Born in Motown, Lisa Kaplan is a pianist specializing in the performance of new work
by living composers. Kaplan is the founding pianist and Executive Director of the four-
time Grammy Award-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird. Kaplan has won numerous
awards, performed all over the country, and has premiered new pieces by hundreds of
composers. She has had the great pleasure to collaborate and make music with an
eclectic array of incredibly talented people – Laurie Anderson, Bryce Dessner, Bon Iver,
Glenn Kotche, Shara Nova, Will Oldham, Gustavo Santaolalla, Dawn Upshaw and
Michael Ward-Bergeman to name a few. As a mom, Kaplan has been having an
incredible time raising and learning from her happy-go-lucky and feisty pre-
schooler, Frida. Musically as of late, she has also greatly enjoyed and appreciated the
opportunity to do both composing and arranging for Eighth Blackbird as well as some
producing.
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PSF: You started Eighth Blackbird in 1996 with fellow Oberlin College student Matthew Duvall. What inspired the two of you to begin the ensemble?
LK: The way the group formed was through a conductor at Oberlin, Tim Weiss. He put the original six members of Eighth Blackbird together in this little offshoot group that he conducted. At that time, there were not a lot of conservatories and music schools that upheld contemporary music in their curriculum or ran contemporary ensembles. I’m convinced that our ensemble would not have formed any other place but Oberlin at the time.
One day, we were preparing a recital and Tim couldn’t make it to the dress rehearsal. We said, “well, that’s the only time we have in the hall. So, we’ll just do it without you.” It was such a revelation to play without a conductor! We decided from that point on that we wanted to play unconducted as a chamber group. We were playing some rhythmically complex pieces; Tim holding us together in terms of keeping time was useful, but what we were realized we were missing was a deep understanding of the score and then how we might collaboratively decide to interpret it.
PSF: The COVID-19 pandemic was a difficult time for the performing arts. How did Eighth Blackbird carry on?
LK: We had received an NEA grant around the beginning of COVID, which we were able to repurpose into launching what we call our Chicago Artists Workshop. We engaged Chicago-based artists from many different genres, ranging from spoken word artists to a soul singer to a classically trained tenor to a puppeteer to multimedia sound artists. We presented 15 virtual pay-what-you-can concerts over the course of nine months featuring these artists. Interacting with different collaborators through the Workshop really kept us going, artistically. It felt good be out of our comfort zone and doing something different than we often did by collaborating with these different artists from different musical backgrounds.
PSF: Speaking of collaboration: Eighth Blackbird is known for moving music forward through its collaborations with today’s most cutting-edge composers, artists, and performers. How do you approach the collaborative process? Do the ideas come first, or the relationships?
LK: The relationships have always really come first. Fundamentally relationships are what this whole music of chamber music is based upon. For example, my friend J. Ivy. J. is a poet and spoken word artist who I met through being on the Board of the Chicago Chapter of the GRAMMYs. I always enjoyed chatting with him when we would be at Board meetings. I knew he was interested in mentorship, and so I asked him to come in and talk to our Creative Lab Fellows. He was thrilled to do it. We ended up doing this great concert with him and our collaboration has only grown since that time. Collaborations are born that way, generally: through relationships, you develop ideas that come to fruition in the shape of projects.
PSF: To continue to move music forward, we’re going to need a new generation of daring performers. Tell us about Eighth Blackbird’s Creative Lab program, and how it came about.
After a while, your emphasis shifts from yourself to helping others and mentoring the next generation. And that certainly is what happened with Eighth Blackbird. Based on our experiences at different music festivals as guests, we realized that it would be cool to start our own program, taking all the best parts that we’ve seen at other music programs and make them into our own program. That was the genesis for our Blackbird Creative Lab.
There was no pedagogy for artists entrepreneurship when I was studying music. We’re very interested in cultivating this next generation, giving them the tools for becoming the best version of their sort of musician self that they can. To say, look, “I’m an oboist (for example), and I love doing this, and I want to help other people do this, and I want to be a part of a community, and this is the reason you should care about what I’m doing.” We’ll be relaunching the program in the summer of 2023. It’s of such importance to us that we are involved in the cultivation of these new arts ambassadors.
PSF: What advice would you give to a young person interested in pursuing contemporary music?
One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give is that musicians today, no matter what they specialize in, need to be flexible. Artists who are open to doing things that may be outside of their comfort zone are more successful. You need to embrace a diversity of genre, diversity of collaboration, a possible divergence between what you thought you would do with your musical career and what you’re actually doing. Those are huge determining factors of whether you succeed or not.
It really pays to be nice. This is a small community, and there’s a lot of talented people. Will presenters want to hire the genius who’s a total pain, or will they want to hire the genius who’s adaptable and awesome and super nice? In most cases, the latter.
Also: it’s hard when you get out of school to find a community of people and resources that you need, that you maybe didn’t even realize you had while you were a student. So, using to full advantage of the resources of a program while you’re in school is hugely important.