by Daniel Hathaway
Some composers’ brains generate so many ideas that their compositions bulge at the seams to contain them. That was the case at Severance Hall on Thursday evening, January 12, when music director Franz Welser-Möst, pianist Yefim Bronfman, and The Cleveland Orchestra presented a new work by Jörg Widmann and an old symphony by Anton Bruckner. Packed with musical content, each piece was enthralling in its own way. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Whether it’s a sports team or a chamber music ensemble, it’s all about assembling the perfect combination of people who together can achieve the highest performance standards. “This is a dream team,” pianist Alessio Bax said of his Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center colleagues during a recent telephone conversation. “I’ve worked with each of them separately on many occasions, but to have them all together for these concerts is amazing. They are all fantastic musicians, great people, and we all like each other, so it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
On Tuesday, January 17 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church, Bax will be joined by violinist Ani Kavafian, violist Yura Lee, and cellist Paul Watkins for a Cleveland Chamber Music Society concert that will feature piano quartets by Brahms and Fauré. [Read more…]
by Jeremy Reynolds
Far from being an outdated or even obsolete instrument, the lute makes a stirring pitch for its continued relevance in the hands of the ensemble Ayreheart, which released Barley Moon in June 2016 on the Sono Luminus label. In this album, four modern day troubadours with lutes and drum and sweet, sweet voices harken for an hour to a simpler musical era. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
What promised to have all the elements of a wacky gallery happening — three musicians blowing, whistling, and breathing onto an ancient, suspended rock — became a surprisingly engaging experience last Friday in Gallery 218 of the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Pianist Kirill Gerstein was the center of attention at last Friday’s Cleveland Orchestra Fridays@7 performance at Severance Hall — both during and after the concert. The Russian-born pianist, who is equally at home in classical and jazz, brought a new approach to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue that made the piece sound newly-minted, and enchanted the audience at the After Party in the Grand Foyer with jazz-inspired pieces by Ligeti, Earl Wild, and Oscar Levant. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“Groups like ours appeal to the most adventurous of listeners,” Zeitgeist percussionist Heather Barringer said during a recent Skype conversation. “They’re people who enjoy listening to something that hasn’t been listened to before.”
Beginning on Friday, January 13 at 7:30 pm at Happy Dog at the Euclid Tavern, the St. Paul, Minnesota-based new music ensemble will join forces with Cleveland’s own No Exit for three free concerts featuring experimental music that explores the possibilities of multimedia, improvisation, and electroacoustics. Performances continue through Sunday. See below for a complete list of programs, times, and locations.
“These concerts are going to be really amazing, and each program is a little different,” No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer wrote in an email. “These Cleveland concerts are the second leg of our multi-city collaboration. The first part of this season’s ensemble exchange program took place in St. Paul in the fall, and now Zeitgeist will be in Cleveland to return the favor.” The collaboration grew out of the two ensembles’ shared goal to bring greater national visibility to composers and performing artists who make their homes in the Midwest. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Former assistant conductor James Gaffigan will return to the podium at Severance Hall from Thursday, January 5 through Saturday, January 7 to lead The Cleveland Orchestra and pianist Kirill Gerstein in Bernard Hermann’s Suite from Psycho, Arnold Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, the original, jazz band version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Performances include Thursday and Saturday evenings, a Friday matinee and a Fridays@7 event.
From January 6-8, the Philadelphia-based vocal ensemble, The Crossing, will give sixeen performances of David Lang’s Lifespan in Gallery 218 — the glass house that rises above the Cleveland Museum of Art’s East Boulevard façade. Surrounding a 4-billion-year-old rock suspended from the ceiling, three vocalists will whistle and breathe, moving the rock like a pendulum, “a poetic form of wind erosion” (read a preview here). Performances are scheduled for Friday at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 7:45 and 8:30 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday on the hour from noon to 4:00 pm. Weigh in on your experience by sharing your own comments on the ClevelandClassical.com Facebook page. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Beginning on Friday, January 6 at 4:00 pm, three members of the award-winning Philadelphia-based choir, The Crossing, will present the first of sixteen performances of David Lang’s Lifespan, a fifteen-minute work for three or more whistlers, in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gallery 218, East Wing Glass Box. See our concert listings page for additional performance dates and times.
In his artist statement for the composition, Lang writes: “Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla asked me to work with them for a major 2014 retrospective of their work in Philadelphia, this time on a piece that would represent an encounter between musicians and a four-billion-year-old rock, one of the oldest intact rocks remaining in the world. For this piece I imagined that the musicians would use their breath and their voices to challenge and threaten the suspended rock, in the way that the forces of nature have been challenging it for the previous four billion years.”
Yes, you read that correctly. During each performance, an approximately 4 billion year-old rock — found during a geological dig in Alberta, Canada — will hang from the gallery ceiling while the vocalists whistle and breathe, subtly moving the Hadean-period rock like a pendulum. [Read more…]
by Jeremy Reynolds
Daniel Lippel has released an EP on the New Focus Recordings label comprising a single work by Steve Reich: Electric Counterpoint (1987), also the title of the 15-minute EP. Lippel is co-founder and director of New Focus Recordings, and has served as resident guitarist of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) since 2005, and of the new music quartet Flexible Music since 2003. He studied at Oberlin with Steven Aron, and with Jason Vieaux at the Cleveland Institute of Music. [Read more…]
by Mario Buchanan, Special to ClevelandClassical.com
On December 31 the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, under the direction of Carl Topilow, performed their annual New Year’s Eve concert at Severance Hall. Above the partygoers’ heads in the Grand Foyer were two nets filled with blue and white balloons waiting to welcome the new year, and attendees were required to grab a party horn from the table for the concert. In the auditorium, “2017” was spelled out with balloons above the stage. Clearly, this was going to be a night to remember. [Read more…]