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To•Day

DIARY, Weekend, Friday-Sunday, June 13-15, 2025

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

June has become summer festival month in Northeast Ohio, and our classical music listings this weekend are either part of ChamberFest Cleveland, the ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival, or the Ohio Light Opera summer season. Here’s what they’re offering, in alphabetical order:

ChamberFest Cleveland continues on Friday, June 13 with “Reflections” at 7:30 at the Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights), and two events on Saturday, June 14: “Rhythm & Clues,” a free, family-friendly concert by the Nate’s World Trio including a scavenger hunt (11 am at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes), and “A Musical Feast” featuring a new work by Errollyn Wallen (pictured, 7:30 at Heights Theater in Cleveland Hts.)

Wallen returns to ChamberFest on Tuesday, June 17 for an afternoon-long series of free “Meet Composer Errollyn Wallen” events beginning with a 2:30 performance of her Remember, Marimba and ending with a 6 pm concert of her works, all at the East Cleveland Public Library. ChamberFest tickets are available online.

On Friday, June 13, ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival will present faculty and guest pianist Shuai Wang in “1, 2, 4, 8…Tango!” and on Saturday, June 14 will host Trio Seoul in “The Ringing of Cimbalom.” On Sunday, ENCORE will present “The Golden Waltz,” with guest pianist Kyu Yeon Kim at  the Maltz Performing Arts Center, Cleveland.) Tickets for all events available online.

On Saturday, June 14, Ohio Light Opera will raise the curtain on its 46th summer season at the College of Wooster with the first of fourteen performances of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel. Five more shows will open this summer through August 3. (7:30 in Freedlander Theater, Wooster. Tickets available online.

For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: [Read More…]

Pre•Views & Features

June festivals get up to speed this week in Northeast Ohio

by Daniel Hathaway

June has become the unofficial summer festivals month in Northeast Ohio, with ChamberFest Cleveland, the ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival, and the Ohio Light Opera summer season all beginning at once — and with more to come. Here’s what they’re offering just this week (in alphabetical order):

ChamberFest Cleveland continues its thirteenth season on Friday, June 13 with “Reflections.” Ten artists perform music by Arvo Pärt, Anton Arensky, and Camille Saint-Saëns (7:30 at the Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights).

ChamberFest offers two events on Saturday, June 14: “Rhythm & Clues,” a free, family-friendly concert by the Nate’s World Trio including a scavenger hunt (11:00 am in the Friends Pavilion at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes), and “A Musical Feast” featuring a new work by Errollyn Wallen in a “chamber cabaret” performance from Nate’s World — the fertile imagination of bassist Nathan Farrington (7:30 at Heights Theater in Cleveland Heights). [Read on…]

Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute gears up to celebrate the music of England

by Stephanie Manning

When Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute (BPI) began more than half a century ago, dedicated programs for studying and performing early music were almost nonexistent.

“ In the early seventies, it was really the only place where you could study that repertoire in the States,” artistic director Kenneth Slowik said in a recent interview. Thankfully, “nowadays, there are several different options.”

Throughout the decades, the renowned summer workshop has continued its annual meetings, with only a brief pause for the pandemic. From June 15–29, BPI will mark its 53rd year when it welcomes a group of both professional and avocational musicians to Oberlin Conservatory. Performers ages 15 and up will participate in workshops, master classes, and large ensembles under the theme “Music in England from Purcell to Handel.”

Where does BPI fit into today’s early music landscape? “ It still has its place, I think,” Slowik said. “Certainly, the people who come take away a two-week experience that’s unlike anything else they’ve done.”

[Read on…]

ChamberFest: a conversation with Raman Ramakrishnan

by Mike Telin

With a Bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a Masters in music from The Juilliard School, Raman Ramakrishnan’s career path could have gone in numerous directions. “For me, it’s always been about the cello,” Ramakrishnan said during a recent interview. “And from the beginning, chamber music is what I loved.”

Next week the Athens, Ohio-born cellist will make his ChamberFest Cleveland debut in three programs. I began our Zoom conversation by asking him if he has spent any time in Cleveland.

Raman Ramakrishnan: Actually, my mother was born in Cleveland and grew up in Cleveland along with her three sisters. And my grandparents are buried in Cleveland on the West Side.

Mike Telin: You were born in Athens, Ohio.

RR: I was. But to be honest, I only spent two months of my life there before my parents moved. [Read on…]

ChamberFest Cleveland welcomes composer/performer Errollyn Wallen

by Mike Telin

In her memoir Becoming a Composer, Errollyn Wallen recalls being nine years old and walking to Ridley Road Market with her uncle to buy fruit and vegetables. “I told Uncle Arthur that I could hear ‘all these sounds in my head’ but I didn’t know what to do with them. Uncle Arthur suggested that perhaps I was a composer.”

Little did that young girl — who was born in Belize and brought up in Tottenham, England — know that she would go on to become one of the world’s top twenty most performed living classical composers.

In 2024, Wallen was appointed Master of the King’s Music by His Majesty The King, and in 2025 she was named BBC Classical Music Magazine’s Personality of the Year. This month Wallen is also ChamberFest Cleveland’s composer-in-residence.

Opening the Zoom link from her home in Orkney, I began our conversation by asking how the ChamberFest invitation came about.

[Read on…]

ChamberFest Cleveland invites you to spend time in Nate’s World

by Mike Telin

“I’ve been coming to ChamberFest for a number of years, and it’s always a wonderful thing to come back,” bassist Nathan Farrington said via Zoom from Los Angeles. “I grew up in Columbus but I have a huge family in the Medina area so it also gives me a chance to perform for and reconnect with them.”

On Saturday, June 14 at 7:30 pm at Heights Theater, Nathan Farrington will join pianist Ahmed Alom and drummer Gabriel Globus-Hoenich for a chamber cabaret from “Nate’s World.” The program also includes J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E, Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat, and Errollyn Wallen’s Making Hay. Wallen and composer Michael Frazier will present a pre-concert conversation at 6:30 pm. A cash bar will be available in the lobby. Tickets can be purchased online.

What is Nate’s World? Farrington said that it grew out of the frustration he and his trio members had with the role of performers in traditional classical concerts — the genre doesn’t always do the best job of acknowledging the role of the performer.

[Read on…]

Irish guitarist Alan Mearns to make Guitar Festival debut this weekend

by Daniel Hathaway

When I asked Armin Kelly, the founder and artistic director of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, who he would recommend that I speak to for a preview article this time around, he didn’t miss a beat.

“I think you will find Irish concert classical guitarist, composer, poet, and songwriter Alan Mearns a particularly interesting, well-spoken artist to interview. This will be Alan’s first time to perform in Cleveland, and he will be taking part in a pre-concert discussion with Jonathan Leathwood in a lecture entitled Beyond Transcription, A Conversation with Alan Mearns, on Thursday, June 5, from 6:00 to 7:15 pm, and playing a solo recital on Sunday at 3 pm.

“Alan’s transcriptions of Bach and other composers have electrified audiences and critics far beyond the confines of the classical guitar world. His approach is a fundamentally imaginative one — perhaps not surprising from such a multi-faceted artist. His transcriptions seek to recreate the excitement of the original music in terms of the guitar.”

[Read on…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: a conversation with pianist/composer Michael Stephen Brown

by Mike Telin

Season thirteen of ChamberFest Cleveland gets under way on Wednesday, June 11 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

The program — “Lost and Found” —  features J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Two Keyboards in C major, Felix Mendelssohn’s String Octet, and Michael Stephen Brown’s The Lotos-Eaters (with the composer at the piano). Executive director Jessica Peek Sherwood presents the pre-concert festival welcome at 6:30 pm. Although this concert is sold out, the Festival runs through June 28. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with composer/pianist Michael Stephen Brown on Zoom and began our conversation by asking him if this year would be his second or third visit to ChamberFest.

Michael Stephen Brown: This will be my second, but I’ve known Roman and Diana for a long time, so I look forward to returning. I met them both at the Ravinia Festival, and with Roman being a fellow pianist, we had a lot in common. We became fast friends and loved to play for each other and play four-hand music together. Then he came to Juilliard — I was already there — and we both studied with Robert McDonald.

[Read on…]

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