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To•Day

DIARY: Monday, February 23, 2026

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 pm Matthew Jaroszewicz leads the Canton Youth Symphony Advanced Orchestra in Charles Ives Variations on “America,” Faye-Ellen Silverman’s Yellow Lilies (world premiere), John Williams’ “Adventures on Earth” from E.T., and George Gershwin’s Concerto in F with pianist Baron Fenwick.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other performances.

INTERESTING READ:

In a frenetic digital era, he’s helping Angelenos rediscover the classic cassette player – LA Times via Yahoo

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

There are two major British composers to celebrate today, one adopted, the other very much a native of “England’s green and pleasant land.”

George Frideric Handel (pictured above) was born in Halle, Saxony on February 23, 1685. Details of his life are so well known — except perhaps his recently documented financial involvement with the slave trade — that a few random references may be welcome.

Like the British monarch at the time, Handel’s native tongue was German, which didn’t prevent him from becoming an English musical icon — but still gave him a bit of trouble when composing. [Read More…]

Pre•Views & Features

Music@Main: Pianist Theron Brown

By Max Newman

Pianist Theron Brown wants you to be able to hear his own personality in his music. “I try not to think about it too much. My music is part of me, and I try to be authentic and true to myself within it. I want people to listen and be like, ‘Oh, that’s Theron.’ It’s real, it’s honest.”

This heart-on-sleeve philosophy will come to the fore on Saturday, February 28 at 1:00 pm as Brown’s jazz trio performs at the downtown Cleveland Public Library. The show, organized in celebration of Black History Month, is part of the CPL’s “Music at Main” series, a genre-bending concert series held in the Library’s third flood lobby.

[Read on…]

Soprano Estelí Gomez and composer Gilda Lyons collaborate on Les Délices’ “La Diosa”

by Stephanie Manning

The Venn diagram of performers who love early music and those who love new music is closer to a circle than one might think. Take soprano Estelí Gomez, who is as likely to appear on a Baroque program as she is on a contemporary one.

“One of the reasons people love doing both is that the composer has a lot of excitement for and trust in the performer,” Gomez said in a recent interview.

From the composer’s perspective, that idea of artistic freedom is “wonderfully liberating,” Gilda Lyons said in that same Zoom call. While research is important, “I’m never going to know as much as the performers do about their specific instrument. So I’m going to leave space for them to be the artists that they are.”

[Read on…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) Semi-Finalist Jonathan Mamora in residency at The University of Akron

by Mike Telin

When the Cleveland International Piano Competition set out to plan its 50th anniversary in 2024, CIPC president Yaron Kohlberg knew that some changes needed to be made.

“A lot has changed in the classical music world during the past 50 years,” Kohlberg said in an interview prior to that year’s competition. He added that the changes that were made were designed to create more and better ways for CIPC to serve the contestants, the audience, and the community at large.

One of the many alterations that Kohlberg and his team implemented was in the Competition’s prize structure, which featured a new artist development program that was open to all contestants. The program offers mentorship opportunities with leading pianists, faculty, and innovators in the classical music world, and short courses in personal branding and social media, fundraising, artist finances, and similar topics, offered in partnership with Young Concert Artists. It also included residencies at Northeast Ohio universities.

From February 18 through 28, pianist Jonathan Mamora will serve as artist-in-residence at The University of Akron School of Performing Arts. During his residency, he will present workshops, deliver lectures, and give a free public recital. These events are made possible through a partnership with Piano Cleveland and The Kulas Foundation.

[Read on…]

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