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Archives for June 2015

ChamberFest: “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” at Mixon Hall (June 27)

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by Mike Telin

Cho-RabinovichChamberFest Cleveland added a new spin to the phrase “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” on Saturday, June 27 in Mixon Hall. Although no wedding took place, the program featured music that perfectly marries the classical ethos with jazz and folk idioms. As violinist Jinjoo Cho and pianist Roman Rabinovich prepared to open the concert with Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, suddenly from offstage, the sounds of the opening clarinet line from Rhapsody in Blue filled the hall. [Read more…]

ChamberFest: на здоровье! (June 27)

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by Jeremy Reynolds

BeethovenQuartetNancy Osgood, Board Chair of ChamberFest 2015, began на здоровье! (Good Health!) by dedicating the program to the memory of James Ireland III, one of the great benefactors of the arts in Cleveland. On Friday, June 26, CWRU’s Harkness Chapel hosted the festival’s all-Russian program, which attracted a healthy number of younger listeners in addition to a large number of seasoned concertgoers. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Grab Bag!” at The Wine Spot (June 23)

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by Nicholas Jones

WSThreeViolinsChamberFest Cleveland’s “Grab Bag!” concert on Tuesday was informal and eclectic, as the title implies. Seated fairly comfortably in Lee Road’s Wine Spot, the capacity audience was treated to a stimulating mix of instruments and musical styles — as well as a free glass of wine or beer. ChamberFest organizers Diana and Frank Cohen served as gracious hosts, giving impromptu commentaries between numbers. [Read more…]

Dispatch from Chicago: fresh inc Festival composers worked with Dan Visconti (June 20)

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Fresh-Inc---Constellation-1002It’s sometimes argued that the future of classical music resides not with large orchestras in grand halls, but with flexible chamber ensembles in versatile venues. A convincing example of that possible future occurred at Chicago’s Constellation on June 20 in the penultimate concert of the fresh inc 2015 chamber music festival. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: One Touch of Venus (June 27)

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by Kelly Ferjutz, Special to ClevelandClassical

Venus1It’s a little bit sassy, a little bit bawdy, and a whole lot of musical fun! What is it, you ask? Why, it’s One Touch of Venus, now onstage in repertory through August 8 at the Ohio Light Opera in Wooster. It’s totally fabulous. One Touch of Venus is one of half-a-dozen or so musicals written by the eminent classical composer Kurt Weill, but the music is anything but strictly classical in orientation. There’s jazz, boogie-woogie, and jitterbug, in addition to beautiful melodies such as “Speak Low,” and “I’m a stranger here myself.” [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Weiss & Polonsky in “Crossing Hands” at Dunham Tavern (June 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

WeissPolonsky1Music for four hands on one piano has usually been a parlor game rather than the subject of public performance. Composers dabbled in that genre to satisfy an enthusiastic market of amateurs who wanted to amuse themselves and friends at home — and arrangers made versions of chamber and orchestral music so that musicians could study repertoire before the advent of sound recording. But Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky’s refreshingly informal performance of music by Dvořák, Debussy, Schumann, Ravel, and Fauré at Dunham Tavern on Sunday afternoon, June 28 made a terrific case for four-hand music as a recital vehicle in its own right. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Anna Polonsky & Orion Weiss play separately and together

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by Daniel Hathaway

Weiss-and-PolonskyPianists Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss share a marriage as well as busy performing careers. Mirroring the way their lives play out, Polonsky and Weiss will play duo-piano, join in a concert of music for one-piano-four-hands, and perform with other musicians during ChamberFest Cleveland’s fourth season. We spoke to them separately by telephone (they were in different cities at the time) to ask about their appearances.

Cleveland-born Orion Weiss is involved in multiple ChamberFest assignments. “It’s like a twelve-course meal with many different dishes,” he said. “I’ll be playing Thomas Adès’s Darknesse Visible; a concert with Alexi Kenney at the Cleveland Public Library; the Mozart E-flat piano quartet; George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening with Roman Rabinovich; the little g-minor Rachmaninoff trio; Gershwin’s An American in Paris with Anna; then the four-hand concert.” [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: a conversation with bassoonist Fernando Traba

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by Mike Telin

TRABA-FernandoOn Wednesday, July 1 at 7:00 pm, ChamberFest will pull out all the stops when it caps off its season with a concert at the Blackstone Pipe Organ Residence in Bratenahl. The concert, titled “Stars and Stripes,” will feature Todd Wilson on the home’s custom-built organ in a performance of Ives’s Variations on a National Hymn, “America.” The prize-winning Echo Saxophone Quartet will play Terry Riley’s Tread on the Trail, and the concert will conclude with Dvořák’s String Quintet No. 3, Op. 97. At 6:15 pm, festival speaker Joel Smirnoff will present a prelude talk, and a picnic on the lawn will follow the performance.

At the suggestion of bassoonist Fernando Traba, the concert will also include Ned Rorem’s rarely-performed Winter Pages for clarinet, bassoon, violin, cello, and piano. “Frank Cohen asked me to let him know if I hear any great piece that hasn’t been played at the Festival,” Traba recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “I often visit YouTube and Spotify to try to find pieces that I don’t know. I came across a performance of this one, and it immediately struck me that it should be played at ChamberFest. I sent Frank the link, and he got back to me saying that he had actually played the piece shortly after it was premiered. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know a lot about Ned Rorem. He is 91 years old now, and he’s mainly known as a composer of art songs.”

[Read more…]

ChamberFest 2015: A conversation with Matthew Tracy of the Echo Saxophone Quartet

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by Jeremy Reynolds

Echo-Sax-Quartet“This is exactly the type of performance opportunity that we’re interested in doing as a quartet — we’re taking it extremely seriously,” said Mathew Tracy (pictured second from the left), soprano saxophone player in the Echo Quartet. On Wednesday, July 1 at 7:00 pm, in the Blackstone Pipe Organ Residence, the quartet — comprising Tracy, Kyle Landry (alto), Casey Grev (tenor), and Eric Troiano (baritone) — will open ChamberFest Cleveland’s final 2015 concert with Terry Riley’s Tread on the Trail. The program, titled “Stars and Stripes” in honor of its proximity to July 4, will feature works by American composers Charles Ives and Ned Rorem and American-inspired music by Antonín Dvořák. We reached Tracy by phone to ask how the quartet became involved with ChamberFest and to discuss Riley’s music.

“This is our first year playing in ChamberFest,” said Tracy. “We were contacted by Diana Cohen about four months ago, asking if we wanted to be a part of the festival. [Read more…]

BPI Perspectives: A conversation With Webb Wiggins

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by Jeremy Reynolds

WIGGINS-WebbThe Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin Conservatory has touched many lives since its inception in 1971. Not the least of these is current faculty member Webb Wiggins (Associate Professor of Harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory), who teaches harpsichord and organ during the program. We recently reached Wiggins by telephone at his home in Oberlin, where he described the transformative effect BPI had on his life.

Jeremy Reynolds: I understand that BPI was a revelatory experience for you. When did you first begin your affiliation with the institute?

Webb Wiggins: In the late 1970s. I came in as a student — a keyboardist — and that was where I had my first experience performing as a harpsichordist. It was really life changing! So I went home and decided “this is my life.” [Read more…]

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