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Archives for November 2013

Preview: Oberlin Artist Recital Series — a chat with cellist Yo-Yo Ma

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by Mike Telin

MA-Yo-Yo“I can’t say that I don’t lead an interesting life,” cellist, humanitarian and Silk Road Project founder Yo-Yo Ma says with a laugh. “It’s sometimes a little crazy and when that happens I just need to look at myself and say, I am the one responsible for it and I can’t blame anybody but myself.”

On Wednesday, November 20 beginning at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin College Artist Recital Series presents Yo-Yo Ma and his long time collaborator, pianist Kathryn Stott, in a concert featuring the music of Stravinsky, Villa Lobos, Piazzolla, Guarnieri, de Falla, Messiaen and Brahms. The concert is sold out.

Yo-Yo Ma is a person who enjoys building relationships and finding common ground with everyone he meets, and it their mutual love of travel that he attributes to the long collaborative relationship he has enjoyed with Kathryn Stott. Ma and Stott have been sharing stages since 1985 and together won Grammy Awards in 1999 and 2004.

“Kathy loves adventures and we get along famously well. She is an incredible person and musician and she probably loves traveling or has traveled more then I have,” Ma says. [Read more…]

Preview: CMA’s Masters of the Fiddle — a conversation with Persian spiked fiddle virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor

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by Mike Telin

Kalhor“I think that being back in Cleveland is a very beautiful déjà vu. I have been there many times with various projects and it’s so nice to return and play for the audience in the same place again,” kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor told us by telephone from the west coast. “As a touring musician it’s always very nice when you develop that relationship with a venue. It builds a trust that they want to hear your new projects and I’m glad that I have this relationship with the Museum.”

On Wednesday, November 20 Persian spiked fiddle virtuoso and three-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor returns to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium for a concert beginning at 7:30 pm. Kalhor will be joined by Ali Bahrami Fard, santoor. The performance is part of the Museum’s Masters of the Fiddle series.

Kalhor, a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, is known around the globe for his performances of traditional Persian music as well as for his multiple collaborations. In addition to Silk Road, Kalhor has appeared as soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de Lyon and the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, and was recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth without Youth in a score on which he collaborated with Osvaldo Golijov.

Kahlor says that his CMA program is the result of an experimental project that began after meeting instrument maker Peter Biffin in Germany. [Read more…]

Review: Opera Western Reserve — La Bohème at Stambaugh Auditorium (November 15)

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by Robert Rollin

Boheme-PosterLast Friday night Opera Western Reserve presented Puccini’s La Bohème in a beautiful Stambaugh Auditorium production, replete with excellent singing, fine dramatic pacing and superlative orchestral accompaniment. Music director Susan Davenny Wyner’s effective conducting, and director/scenic designer David Vosbergh’s attractive sets and lively staging contributed greatly. Now in its tenth year, the company continued to wisely schedule only one performance annually, ensuring houses bursting at the seams. The Friday performance was no different.

Soprano Marian Vogel, who sang the title role in OWR’s 2011 production of Tosca, was terrific as the tragic seamstress Mimi. Tenor Alex Richardson, who sang Cavaradossi in the aforementioned production, returned as the intense poet Rodolfo, expertly tossing off the difficult role.

Soprano Lauren Frey, as Musetta, the sophisticated woman of the world, paired with baritone Michael Young, as Marcello, the painter. Both sang brilliantly, with Frey negotiating the intricacies of her bel canto role with sparkling ease, while Young enlivened the performance with his lovely vocal color. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire: “Tangos and Fandangos” at Fairmount Church (November 15)

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by Timothy Robson

Schiffer-&-BrinkmannOne of the best things about Apollo’s Fire’s programs is that director Jeannette Sorrell and her musicians plan programs that are entertaining. They are scholarly, but not pedantic; instructive, but not condescending; and the expert musicians give every appearance of enjoying the act of performance, with awareness of their fellow musicians.

Such was the case again on Friday night, November 15, at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, for the first of four performances of “Tangos and Fandangos,” an exploration of the Mediterranean musical styles from 18th century Spain that crossed the Atlantic and evolved into those sexy South American dances, the fandango and the tango. The full house responded enthusiastically to this unfamiliar music by Santiago de Murcia, Luigi Boccherini, Carl Friedrich Abel, and Apollo’s Fire regular René Schiffer (writing under the nom de plume René Duchiffre).

Baroque guitarists Simon Martyn-Ellis and William Simms opened the concert with 18th century Spanish composer and guitarist Santiago de Murcia’s Fandango (c.1730). The performers entered from opposite sides of the stage, bowed to each other and commenced a musical “duel,” trading phrases in increasing virtuosic variations above the descending bass line that is the hallmark of the fandango. The tension increased until the music dramatically stopped without warning. [Read more…]

Preview: Apollo’s Fire’s “Tangos and Fandangos” features concertos by René Schiffer

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by Mike Telin

Schiffer-&-Brinkmann“A lot of people play the gamba very softly and delicately,” said Apollo’s Fire gambist and cellist René Schiffer, “and I always thought that was wrong. You need to get what you can out of the instrument, and the gamba can be loud, especially when you play chords.”

Apollo’s Fire audiences will experience that brasher voice of the viola da gamba this week, as Cleveland’s baroque orchestra presents five performances of “Tangos and Fandangos with Boccherini and Friends” in area churches. The program includes René Schiffer’s “notorious” Tango Concerto for two gambas featuring Schiffer and his colleague Mime Y. Brinkmann. Elsewhere on the program the two soloists will swap out gambas for cellos to duel away in Schiffer’s Fandango.

“I chose the tango because I thought it was the perfect way to end a baroque concerto,” Schiffer said in a telephone conversation. “It has the strict rhythm of the baroque and an ostinato which relates it to the chaconne or any long piece with the same bass line played over and over again. Of course it is a total joke that two gambas are playing a tango — but at the same time, I think that when they are playing together they often sound like a bandoneón. And the noise that they can make — you never get to do that in a baroque piece.” [Read more…]

Preview: Arts Renaissance Tremont — Daniel Shapiro and Friends

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by Mike Telin

SHAPIRO-Daniel“I absolutely love the Franck Piano Quintet,” pianist Daniel Shapiro told us by telephone. “There’s a mystical quality to it similar to what you find in Bruckner, almost as if the clouds part and one can see God or something like that. It’s beyond everyday passion. Yes I do love the music of Franck although I think his detractors are noisy.” On Sunday, November 17 beginning at 3:00 pm in Pilgrim Congregational Church, Arts Renaissance Tremont presents pianist Daniel Shapiro with Jinjo Cho and James Thompson, violins, Leah Ferguson, viola and Carlyn Kessler cello in performances of the piano quintets by Dvořák and Franck.

Performing chamber music has and continues to be an important part of Shapiro’s musical life. He has performed regularly with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and Cleveland Orchestras, and has also performed with the Cavani, Mirò and Linden Quartets. And he has very kind things to say about his colleagues for Sunday’s concert, all of whom are students at the Cleveland Institute of Music. “I don’t think of them as students, we are equal colleagues — we share ideas and talk about what we think would make things better.” [Read more…]

Preview: Jieming Tang to make orchestra debut with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra

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by Mike Telin

TANG-Jieming2“I’m very excited,” says 16 year old violinist Jieming Tang. “It’s my first time ever to play with an orchestra.” On Saturday, November 16 at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Carlton Woods presents a concert that features Jieming Tang in Beethoven’s Romanze No. 2. The program also includes Weber’s Concertino with clarinetist Amitai Vardi, along with works by Peter Maxwell Davies, John Corigliano and Felix Mendelssohn.

Jieming Tang was born in 1997 in Hefei, China and began his violin studies at age three. When he was eight, he began to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and entered the Conservatory’s pre-college division the following year. In April 2010, Tang came to the United States to be part of the Junior Young Artist Program of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Tang was asked by BlueWater to choose one of the two Beethoven Romanzes and he chose No. 2 because he has performed it several times before with piano. “I’m glad I picked this one because right now there are so many things going on. I can’t imagine if I would have had to learn a new piece.” [Read more…]

Preview: No Exit plans two concerts celebrating the life and work of Raymond Scott

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by Mike Telin

SCOTT-Raymond“Like most of us, as a kid I watched the Warner Brothers cartoons. Of course I didn’t know that was his music,” says No Exit new music ensemble artistic director, Timothy Beyer. “But when as a teenager I heard the proper jazz versions of these pieces I remember thinking, I’ve heard that before!” Whose music is Beyer speaking of? The one and only Raymond Scott. On Friday, November 15 at Spaces Gallery and Monday, November 18 in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, No Exit begins their fifth season with a celebration of the life and work of the great Raymond Scott.

The concerts feature new arrangements of some of Scott’s most recognizable works by Geoffrey Burleson (Powerhouse Passacaglia), Russ Gershon (Snake Woman & Song of India), Greg DʼAlessio (War Dance for Wooden Indians), Christopher Auerbach-Brown (The Man at the Typewriter) and Eric Gonzalez (Celebration On the Planet Mars). The concerts also feature new compositions inspired by Scott’s music by James Praznik (Turkey in Twilight)and Timothy Beyer (Egyptian Barn Dance Meditation).

Timothy Beyer says that “Scott was a truly brilliant guy whose genius couldnʼt be contained within a single medium. For instance, he was one of the early pioneers of electronic music — some of which will be featured on the program along with pieces inspired by his Quintette — and he developed many early devices for composing and creating electronic works. [Read more…]

Preview: Organist Nathan Laube to play at Stambaugh Auditorium on November 17

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by Daniel Hathaway

LAUBE-NathanChicago-born concert organist Nathan Laube will be the next featured recitalist on the Stambaugh Auditorium series in Youngstown on Sunday, November 17 at 4:00 pm. Laube will play music by Widor, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Liszt on the recently-restored E.M. Skinner organ, including two of his own arrangements.

Though his Youngstown program is tilted toward nineteenth century Romantic composers, Nathan Laube is omnivorous when it comes to the organ and the music written for that instrument — both of which vary widely from one country to another and across different eras and epochs of musical taste. We reached Laube in Shreveport, LA during a break in his practice time for a recital there last weekend to talk about what he’d been up to since we last heard him several years ago at the Organ Historical Society convention in Cleveland — and he’s been up to a lot.

“I’ve been in Europe for three years, first on a Fulbright to Toulouse in France, then to earn my master’s degree at the Music Hochschule in Stuttgart. I also served as artist-in-residence at the American Cathedral in Paris. During that time, I was lucky to have access to the finest collection of historical organs in the world!”

[Read more…]

Preview: CMA’s “Masters of the Fiddle” — a chat with Natalie MacMaster

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by Mike Telin

MacMaster-&-LeahyOn Friday, November 15 beginning at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series presents Masters of the Fiddle: Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy. The sold-out concert includes French Canadian, Celtic, Bluegrass and Cajun music in addition to original compositions by MacMaster and Leahy.

“Sold out, how exciting is that!” Natalie MacMaster exclaimed by telephone. MacMaster says that she always looks forward to being on stage with Donnell Leahy, who is also her husband. She is also quick to point out that they do travel as a family and yes, they do travel with their four children. So how does MacMaster juggle everything that comes with the life of a working mother who performs over 100 concerts dates a year? “I don’t really know the answer, but I do know that life is full and rich and exciting and difficult and wonderful. We’re really living and all the things you could hope for are happening for us, with the children, building a home and being able to play music. It’s fabulous.”

MacMaster says the show as always, is very energetic and upbeat. [Read more…]

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