced eight acclaimed recordings with Chicago’s Cedille Records; and won four Grammy Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance, most recently in 2016 for Filament. They were named Musical America’s 2017 Ensemble of the Year, and in 2016 were the inaugural recipients of Chamber Music America’s Visionary Award and the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Paul Muldoon is one of Ireland's leading contemporary poets. He has published more than 30 collections of poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize, T.S. Elliot Prize, and John William Corrington Award for his work. From 2007-2017, Muldoon was Poetry Editor of the New Yorker. He serves as the Howard G.B. Clark Professor of the Humanities and Chair of the University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University, and is married to the novelist Jean Korelitz.

Grammy-nominated artist Iarla Ó Lionáird has worked with renowned composers including Donnacha Dennehy, Dan Trueman, Nico Muhly, Gavin Bryars, and David Lang; recorded with Peter Gabriel, Nick Cave, Robert Plant, and Sinead O'Connor; and performed in concert halls all over the world, from New York's Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House and beyond. 

He is the vocalist with the critically acclaimed Irish American band "The Gloaming,” and his singing has been featured in films including The Gangs of New York, Hotel Rwanda, and Brooklyn. He holds a masters degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Limerick, where he is currently completing a PhD, and teaches at Princeton University as the recipient of a Belknap Fellowship.

Dan Trueman is a composer, fiddler, and electronic musician. He began studying violin at the age of 4, and decades later, after a chance encounter, fell in love with the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, an instrument and tradition that has deeply affected all of his work, whether as a fiddler, a composer, or musical explorer. 

Dan's current projects include Olagón; a double-quartet for So Percussion and the JACK Quartet, commissioned by the Barlow Foundation; the Prepared Digital Piano project; a collaborative dance project with choreographer Rebecca Lazier and scientist Naomi Leonard; and ongoing collaborations with Irish fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and guitarist Monica Mugan (Trollstilt). His recent albums with Adam Sliwinski (Nostalgic Synchronic), Ó Raghallaigh (Laghdú), and So Percussion (neither Anvil nor Pulley) have met with wide acclaim.