Chatterbird Performs New Music

For the composer, oboist and all-around-immersive-tech-art innovator Robbie Lynn Hunsinger, 2017’s total eclipse was an unforgettable experience. “As the sun became a sliver, I was chilled by the increasing winds and the quieted insects and birds,” Hunsinger writes in a note. “The distant sunrise effects of totality were as incredibly beautiful as the apparent black hole blotting out our sun was menacing.” This celestial phenomenon became the jumping-off point for Hunsinger’s Eclipse, a new multimedia work that the alt-classical group chatterbird will premiere at the Blair School of Music. This large-scale piece — scored for voice, piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, cello, bass and piano — will include video with Hunsinger’s trademark custom-coded-generative animations. The program will also include composer Wu Fei’s Jiang Nan for soprano and piano, along with Michael Slayton’s The Birth of the World for flute, violin and clarinet, and Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Trajectories for prepared piano. Tickets are $20. JOHN PITCHER