Cleveland Classical

Kent/Blossom Music Festival: a conversation with the Emerson Quartet’s Philip Setzer

by Delaney Meyers

On Wednesday, July 18 at 7:30 pm, The Emerson String Quartet will perform with cellist Jerry Grossman in Ludwig Recital Hall as part of Kent/Blossom Music Festival’s 50th anniversary concert season. I spoke with Philip Setzer, violinist of the Emerson, by telephone and asked about the program and his personal connections with KBMF as an alumnus. The Quartet is this year’s Kulas Guest Artist.

Setzer said that “the theme, if there is one, is of loss and mourning, but also a celebration of life.” The all-20th century first half will open with the adagio from Barber’s string quartet, a work that is very meaningful to the ensemble. Setzer said that the string orchestra version, known as Adagio for Strings, “has become iconic as a piece of national and international mourning.” [Read on…]

31 young pianists arrive this week for Oberlin Cooper Competition

by Daniel Hathaway

Piano professor Robert Shannon is eagerly waiting to welcome this year’s participants in the Thomas & Evon Cooper Piano Competition to the Oberlin campus later this week. “This year the lineup is stronger than ever,” Shannon said in a recent telephone conversation. “There’re some impressive people, and the overall level is consistently high.” (Photo: the semifinalists in 2016.)

The biennial piano contest, which alternates with a violin competition, will be fueled by 31 young players from seven different countries (see the roster of competitors and their repertoire here). The 13-18 year-olds have been selected from a field of some 90 applicants who have been drawn to the Cooper event through its reputation alone. “We don’t actively recruit,” Shannon said. “We just publish the announcement and we’re well enough known by now that it just happens. The first year we held the Cooper we had something like 140 pianists apply, but then I think people figured out how challenging it was going to be. We’ve stabilized now at about 90 applicants.”

This year’s competitors include eleven U.S. citizens, seven from China, five from Canada, three from South Korea, two each from Finland and Taiwan, and one from Norway.

[Read on…]

The Oberlin Cooper Competition: a conversation with Kasey Shao

by Mike Telin

This year’s sole competitor from Ohio in the Cooper International Piano Competition, fourteen-year-old Kasey Shao began her studies at age six. During a recent telephone conversation from her home in Cincinnati, the Walnut Hills High School sophomore said that she has known about the Cooper Competition from the time it began. “I’ve watched the live streams and broadcasts, and I’ve always wanted to compete in it. Now that I’m finally old enough, I applied and got in. I’m very excited to compete and to meet the other contestants.”

No stranger to the competition world, Shao is a two-time grand-prize winner of the National League of Performing Arts. She has been awarded first prize at the Crescendo International Music Competition, West Chester Piano Competition, and Princeton Festival Piano Competition, as well as grand prize and first place at the Steinway Society of New Jersey Young Pianist Competition. [Read on…]

Milt Hinton Institute for Studio Bass:
July 7 through 13 in Oberlin

by Mike Telin

For seven decades, bassist Milt Hinton played with the most influential artists in American music. While doing so, Hinton chronicled his experiences through the lens of his ever-present camera. This week the Oberlin Conservatory will celebrate its ties to the late performer with the Milt Hinton Institute for Studio Bass, a biennial summer program for developing musicians that takes place this year the Oberlin campus from July 7 through July 13.

Designed for bass students ages 13-21 of all ability levels, the Institute consists of a week of master classes, performances, bass ensembles, studio sessions, lectures, and workshops. It focuses on a comprehensive range of genres: classical, early music, jazz, slap, Latin, and electric. Directed by Oberlin Professor of Jazz Studies and Double Bass Peter Dominguez, the Institute will feature the nation’s finest teachers and performers across a variety of styles.

The Institute is part of an ongoing relationship between Oberlin and the Hinton estate to ensure that the legacy of “The Dean of Jazz bassists” will be kept alive well into the future. [Read on…]

Pianist Spencer Myer and the Miami String Quartet to combine once again at Kent Blossom

by Jarrett Hoffman

“Although Myer isn’t an official member,” ClevelandClassical.com wrote last year, “his performance…made it sound as if he were a bona fide Miami.”

Pianist Spencer Myer will continue his long-standing collaboration with the Miami String Quartet on Wednesday, July 11 at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State — the second faculty concert of this year’s Kent/Blossom Music Festival. The program includes Haydn’s String Quartet in d, Op. 76, No. 2, Pēteris Vasks’ 1995 String Quartet No. 3, and Dvořák’s Op. 5 Quintet for Piano and Strings in A.

Last week I caught up with Myer by phone, and began our conversation by asking about his busy June.

[Read on…]

Blossom Music Center: starting to build a summer home for The Cleveland Orchestra
(first of three articles)

by Alice Koeninger

As you may remember, two summers ago The Cleveland Orchestra helped to celebrate the centennial of the National Parks Service at the Blossom Music Center. Now it is time for Blossom to celebrate its own milestone: its 50th anniversary.

At Blossom’s conception, The Cleveland Orchestra was the only “Big Five” orchestra in the country that did not offer full-time positions to its musicians, mainly due to the fact that it did not have a summer home. In 1965, it became musical director George Szell’s mission to build such a residence, and the Musical Arts Association was finally listening.

Soon, Frank E. Joseph, Szell’s friend and board president, along with Beverly Barksdale, the Orchestra’s general manager, began looking at possible sites for that outdoor venue.

[Read on…]

Ohio Light Opera to present Bernstein’s Candide

by Jarrett Hoffman

With July 4th a day away, it’s as good a time as any for this conversation-starter: aside from The Star-Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful, what music do you most associate with the US of A? It may be the marches of J.P. Sousa, or it

could be a particular song by the Violent Femmes (“Do you liiiike American music?”). And it very well might be the works of a certain native-born composer that have graced more than a few programs this year.

The day after the United States turn 242, Ohio Light Opera will celebrate two more birthdays — the company’s 40th and Leonard Bernstein’s 100th — when they present that composer’s 1956 comic operetta Candide. Performances begin on July 5 at 2:00 pm in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster and continue through August 10. (See their calendar for details.)

Directed by Steven A. Daigle and conducted by Steven Byess, the production also marks OLO’s first-ever performance of any Bernstein work. Ted Christopher, Alexa Devlin, Stephen Faulk, Benjamin Krumreig, Hannah Kurth, Daniel Neer, Sarah Polinski, and Stephen Walley will take on a cast of characters who are repeatedly killed, only to bizarrely turn up again in far-off locales and ever-stranger situations.

[Read on…]

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