by Mike Telin
“I’m very excited to be conducting CityMusic’s Holiday Concerts this year,” Peter Bennett said during a telephone conversation. “And I am particularly pleased to be able to work with the La Sagrada Familia Choir to bring Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla to Cleveland audiences for the first time.” On Wednesday, December 3 at 7:30 at La Sagrada Familia Church, CityMusic will present the first of five free performances featuring Ramírez’s Misa Criolla. (See our concert listings for times and locations.) The concert also includes Antonio Sarrier’s Overture in D, and Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto with CityMusic principal bassoon Laura Koepke as soloist.
“Misa Crioll presents a different kind of challenge for me,” Bennett said. “It’s not the kind of repertoire that I’ve done before, but when Eugenia Strauss asked me to conduct it, it seemed like an amazing thing to do. It’s a great piece, and the fact that we’re involving a Latino church choir is a great way to present it to the community.”
It was a treat to be reminded of the brightness of the orchestral world’s future on Sunday night, November 23 in Severance Hall. For that occasion, artistic director Brett Mitchell designed a terrific concert for the opening of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra’s 2014-2015 season. 
“How could I possibly enter into our twentieth season without him being a major part of this concert?” Contemporary Youth Orchestra Music Director Liza Grossman exclaimed over the phone. The man Grossman is referring to is Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Bernard Rands. On Sunday, December 7 at 7:00 pm in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University, CYO will present a concert honoring the composer.
The baroque ensemble named after the innovative eighteenth-century composer Jean-Féry Rebel took a rapt, mid-sized audience through a breezy, one-hour survey of “Musical Treasures of the 17th and 18th Centuries” early Sunday afternoon in Kulas Recital Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. 
The Akron Symphony appropriately celebrated Saint Cecilia’s Day 2014 with a concert of music by the divine Mozart and the sainted Fauré, but also took the opportunity to elevate the jazzy music of Ravel to the Empyrean. To a neglected symphony and an infrequently performed mass by Mozart, music director Christopher Wilkins added a lovely Fauré bonbon and a wonderfully cheeky Ravel piano concerto, creating a program that showed the patron saint of music to be a woman with wide aesthetic tastes. 
On Friday, November 21, Trinity Cathedral’s Choir, Chamber Singers and instrumentalists, directed by Todd Wilson, presented a “Bach by Candlelight” concert in their home church with violinist Jinjoo Cho, oboist Danna Sundet and organist Parker Ramsay. It was a glorious setting in the magnificent Trinity Cathedral nave with its ornate organ case the center of attention. 
In just over an hour, betrayal and jealousy in a Sicilian village spill over into tragedy in Pietro Mascagni’s one-act classic opera, Cavalleria rusticana — all the while accompanied by some gorgeous music. Opera Circle staged two performances of “Cav” last weekend at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. I saw the opening performance on Friday evening, November 21. 
The Juilliard Quartet, just back from a series of concerts in Europe, are next up on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. The group will play quartets by Anton Webern, Joseph Haydn and Franz Schubert on Tuesday, December 2 at 7:30 in collaboration with the Winter Chamber Music Festival of the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Bartók and Miley Cyrus sat side by side at Ohio City’s Transformer Station last Wednesday, November 19 — and the marriage was predictably odd. Presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series, the Calder Quartet put on a stunning, compact show at the equally compact art gallery, and watching over from the wall behind them was the provocative pop star, depicted in prints as part of artist Julia Wachtel’s work Girl. 
Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC) has announced that it will invest $27,183,242 in grants to 196 arts and culture organizations in Cuyahoga County through its 2015-16 General Operating Support and 2015 Project Support grant programs. The grant award amounts were approved by CAC’s Board of Trustees during its meeting and celebration event on Monday afternoon, November 24 at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.