Two violinists traveling in opposite directions in the music world

We hear a lot about classical musicians fleeing traditional orchestras, running off to create serious new music with living composers. So what are we to make of a successful alt-classical musician who decides to return to the mother ship?

(LUKE RATRAY) - EIGHTH BLACKBIRD:Clockwise from far right are Michael J. Maccaferri, Lisa Kaplan, Matt Albert, Nicholas Photinos, Tim Munro and Matthew Duvall.

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That’s the case of Matt Albert, violinist in one of the more successful contemporary ensembles on the scene, eighth blackbird. He’s looking for an old-fashioned orchestra job.

“I have always loved Brahms, Mozart, Sibelius,” he says. “I have never had the chance to pursue those as a professional.”

Founded in 1996 by a group of students at Oberlin Conservatory, this sextet has become a cornerstone of the contemporary music scene. It is playing at the Library of Congress Friday night in which Albert will play the world premiere of a piece by Stephen Hartke.

But next season, instead of touring and coaching chamber ensembles at the University of Richmond and the University of Chicago (eighth blackbird has residencies at both), Albert will be taking orchestra auditions, looking for string quartet jobs and doing pickup work as he can find it — pursuing exactly the freelance career many musicians are eager to escape.

“I just want to find new ways of loving what I’m doing,” he says, adding, “I want to be differently inspired now.”

Yvonne Lam, another violinist, is going in the opposite direction.

Though she held degrees from some of the most prestigious music institutions in the world — Curtis and Juilliard — she had a hard time establishing a chamber group when she began making her way as a young professional. “I got to the point where I thought, I have to get a job now, I have to support myself,” she says. She was lucky; her first orchestral job out of the gate was the post of assistant concertmaster at the Washington National Opera Orchestra, where she has been playing for the last three years.

Lam won’t be at the eighth blackbird concert on Friday, because she’s playing in WNO’s “Iphigenie en Tauride” at the Kennedy Center Opera House. But at the end of the season, she’s leaving the orchestra — to take Albert’s slot in eighth blackbird.

“You can’t get farther away,” she laughs, about the difference between playing French and Italian opera in an orchestra pit, hidden from the eyes of the audience, and playing contemporary music with a small ensemble, center stage — not to mention being on the road with the ensemble 180 to 190 nights a year.

“I think it’s a funny coincidence with me and Matt,” she says. “A lot of people have said to me jokingly, ‘Too bad you guys can’t just switch.’ ”

Lam and Albert illustrate different sides of the musician’s perennial problem: how to construct a fulfilling life as an artist while paying your bills. Conventional wisdom has it that an orchestra is constricting: You make steady money but sacrifice your artistic autonomy, and are stuck playing the music of the past. Now that alternative groups like eighth blackbird are coming of age, though, Albert’s step shows a different way to interpret the situation: Any career spent doing one thing can feel restrictive after a while. “Conductors,” Albert points out, “don’t stick with orchestras longer than 12 or 15 years.”