The birds came back to roost at Oberlin — eight of them, that is. Oberlin’s own eighth blackbird performed on Saturday, a sextet of performers all of whom graduated from the Conservatory in 1996. The group, committed to playing and nurturing contemporary classical music, performed a hometown show to a small yet attentive Finney Chapel audience.

The event was a benefit for Classical Action, an organization founded in 1993 and based in New York. Classical Action utilizes the talents of those in the performing arts community to raise money for AIDS research. Eighth blackbird’s visit to Oberlin was sponsored by the organization’s Oberlin branch, the first of its kind in the collegiate community. Finney’s stage was littered with an enormous array of instruments, which the ensemble used to momentous effect. The program began with Roshanne Etezady’s “Damaged Goods,” a work made up of four movements.
From the outset, the six musicians displayed their incredible technical bravura by attacking the music with precision and intensity. Etezady’s piece was played from memory, only adding to the pyrotechnic skill the group displayed throughout the evening. The piece, a commission for eighth blackbird, was part of a collaborative project with the Minimum Security Composer’s Collective, a group to which Etezady belongs. The group, made up of three other composers and Etezady, have created a long work for eighth blackbird entitled “di/verge.” Etezady’s work was one of those four pieces.

For the second slot on the bill, the sextet previewed excerpts from the other three works that make up “di/verge.” Dennis DeSantis’ “Powerless,” Adam Silverman’s “In Another Man’s Skin” and Ken Ueno’s “Pharmakon” acted as short bursts of intense, crashing aural sensations. Flautist Molly Barth shined as her flute trilled over the propulsive energy from Matt Albert’s violin and Michael Maccaferri’s clarinet. The third work on the program matched a hometown performance ensemble with a local composer.

The group then played yet another work especially written for them, this time by composer Randy Coleman, chair of the Conservatory’s Contemporary Music Division. Entitled “Portals: where birds fly still,” this was the highlight of the evening. Donning headsets, the six Blackbirders began the piece by deconstructing the title. Each performer began by scrambling the words until a garbled cacophony of sound was tumbling out of the speakers. Coleman writes in the program note: “Integrated with [the performers] live sound is a mixture of computer-generated percussion sounds and a digital conglomerate of sampled vernacular musical material selected by members of Eighth Blackbird.”

All of the sound, both live and taped, merged to create a tight and gripping hysteria, with the members of the group practically rocking out. Cowbells were bashed, cymbals crashed, violins were sawed at. Roiling underneath was the scrawl of Coleman’s recorded bits and pieces. With “Portals,” Coleman has created ordered mania, played by a group who showed the audience an hysterical glee.

The program was rounded out by Daniel Kellog’s piece “Divinum Mysterium.” Kellog, at the scarily young age of 25, has been appointed the composer-in-residence at the University of Connecticut. A composer who is deeply steeped in liturgical music, Kellog’s 30-minute piece roughly charts the creation myth of Genesis. Combining elements of hymn and the atonal, the piece was reminiscent of work by the contemporary composer John Taverner, another religiously inspired composer. Kellog was ever ready to crack out the percussion, with his work gnashing its considerable teeth, particularly in the first and second movements entitled “Beginnings” and “The Spirit of God Moved Upon the Face of the Waters.”

As always, eighth blackbird wore the piece out, eliciting a wave of cheering from the audience when they took the final curtain call. The one glaring problem with the evening’s performance was the sextet’s amateurish addresses to the audience, reminiscent of junior- high presentations. Their spiel did little to clarify the very hard material they had programmed. My advice to you: catch these Oberlin alum now, before they’re selling out Carnegie Hall.