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Archives for December 2012

Review: Cleveland Orchestra: Fridays @ 7 with Bela Fleck, Banjo Virtuoso (December 7)

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by Alexandra A. Vago

The ClevelandFLECK-Bela Orchestra’s KeyBank Fridays@7 concert series began in 2009 as a way to create a new concert experience for new patrons and introduce current patrons to musics of the world. As part of this season’s series, Giancarlo Guerrero led the Cleveland Orchestra in an exhilarating exhibition of American music for a nearly sold-out Severance Hall on Friday, December 7.

Fridays@7 is really three concert experiences in one. The 6:00 pm pre-concert in the Reinberger Chamber Hall featured folk music from Eastern Europe performed by Harmonia. The main event highlighted American music with Short Ride in a Fast Machine by Adams, An American in Paris by Gershwin, and Béla Fleck’s Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra. The Bogomolny-Kozerefski Grand Foyer housed the after-party, which showcased contemporary music from New Orleans performed by Mark Mullins, trombone; Roland Guerin, bass; and Johnny Vidacovich, drums. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble (December 7)

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by Mike Telin

The Italian experimentalistBOWLIN-David Luciano Berio is arguably one of the most influential composers of the mid- to late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His group of Sequenzes is a series of thirteen compositions for unaccompanied instruments, including voice, each of which explore and expand on each instruments technical possibilities. On occasion the composer expanded some of the Sequenzes through the addition of instrumental layers. Berio’s Corale (su “Sequenza VIII”) featuring the outstanding violinist and Oberlin faculty member, David Bowlin, served as the centerpiece for the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble concert on Friday, December 7 in Warner Concert Hall.

Although Berio never composed a violin concerto, Corale (1981), is a more than suitable contribution to the canon by the composer. Scored for string orchestra and horns, Berio leaves his haunting Sequenza VIII intact and creates dialogues from within the orchestra that inventively support the solo line melodically, harmonically and rhythmically. Throughout the performance it was clear that David Bowlin has lived with this work for some time. Performing from memory, he made the many complicated technical passages, numerous double stops, and extended soft staccato lines sound effortless. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Pink Martini: a conversation with Thomas Lauderdale

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by Mike Telin

Let’s facepink-martini it, people have ideas everyday, but not all of them are good. In 1994 in Portland, Oregon, the politically active Thomas Lauderdale had grown tried of attending fundraising events that featured music he found to be “underwhelming, lackluster, loud and un-neighborly.” Lauderdale, a lover of music from around the world, decided to form a band that would perform music that wove together the genres of classical, jazz and old- fashioned pop. The band would “provide more beautiful and inclusive musical soundtracks for political fundraisers for causes such as civil rights, affordable housing, the environment, libraries, public broadcasting, education and parks.” Above all, both liberals and conservatives would enjoy the music. Eighteen years later, its clear that Lauderdale’s idea to form the “little orchestra” Pink Martini, was a good idea.

On December 18 & 19 at 8:00 pm, Pink Martini returns to Severance Hall for a holiday celebration with The Cleveland Orchestra, under the direction of James Feddeck. Described as a “globally-inclusive holiday concert for the 21st century,” the concert features the band’s popular favorites along with holiday classics such as “White Christmas,” “Santa Baby,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “We Three Kings,” and more. [Read more…]

Review: Bass-baritone Mark S. Doss at The Music Settlement (December 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Mark S. DossDOSS-Mark-S returned to his hometown last weekend for a Friday evening concert with The Singers’ Club, who joined with The Music Settlement to present the bass-baritone in a second event on Sunday afternoon. His solo recital on December 9 in Glick Recital Hall was offered as part of the Settlement’s ongoing centennial celebrations.

Now an international opera star who has performed fifty-five roles in more than sixty houses, Doss only began studying voice at the age of 21 after he went off to seminary in Indiana. Friends, colleagues and fans packed the L-shaped recital hall on Sunday to hear Doss sing art songs, opera arias, two cantatas with instruments and a set of spirituals with the expert collaboration of pianist Jerry Maddox.

[Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Bela Fleck (December 6)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The ticketsFLECK-Bela touted American in Paris, the publicity focused on Bela Fleck and his new Banjo Concerto, but the centerpiece of Thursday evening’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall led by guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero was Aaron Copland’s wonderful ballet suite from Billy and the Kid, first played by Rodzinsky and the orchestra at subscription concerts in 1943 but thereafter mostly relegated to educational concerts and summertime at Blossom.

Somehow, the Brooklyn-born Copland — paralleling the background of New York-born cowboy Wiliam Bonney, the subject for Lincoln Kirstein’s 1938 ballet — managed to evoke the wide open spaces and the joys and sorrows of the Wild West in music that is unmistakeably and iconically “American”. The suite is a terrific piece of orchestral choreography full of stories, scenes, moods, colors and rhythms that creates its own brilliant scenario without a dancer in sight. [Read more…]

Review: Opera Western Reserve: Barber of Seville at Stambaugh Auditorium, Youngstown (November 30)

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by Robert Rollin

LastOperaWesternReserveLogo Friday evening, November 30, Opera Western Reserve presented its annual Stambaugh Auditorium production. It has been several years since the company has scheduled an opera buffa, or comic opera, and Giachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, among the greatest in the genre, was a marvelous choice. Area opera lovers responded with an enormous appreciative crowd. Headlining the production was Youngstown-born tenor, Lawrence Brownlee, internationally known for his beautiful voice, remarkable technical agility, and dramatic flair. The Company dedicated the performance to Dr. Carol Baird for her devotion to the arts education of the children of Youngstown City Schools and her activities as The Youngstown Connection Founding Director. Prior to the performance Brownlee expressed his appreciation for Baird’s irreplaceable contribution to his artistic development.

Rossini wrote this masterpiece at the age of twenty-four, and the production sparkled with stunningly attractive singing, rapid-fire pacing, and fine choral and orchestral accompaniment. Brownlee, as Count Almaviva, Rosina’s eager suitor, led the impeccable cast, and lived up to his international reputation with fabulous vocal delivery. His pearly tone and fine acting were consistent all evening. [Read more…]

Preview: No Exit to give December 12 concert at the Maltz Museum in conjunction with “Bezalel on Tour” exhibition

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by Mike Telin

Currently onNoExit view at The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is Bezalel on Tour, an exhibition that celebrates the 106th anniversary of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel’s oldest institute of higher education and a leading international academy of art, design and architecture. In conjunction with the exhibit, the museum will also present films, an artist talk, and on Wednesday, December 12th beginning at 7 PM, members of the No Exit New Music Ensemble will present a concert program inspired by Bezalel on Tour.

“There are all sorts of interesting objects included in the exhibit, so the idea behind the concert is for it to be an exhibit in itself,” No Exit’s artistic director Timothy Beyer told us by telephone. The program includes works by Shulamit Ran, Morton Feldman, Miklós Rózsa, Andrew Rindfleisch and Corey Rubin, all of whom are Jewish and/or Israeli composers. “We want to create an intimate and ‘singular’ experience for the listener with each piece being very much it’s own thing — a standout in it’s own right.” The only non Jewish composer represented on the program in Maurice Ravel, whose setting of Kaddish, will be performed by vocalist Corey Rubin and pianist Nick Underhill. Ravel’s arrangement of the work for cello and piano will also be performed by Underhill and cellist Nick Diodore. [Read more…]

Review: Enthralling Mozart and Ferocious Rachmaninoff from the Canton Symphony Orchestra (December 2)

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 by Tom Wachunas

ItZIMMERMN-Gerhardt is always something of a letdown when Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann doesn’t preface a program selection at a Canton Symphony Orchestra concert with his special brand of wit, sardonic or otherwise. Ever the engaging raconteur, he didn’t disappoint on the occasion of the December 2 performance at Umstattd Hall.

One of the unique elements in this concert, billed as Audience Choice, was that the three program selections were chosen from a list voted upon by loyal CSO subscribers. The list consisted of three overtures, three piano concertos, and three symphonies which Zimmermann offered for consideration at the end of last season. The winning selection for the first work on the program was Rossini’s Overture to La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie). [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society: The Juilliard String Quartet— ten minutes with the ensemble’s new first violinist, Joseph Lin

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by Daniel Hathaway

TouringJuilliard-SQ string quartets seem to change first violinists a bit more often than second violinists, violists and cellists, but the Juilliard String Quartet may have established a record: three different individuals have sat in its driver’s seat in the last fifteen years.

When Robert Mann, one of the quartet’s founders in 1946, decided to retire in 1997, second violinist Joel Smirnoff moved up a chair. After Smirnoff left to become president of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2008, Nicholas Eanet, one of the concertmasters of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, was chosen to take his place. Ebullient at receiving the good news about his appointment, Eanet went inline skating in Central Park and broke his wrist — while trying to avoid an accident. Though the wrist healed in record time, Eanet withdrew a year later for unrelated health reasons. Joseph Lin took his place in November of 2011. [Read more…]

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