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Archives for April 2016

Summit Choral Society concludes
season with dance-themed
program at Tangier

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by Daniel Hathaway

DancersChoral societies usually cap their seasons off with a big oratorio, but Summit Choral Society artistic director Marie Bucoy-Calavan has other plans for the 65 singers in her Masterworks Chorale this weekend. As the conclusion to her first season with the ensemble, Bucoy-Calavan will share her dual love of choral music and ballroom dancing with the audience at Akron’s event center Tangier on Sunday afternoon, April 10 at 3:00 pm. “Dance With Me” will feature dance-based choral music by Johannes Brahms, Carl Orff, and Cole Porter — and more.

In a telephone conversation, Bucoy-Calavan noted that she used to be a competitive ballroom dancer herself. “I thought it would be a cool idea to combine two of my passions in the same program. [Read more…]

“The Sung Path”:
reflections on a concert

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by Nicholas Jones

Walters-(Tanya-Rosen-Jones)It’s not that rare that poems are used on recitals to complement the music, but it’s unusual to find a concert that features poetry and music on a relatively equal basis, and to find the poems written by one of the lead performers. That was the case this weekend, however, at the Heights Arts concert, “The Sung Path,” featuring Oberlin Conservatory Professor and Cleveland Orchestra English hornist Robert Walters. The combination inspired our reviewer, an occasional poet, to some verses of his own; as an academic, he thought it best to add some footnotes as well. —ed.
[Read more…]

CMA: Calder Quartet at Transformer Station (Mar. 31)

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by Timothy Robson

05-Calder-QuartetThe Calder Quartet’s concert sponsored by the Cleveland Museum of Art on Thursday evening, March 31 was an extraordinary event both musically and in its setting. It took place in Cleveland’s Hingetown neighborhood in Transformer Station’s white-washed, post-industrial salon, a lofty cube with menacing chains and hooks dangling from the ceiling. The sold-out concert was wisely limited to about 40 people, surrounding the quartet, who were placed in the center of the room. This arrangement created an unusual intimacy between performers and audience, and made for an intense musical experience. [Read more…]

LCCC Signature Series: violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins with pianist Craig Ketter (March 31)

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by Nicholas Jones

Hall-TomkinsKelly Hall-Tompkins’s recent recital at Lorain County Community College began, as she said, with the miniature and proceeded to the giant. The excellent New York-based violinist, with pianist Craig Ketter, moved from modernist character pieces by Sergei Prokofiev and Jeffrey Mumford to the full-blown Romanticism of Richard Strauss. Versatile and expressive, Hall-Tompkins and Ketter gave the smaller works a dignity belied by their short duration, and brought a welcome variety to the much longer and distinctly pre-modern Strauss. [Read more…]

Orlando Consort to provide live medieval music for Dreyer’s Joan of Arc film at CMA April 6

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by Mike Telin

Orlando-Voices-AppearedWhen Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc was first screened in Paris in 1928, the silent film classic was accompanied by an orchestral score specially composed by Victor Alix and Léo Pouget. A subsequent version paired the movie with music by J.S. Bach, Tomaso Albinoni and Antonio Vivaldi arranged by Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. Dreyer wasn’t happy with either solution, especially the baroque music, which he thought to be anachronistic for a story set in the middle ages. [Read more…]

No Exit to celebrate music of
Erik Satie in three concerts

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by Mike Telin

SATIE-EricAlthough Erik Satie’s Vexations consists of a single page of manuscript, the composer included the following statement: “In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.”

Beginning on Monday, April 4 at 8:00 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, No Exit will present the first of three area concerts featuring Satie’s incomparable work. The concerts are the second installment in the ensemble’s year-long celebration of the music, mind, mirth and mayhem of the original musical Dadaist, who lived from 1866 to 1925. The program will be repeated on Friday, April 8 at SPACES and on Saturday, April 16 at Heights Arts. Both concerts will begin at 8:00 pm. [Read more…]

In2ative to perform on
Nighttown Series April 6

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by Mike Telin

In2ativePortions of this article are reprinted from an interview in November of 2015 before In2ative performed on the LCCC Signature Series.

The story of how flutist Kimberly Zaleski and cellist Trevor Kazarian came to form the duo In2ative is fit for the big screen. After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Music, they both worked in restaurants until one day they both found themselves out of jobs. It was at that moment that they decided to take a risk.

“We went to CoolCleveland and searched for all of the festivals in the area,” Kazarian recalled during a conference call with his musical partner. “We would go to each event, put out a hat, and play. We were paying our rent from tip money, but at the same time we were meeting people and making connections. I feel that a lot of what we have today goes back to that moment of taking the risk, and really going for what we believed in. We’re lucky to be in the situation that we are now.” [Read more…]

Behind the scenes at TCO’s Bartók productions: a conversation with répétiteur Miloš Repický

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by Daniel Hathaway

RepickyWhen Severance Hall audiences experience the thrills and chills of Béla Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin and Bluebeard’s Castle this weekend with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, they’ll see the culmination of weeks of preparation by a whole staff of behind-the-scenes personnel. Among those who will be witnessing the fruits of their labors but not taking a bow at the end is the répétiteur for the two productions, Miloš Repický.

Repický, who serves on the music staff of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, has been hard at work on his third Severance Hall project, having previously served as pianist and vocal coach for Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in 2014, and for Richard Strauss’s Daphne in 2015. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “A Harlequin Romance” — Julie Andrijeski & Steven Player talk about dance

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by Daniel Hathaway

Player-AndrijeskiWhen Apollo’s Fire presents four performances this weekend of “A Harlequin Romance,” its final show of the season, Julie Andrijeski and Steven Player, who have made brief appearances as dancers with the orchestra in the past, will play a more central role in exploring both noble and popular forms of baroque movement to corresponding music by Georg Philipp Telemann.

“This is the rare occasion when I’ll be dancing in more than a cameo role,” said Andrijeski, who can usually be spotted playing violin in Apollo’s Fire. We spoke by telephone during a break in her rehearsals with Player last week.

“Steve and I will mostly be dancing this time but also playing violin and guitar a little bit. There’ll be two different type of dances: a set of the more noble dances to Telemann’s Don Quixote Suite in the first half, then in the second half we’ll be dancing to the Overture Burlesque, which is more of a commedia dell’arte presentation. [Read more…]

Ayreheart to play two area performances this weekend

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by Mike Telin

AyreheartOn Thursday, April 7 at 8:00 pm at the Bop Stop, the band Ayreheart (Ronn McFarlane, lute, Brian Kay, vocals and lute, Will Morris, colascione, and  Mattias Rucht, percussion) will present a concert titled “Will You Walk the Woods so Wild.” The concert will be repeated on Friday, April 8 at Kent Unitarian Universalist Church in Kent, also at 8:00 pm.

“We do call ourselves a band, but we’re hard-pressed to figure out what kind of band we are,” Ronn McFarlane joked during a recent telephone conversation while en route to Michigan to start Ayreheart’s ten-day, nine-concert tour. “We formed to play original music that I was writing for lute, and songs with lute and other instruments like percussion and bass. But we also love the old music, so even when we have concerts focused on the new we always play a good bit of old.”   [Read more…]

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