by Jarrett Hoffman
A swirl of CIM connections pervades the next program from the school’s New Music Ensemble, starting with the featured guest: Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate ’00, a composer and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma who is dedicated to the development of American Indian classical composition.
“Jerod has been on my list for quite some time,” New Music Ensemble director Keith Fitch said in an interview. “He’s a really interesting composer who’s carved a fascinating career, and who is representative of a community of musicians we don’t often hear from.”
Music from opposite ends of Tate’s career will bookend the program on Sunday, October 31 at 4:00 pm in Mixon Hall. Talowa’ Hiloha (Thunder Song) for solo timpani was written in 1997 when he was at CIM, while MoonStrike for string quartet and narrator was premiered in 2019. The role of narrator, who recounts three American Indian legends, will be played in this case by Tate himself.
Whether it was the passing of his mother in February 1865 or the death of Robert Schumann later that same year, no one is certain what motivated Johannes Brahms to compose his large-scale, non-liturgical Requiem in the German language.
It’s always interesting to hear how musicians come to choose their instruments. Some want to follow in the footsteps of a family member, while others prefer to chart their own path. “What drew me to the saxophone to begin with was my grandma,” Gabriel Piqué said during a recent telephone conversation. “It’s something you never want to hear your grandma say, but I brought one home and she said ‘Gabe, that instrument is sexy.’ I think I was in the 6th grade, and that’s when I decided that I didn’t want to play clarinet or flute, I wanted to play the saxophone.” 
When Turkish-American guitarist Celil Refik Kaya returns to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society for a recital at Plymouth Church on Saturday, October 23 at 7:30 pm, there will be one important overlap with his program from four years ago: it will include a piece by Celil Refik Kaya.
If you ask a musician what new skill they learned during the past eighteen months, more often than not, the answer is video editing. And, in a relatively short amount of time, many became quite good at it.