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To•Day

DIARY, Weekend, March 28-30, 2025

by Daniel Hathaway

THIS WEEKEND:

There are 20+ events to choose from this weekend (some with more than one performance). Good luck choosing among them!

Friday: The Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Wind Ensemble (6 pm in Gamble Auditorium), Wit’s Folly (Carl Maria von Weber on historical clarinets, 7 pm, the Bath Church), The Cleveland Orchestra (Marvel Studios’ Black Panther in Concert, 7:30 at Severance), Renovare Music (7:30 at City Church), Cleveland Jazz Orchestra (big band jazz, 7:30 at the Maltz), The Oblivion Project (pictured, Piazzolla, 7:30 at the Art Museum), and Baldwin Wallace Opera (Offenbach, 8 pm at the Kleist Center).

Saturday: Baldwin Wallace Opera (Offenbach, 3 pm at the Kleist Center), Stars in the Classics (4 pm at Church of the Western Reserve), Wit’s Folly (Carl Maria von Weber on historical clarinets, 7 pm, Praxis Fiber Workshop), Akron Symphony (Bologne, Mozart, Montgomery & Beethoven, 7:30 at E.J. Thomas), The Cleveland Orchestra (Marvel Studios’ Black Panther in Concert, 8 pm at Severance), and Baldwin Wallace Opera (Offenbach, 8 pm at the Kleist Center).

Sunday: The Oblivion Project (Piazzolla, 2 pm at Akron-Summit Public Library), She Roars (chamber music by living female composers, 2 pm at The Bop Stop), Choral Arts Cleveland & Wind Quintet (premiere of a Mickey McGroarty piece, 3 pm at Disciples Church), Baldwin Wallace Opera (Offenbach, 3 pm at the Kleist Center), Cleveland Women’s Orchestra 90th Anniversary Concert (3:30 at Severance), Heights Chamber Orchestra (3:30 at Fairmount Presbyterian), and Organist James O’Donnell (formerly of Westminster Abbey, 4 pm at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts.) [Read More…]

Pre•Views & Features

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at Severance: Chatting with conductor Eric Benjamin

On Sunday afternoon, March 30 at 3:30, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra will continue its long tradition of performing in Severance Hall. The ensemble’s 90th Anniversary Concert in what is now known as the Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center will be conducted by music director Eric Benjamin. Tickets are available online.

The main work on the program will feature violinist Olga Dubossarskaya Kaler, cellist Eleanor Pompa, and pianist Emanuela Friscioni, in Ludwig van Beethoven’ Triple Concerto. 

Benjamin was named the fourth music director of the oldest women’s orchestra in the U.S. in 2023, following the lengthy tenures of its founder Hyman Schandler and his successor Robert L. Cronquist, who held the podium for 33 and 22 years respectively. During COVID, John Thomas Dodson served as interim music director for 3-½ years, passing the baton to Jungho Kim for a single season. [Read on…]

Clarinetist Amer Hasan celebrates Mozart with the Akron Symphony

by Stephanie Manning

When Amer Hasan introduced himself to the Akron Symphony in 2019, he did so with the opening movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. “ It was the first piece that I played for Maestro Wilkins in my audition, behind the screen,” Hasan recalled in a recent interview. “So the first three minutes of the concerto is not only the first music I associate with auditions, but also with the Akron Symphony.”

Six years on from that fateful performance, which helped earn Hasan the principal clarinet position, he and the orchestra are set to create some new memories with that same Mozart work. Music director Christopher Wilkins will lead Hasan and the Akron Symphony in a performance of the full, three-movement concerto on Saturday, March 29.

The 7:30 pm concert in E.J. Thomas Hall also features Joseph Bologne’s Overture to The Anonymous Lover, Jessie Montgomery’s Five Freedom Songs, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. Tickets are available online. [Read on…]

Oblivion Project brings tango to CMA

by Max Newman

Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla may have passed away over thirty years ago, but his contributions to the tango music genre are truly eternal.

“Even in his sweetest melodies, there are things that are powerful,” said Derek Snyder, the self-described “de-facto leader” of the Oblivion Project, a musical group that has been performing and exploring the works of Piazzolla for over twenty years.

The project will take the stage at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Friday, March 28 at 7:30 pm. Tickets available online. I was lucky to get to speak to both Snyder and Malena Dayen, the project’s vocalist, over the phone prior to the performance.

[Read on…]

See all previews

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