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Pre•Views & Features

Burning River Baroque tells
the “Other Side of the Story”

by Mike Telin

Curating thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts has become a calling card for the innovative, Cleveland-based ensemble Burning River Baroque.

In the past year, soprano Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust have presented “Suppressed Voices: Music of the Banished” which featured music by Johann Rosenmüller —  a German who escaped to Italy after being imprisoned for homosexuality — and Peter Philips, who was imprisoned as a Catholic in Anglican England, then later fled to the Spanish Netherlands. “Destructive Desires” examined works by Couperin, Rameau, Jacquet de la Guerre, Caccini, Eccles, and Courbois under the light of the #MeToo era.

On Wednesday, March 20 at Glo, Rauschenfels and Maust will be joined by Sarah Lynn, baroque flute, and Glenna Curren, baroque cello, in a concert titled “The Other Side of the Story.” The program, which draws on ancient mythology, literature, and Biblical passages, highlights characters whose viewpoints are underrepresented.

Presented by Fresh Perspectives, the evening includes a 6:45 pm pre-concert talk with host Devin Hinzo and musician Zach Manzi. [Read on…]

Paul Jacobs to play U.S. premiere
of Deutsch organ concerto
at Severance Hall

by Daniel Hathaway

Organist Paul Jacobs will return to Severance Hall this week to play four performances of Viennese composer Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Okeanos with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra.

The concerts, which begin on Thursday evening, March 14 and run through Sunday afternoon, March 17, include Haydn’s Symphony No. 34 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. This week’s programs mark the first United States performances of Deutsch’s organ concerto, which received its debut in November of 2015 by Wolfgang Kogert and Radio-Symphonie-orchester Wien in the Großer Saal of Vienna’s Musikverein.

I caught up with Jacobs on his mobile phone during a break between auditions at the Juilliard School in New York to ask him for some of his impressions of Deutsch and Okeanos.

“I only knew Deutsch by name, but he has quite a successful career and reputation in Europe. It’s my hope that his music becomes better known here in the United States. It’s really excellent writing. We’ve spoken on the phone, and we’re the same age, which is an interesting feature of the collaboration.” [Read on…]

Trenney’s Sounding Light Choir to sing Pietá at St. John’s Cathedral

by Daniel Hathaway

On Friday, March 15 at 7:30 pm, Tom Trenney will bring his Detroit-based Sounding Light Chamber Choir (“the choir of many voices…one song”) to St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland for a performance on the Helen D. Schubert series of John Muehleisen’s Pietà, a 90-minute cantata inspired by the stories of three grieving mothers.

“The first story is about the Passion of Jesus Christ,” Trenny said in a telephone conversation. “The second is about the World War II soldier John Kipling and his mother Carrie, who communicated through letters and writings by father Rudyard. The third is based on the eulogy from Matthew Shepard’s funeral.

“Pietá is about the incredible sense of hope and light that emerges on the other side of tragedy. It’s a message of compassion — the opportunity we all have to sit with someone in grief, and help them experience the joy and grace that is present even in the most difficult moments of life.” [Read on…]

Kent State Opera to stage Copland’s The Tender Land

by Daniel Hathaway

For its spring production, Kent State Opera will present Aaron Copland’s 1954 opera, The Tender Land — a title that seems not to have been staged in Northeast Ohio for at least ten years, although a suite of orchestral excerpts has appeared with some regularity on concert programs.

In a telephone conversation with music director Jay White, the Kent professor admitted that Tender Land was not on his radar before he and Marla Berg decided to produce it at Kent. “The only thing I was familiar with was the choral arrangements of ‘The Promise of Living’ and ‘Stomp Your Foot,’” he said. “Marla wanted to do something in English again and we had done an excerpt from it in our scenes program a couple of years ago. There are essentially three main male characters and two main female characters, and for the first time, we actually had enough men to fill all the principal roles.”

Inspired by Walker Evans’ Depression-era photos and James Agee’s book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and with a libretto by Horace Everett under the pseudonym of Erik Johns, the opera was originally conceived for broadcast on television, but its producers sank the project. [Read on…]

Akron Symphony: Jinjoo Cho, kitchen magnets & the Korngold Concerto

by Jarrett Hoffman

Sometimes it feels appropriate to get right down to business. Last week, when I got in touch with Jinjoo Cho, that would have meant delving immediately into Korngold’s Concerto, which she played in the final round at the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis enroute to winning the Gold Medal. She’ll revisit the piece with Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony this Saturday, March 16 at 8:00 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall.

But there was something I’d read at the bottom of her bio that I needed to clear up first. So when she picked up the phone, I quickly put on my reporter’s hat and began to investigate.

“In the beginning they were more like souvenirs,” Cho said of her collection of kitchen magnets. “I would get one that reminded me of someplace. Now I feel like it’s become a full-on obsession. Whenever I see a cute one, I just can’t not buy it.”

[Read on…]

Chan E. Park brings pansori singing to Around the World Music Series in Kent

by Jarrett Hoffman

Just as species can become endangered, so can forms of art. During the mid-20th century, that was the case with pansori — a Korean style of musical storytelling where a solo vocalist takes on many roles, accompanied by a barrel drum. Pansori received official protections and recognition from the South Korean government in 1964 and from UNESCO in 2003.

One of the foremost advocates of that art form in North America is Chan E. Park, who will bring pansori to Standing Rock Cultural Arts’ Around the World Music Series at the North Water Street Gallery in Kent on Saturday, March 16 at 8:00 pm. (Pay what you wish, or give a suggested donation of $10. A 7:30 pm reception will include free sujeonggwa, a traditional Korean ginger-cinnamon-persimmon punch.)

Today, five madang (or song cycles) make up the pansori repertoire. In Kent, Park will give a bilingual performance of one of those five, the Sugungga (“Song of the Underwater Palace”). That English title sounds a bit imposing, but it’s actually a fairly light tale about a dragon king, his loyal turtle, and the rabbit they plan to trick — but who turns the tables on both of them in the end.

[Read on…]

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