by Daniel Hathaway
On Saturday evening in Akron’s St. Bernard’s Church, the Summit Choral Society gave the second of three Christmas Candlelight Concerts, to a full house, proving that a Christmas concert can offer both substantial and lighter fare and remain thoroughly engaging without resorting to the false allure of tinsel-pop. The two-hour-long program featured the adult Masterworks Chorale, as well as the Society’s youth ensembles — the Touring Choir, Concert Choir and 2014 Alumni Choir — in a dozen selections, many of them written in the last decade or so. [Read more…]
It appears that Northeast Ohio’s classical music organizations are going to be wasting no time getting back into full swing after the holidays. A quick check of our Concert Listings page reveals that almost as soon as 2015 is upon us, audiences will have plenty of concerts to choose from. However, the prize for being first out of the blocks goes to the Oberlin Conservatory.
When the Jesuit church of Saint-Louis in Paris asked for music for their 1694 Christmas Eve mass, their music director Marc-Antoine Charpentier took inspiration from an unlikely source — popular Christmas music of the sort sung in farmhouses and country churches far from Paris. 
Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet Franklin Cohen will leave the ensemble after 39 seasons next summer, having set a record as the longest-serving solo clarinetist in the orchestra’s history. He will be named Principal Clarinet Emeritus upon his retirement. 
In the dark days of December, the seasonal need for light and hope seems to unite the faithful, the lapsed, the secular and even the skeptical in a desire for choral music. Tallis Scholars, the distinguished English choir, recently brought a program of great Renaissance vocal works to the Cleveland Museum of Art, singing with enough soul and skill to light us at least through the impending solstice. 
For its sixth annual round of Christmas concerts on December 19, 20 and 21, Quire Cleveland under the direction of its founder, Ross W. Duffin, will feature music from a single national tradition. French Christmas carols, or Noëls, have a long, folk-based history both in their country of origin and wherever French culture has been spread — including by Jesuit missionaries in what is now French-speaking Canada.