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Taplin Quartet journeys to Heights Arts and beyond for debut (Feb. 8)

by Peter Feher

The Taplin Quartet, Cleveland’s newest chamber ensemble, gave its first local performance this month — and at the same time traveled to Europe, Asia, and Oceania. In fact, the group’s world tour brought along the entire audience at Dunham Tavern in Midtown on Sunday afternoon, February 8.

“From East to West,” the Quartet’s debut program — presented as part of Heights Arts’ Close Encounters concert series — took listeners on a musical trek across three continents while never straying too far from home.

It helped to be embarking with four familiar guides. Violinists Katherine Bormann and Zhan Shu, violist Gareth Zehngut, and cellist Martha Baldwin are all Cleveland Orchestra members, and together as the Taplin, they have the advantage of a shared starting point.

The skills essential for great orchestral playing — rhythmic precision, interpretive clarity, and a quick ability to adapt — were also what kept the Quartet confidently on course during Sunday’s performance.

Barbara Hannigan goes all-American with The Cleveland Orchestra (Feb. 12)

by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Conductor Barbara Hannigan brought an unusual playlist to her appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra on Thursday evening February 12: music by four American composers who rarely share a stage, and who have very different ideas about what American music sounds like.

The Severance Music Center program was a sequence of sharply defined pieces, each showing a different side of American music — experimental, modernist, lyrical, and theatrical. And in Hannigan’s expressive hands, those contrasts felt intentional and well placed.

Imani Winds & Boston Brass at Tuesday Musical (Feb. 10)

by Kevin McLaughlin

On the cold Tuesday evening of February 10, two venerable ensembles — the Imani Winds and Boston Brass — were brought together by Akron’s Tuesday Musical in E.J. Thomas Hall. The large audience was ready for something lively, and the players obliged, spending the better part of two hours passing enthralling music back and forth.

Outfitted in blue jackets, Boston Brass — José Sibaja and Jeff Conner (trumpets), Chris Castellanos (horn), Domingo Pagliuca (trombone), and William Russell (tuba) — introduced pieces and corrected each other’s pronunciation with good humor. “You may be wondering how guys in those jackets get work,” Conner quipped. José Sibaja, who grew up in Puerto Rico, took particular care with Spanish names, and was playfully merciless when his colleagues missed a vowel.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Galop, one of the composer’s theater pieces from the 1930s, was up first. Articulation stayed clean even at the fast tempo, and the group reveled in the music’s dry humor. Sibaja and Conner impressed with their technical ease, while Pagliuca and Russell kept things grounded.

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