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Archives for May 2016

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra with Jinjoo Cho at Severance Hall (April 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CHO-JinjooViolinist Jinjoo Cho had barely achieved teenager status when she first appeared as soloist with the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra. She’s been back several times since that debut, meanwhile walking off with top prizes in the Buenos Aires and Indianapolis competitions. Cho returned to help CWO celebrate its 81st-anniversary concert in Severance Hall on Sunday, April 23, this time with a delightful traversal of Henri Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in d led by Robert Cronquist. [Read more…]

Syndicate for The New Arts presents new works for harp and bass on May 15

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by Mike Telin

SyndicateDuoHow much do you need to know about a piece of music in order to enjoy listening to it? In a recent New York Times interview, Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen likened the experience of attending a concert without preparation to attending a sporting event without understanding the rules.

“We have been so apologetic in this, what we call classical music, that we say: ‘You don’t have to know anything, you don’t have to have any background, you don’t have to have any frame of reference, just come with an open mind, and you’ll love it,’” Salonen said during the interview. “It doesn’t quite work like that. Because if I go to an American football game not knowing anything about the rules — as, I have to admit, I don’t — it’s totally meaningless.”

On Sunday, May 15 at 5:00 pm at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City, the Syndicate for the New Arts will present a concert featuring five world premieres of works that explore the sonic possibilities of the double bass and harp. [Read more…]

FiveOne Experimental Orchestra to present “The Mashup Concert” at Bop Stop May 13

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by Mike Telin

FiveOneBopStopMashup (noun): A mixture or fusion of disparate elements. Mashup (music): A musical genre encompassing songs which consist entirely of parts of other songs.

On Friday, May 13 at 9:00 pm at the Bop Stop, 51XO (FiveOne Experimental Orchestra) will present “The Mashup Concert.” The program will feature mashups, overlays, and works that live somewhere in between the pop and classical worlds.

Musicians have been mashing things up for centuries in one way or another. Sometimes the desired outcome was to create a new musical style, while other times the purpose was to create comedy. Whatever the reason, creating mashups has never become passé.

Why? It’s fun. [Read more…]

Cleveland POPS: an evening of Gershwin with pianist-raconteur Richard Glazier (April 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GLAZIER-RichardTasting menus can give diners a good overview of the capabilities of a restaurant. On Friday, April 29 at Severance Hall, Carl Topilow and the Cleveland POPS Orchestra offered a similar experience, using the music of George Gershwin to give the capacity audience a broad view of that versatile composer’s unique accomplishments — from popular song to Broadway, from jazz to symphonic music — with the delightful assistance in the second half of pianist, raconteur, and social historian Richard Glazier. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra caps off its 30th-anniversary season (May 8)

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by Robert Rollin

COYO-050816-2Last Sunday afternoon, May 8, in Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra presented the third and final season concert of its 30th-anniversary season under its talented music director, Brett Mitchell. The concert’s stylistic range was remarkable given the age of its participants. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: a conversation with violin soloist Tessa Lark

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by Mike Telin

LARK-Tessa“There are some challenging spots in the concerto, but it’s worth all of the effort. The melodies, as you would expect in Dvořák, are just sublime, the kind that never leave your ear,” violinist Tessa Lark said during an interview.

Beginning on Wednesday, May 11 at 7:30 pm at Mentor High School Performing Arts Center, CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Avner Dorman, will present the first of five area performances of Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto featuring Tessa Lark. The program will also include Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Op. 26 and the Symphony No. 3, ”Scottish.” Check our Concert Listings for times and locations of additional performances.

We caught up with the 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient by telephone in Danville, Illinois, where she was performing Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Danville Symphony. [Read more…]

Les Délices: Vaudeville in the French Baroque (May 8)

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by Nicholas Jones

TheatredelaFoireWhen we hear the big names of French Baroque music — Couperin, Lully, Rameau — we think of the opulence of the courts of Paris and Versailles. And we think big — long, serious operas on mythical subjects, string bands packed with dozens of players, and hefty subsidies from king and courtiers. But outside the heady claustrophobia of the courts, Paris also had a looser musical counterculture in the suburbs: small ensembles that played music based on popular tunes, and presented “operas” based not on the tragedies of gods and heroes but on the complications of everyday life. [Read more…]

Singers Companye to feature contemporary works on May 15 concert in Fairlawn

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by Daniel Hathaway

Singers-CompanyeSingers Companye, the 40-voice chorus conducted by University of Akron emeritus professor Samuel Gordon, will cap off their 17th season with a program of contemporary choral music on Sunday, May 15 at 4:00 pm at Faith Lutheran Church in Fairlawn. The program includes music by Ola Gjeilo, Tarik O’Regan, Eric Whitacre, and Joan Szymko, accompanied by a string ensemble.

Gordon said in a recent telephone conversation that he started the ensemble at the encouragement of his former UA students. “I realized there were lots of teachers I had trained in the area, and they all had expressed an interest in continuing to sing, so we just started doing that. Now of the 40 people in the group, I would guess that 30 to 32 of them are teachers.” [Read more…]

Organist David Enlow to perform on Stambaugh Skinner May 15

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by Daniel Hathaway

Enlow-DavidOn Sunday, May 15 at 4:00 pm, New York organist David Enlow will play a recital on the restored E.M. Skinner instrument in Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium. His program includes three of Antonín Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, Louis Vierne’s “Naïades,” “Carillon de Westminster,” and “Adagio” from Symphonie No. 3, Frank Bridge’s Adagio, Percy Whitlock’s Fanfare, César Franck’s Chorale No. 1 in E, and Claude Debussy’s Petite Suite.

After his studies at The Juilliard School, the Canadian-born organist took a job as organist at the Church of the Resurrection in New York, where he’s now approaching his 15th anniversary as organist and choir master (and also serves as Dean of the New York Chapter of the American Guild of Organists). [Read more…]

Akron Symphony — Sounds of Akron: City Meets Symphony (April 16)

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by Mike Telin

ASO-Sounds-of-AkronWhat does Akron sound like to you? This is the question the Akron Symphony Orchestra and composer Clint Needham asked when they invited Akron area residents to download a smartphone app and upload their recordings to the Sounds of Akron website from late last spring through the fall. Those sounds became the inspiration for Needham’s imaginative new work, Sounds of Akron: City Meets Symphony, which received its premiere by the Akron Symphony under the direction of Christopher Wilkins on April 16 at E.J. Thomas Hall. [Read more…]

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