Memory and personal experience are the touchstones of SLIDE, a new concert-length music/theater work by composer Steve Mackey and director/singer/actor Rinde Eckert. These two frequent collaborators are joined onstage by the stunningly virtuosic, Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird, for whom this work was created.

As Mackey narrates (and performs on electric guitar), Eckert plays “Renard,” an enigmatic psychologist conducting an experiment with in- and out-of-focus slides, in which subjects struggle to identify the real image behind the elusive blur—often in the face of interference or subversion from Renard’s colleagues. The experiment becomes a powerful metaphor for our times, as we all strive to discern the truth behind the many images and messages we encounter in our daily lives. Likewise, SLIDE’s music shifts tantalizingly between classical and rock influences. In the L.A. Times’ words, “the stylistic sliding is…powerful and impressive.”

Mackey and Eckert are well-known to Bay Area audiences through work with Berkeley Rep, ACT, the San Francisco Symphony, and Paul Dresher Ensemble. Mackey is a Princeton composition professor, former rock guitarist and early Kronos Quartet collaborator. Eckert is a Pulitizer Prize finalist in Drama and an Obie Award–winner whose previous works at Lively Arts have included Horizon, Schick Machine, and Slow Fire (with Paul Dresher).