by Timothy Robson
The American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham was scheduled to close the 2013/14 season of Akron’s Tuesday Musical on April 10th, but a bad case of laryngitis caused her to cancel her Akron program (as well as a concert scheduled in Oberlin). Fortunately the Akron recital was rescheduled and took place on Monday, April 21, in E.J. Thomas Hall. Graham’s excellent piano accompanist was Bradley Moore.
Graham created an imaginative and varied program all based on, in the singer’s own words, “the ladies,” including the good girls (the Blessed Virgin, Ophelia and Mignon) in the first half of the concert, followed by “the bad girls” in the second (Lady Macbeth, and several other unnamed racy women.) Likewise, Susan Graham appeared for the second half of the program in an off-the-shoulder, glittering black gown with a slit up the side, replacing the first half’s more virginal flowing all-white dress.
Susan Graham opened with Henry Purcell’s Tell me, some pitying angel, often known as “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation,” in which the Virgin Mary laments the necessity to escape to desert exile to protect her son from potential death at King Herod’s hand. [Read more…]
“Expect the unexpected,” eighth blackbird’s spokesman/flutist Tim Munro told our readers in the first of these previews, but he didn’t mean that patrons should go in uninformed. Today, Tim delves into the background of two of the pieces on the ensemble’s program next Tuesday, April 29 at 7:30 in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University.
What’s better than getting to hear the Takács Quartet twice in a week? Getting to hear them three times within a month!
The 82nd Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival takes place this weekend in Gamble Auditorium of the BW Conservatory in Berea and marks the last festival to be directed by Dwight Oltman, who retires at the end of the academic year. See the concert listings for details and note that the St. John Passion is already sold out.
In its 79 years as an organization, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra has invited many young soloists to perform with the ensemble, sometimes giving them their first opportunity to play with an orchestra.
What does eighth blackbird flutist Tim Munro want audiences to know about their Cleveland Chamber Music Society program titled Still in Motion? “There are a lot of things that I love about this program, the surprising twists and turns that it takes. But I would say to expect the unexpected.”
On Sunday, April 27 beginning at 7:30 pm, CMA Concerts at Transformer Station presents Norwegian virtuoso classical accordionist Frode Haltli. The program features music by Hans Abrahamsen, Magnar Åm, Arne Nordheim and Aldo Clementi. “Even though this program is classical contemporary music, I think it reflects my interests in different kinds of music,” Haltli said during a telephone conversation from his home in Norway. “It’s not your ordinary contemporary music, it [ventures] out into many different directions.”
On Sunday, April 27 beginning at 3:00 pm in Pilgrim Congregational Church, Arts Renaissance Tremont presents a concert of chamber music for woodwinds and piano performed by Cleveland Orchestra members Mary Lynch, oboe, Robert Woolfrey, clarinet, Barrick Stees, bassoon and Richard King, horn, with Cicilia Yudha, piano.
For thousands of years humans believed the earth was flat and if you traveled too far you would eventually fall off the edge. It was the third century Greek scholar Eratosthenes who first began to calculate the circumference of the Earth. In the twentieth century, Ohio and specifically Cleveland, has played an important role in furthering space research. Founded in 1941as the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center actually predates NASA by 17 years and is named in honor of former senator John H. Glenn, an Ohioan who was the first American to orbit Earth.
Last Thursday evening, April 17, The Cleveland Orchestra under guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt’s masterful hand performed a stunningly beautiful concert of romantic music. The program featured two wonderful Slavic works.