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To•Day

DIARY: Tuesday, April 7, 2026

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 noon, organist Owen Metz will play Franz Liszt’s monumental Fantasie and Fugue on the Choral Ad nos, ad salutarum Undam on the Tuesday noon Organ Series at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle. For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

This date in history includes two birth anniversaries — French pianist and composer Robert Casadesus (1899) and Indian sitar player and composer Ravi Shankar (1920). [Read More…]

Pre•Views & Features

Apollo’s Fire revives O Jerusalem! Crossroads of Three Faiths (part 1 of 2)

by Mike Telin

This week Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire will premiere a fresh version of their celebrated O Jerusalem! Crossroads of Three Faiths. In this musical tour of the four quarters of Old Jerusalem (Jewish, Christian, Arab, and Armenian), surprising cross-influences emerge.

The program will be presented on Thursday, April 9 at The Bath Church UCC, on April 10 in Gartner Auditorium at the  Cleveland Museum of Art, and on April 11 at Congregation Mishkan Or, all at 7:30 pm. Pre-Concert Conversations will be presented by Daphna Mor (recorder, shawm, ney, and vocals) & Ronnie Malley (oud & accordion), one hour before each performance. Tickets are available online.

In addition to performing, Daphna Mor also served as the project’s Jewish musical and cultural consultant. Dedicated to the music of the Jewish diaspora, Mor is the founder and director of Beineinu Mitzvah, a New York-based initiative cultivating Jewish cultural expression through modern, inclusive practice. She regularly performs and teaches liturgical music, and was invited to Mumbai to lead a workshop on Jewish diaspora melodies while learning local traditions.

[Read on…]

Cleveland Orchestra: catching up with organist Paul Jacobs

by Mike Telin

For over a decade, organ virtuoso Paul Jacobs has been a frequent guest soloist on Cleveland Orchestra programs. Jacobs made his debut in February of 2015 when he had the Severance Hall stage all to himself when he opened for the Orchestra, playing music by Johannes Brahms and Johann Sebastian Bach on the 94-rank Norton Memorial Organ.

Jacobs returned in September of 2016 with Aaron Copland’s Organ Symphony and in November of 2017 with Stephen Paulus’s Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra. In March of 2019 he gave the U.S. premiere of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Okeanos for organ and orchestra. And in 2021 he was featured in Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani.

On Thursday, April 2 at 7:30 pm Paul Jacobs will return to the Mandel Concert Hall stage to revisit Poulenc’s concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra. Under the direction of Daniele Rustioni, the concert also includes Gabriel Fauré’s Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande, Alfredo Casella’s Italia, and Claude Debussy’s La Mer. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

[Read on…]

CIM Opera Theater’s Hänsel and Gretel: a conversation with JJ Hudson

by Mike Telin

The first volume of children’s tales published in Germany by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 includes some of today’s most beloved stories — Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Rumpelstiltskin. That volume also includes the tale of Hänsel and Gretel in which two children cleverly outwit a witch.

On Friday, March 27 at 7:00 pm and Sunday, March 29 at 3:00 pm, Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, returns to the Kulas Hall stage at the Cleveland Institute of Music in performances by CIM Opera Theatre. JJ Hudson directs and Harry Davidson conducts the CIM Orchestra The production, which has a running time of two hours and twenty minutes with one intermission, will be sung in German with English supertitles. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with JJ Hudson by telephone and began our conversation by asking why they chose this particular title for the spring opera.

JJ: This year we will have produced two operas based on fairytales — Judith Weir’s Blonde Eckbert in late January and now Hänsel and Gretel. Both introduce our students to early German romanticism and its themes: mystery in the forest, witches, birds that speak, and otherworldly things.

[Read on…]

See all previews

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