by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday evening, May 5, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra presented its final concert of the season at Severance Hall under conductor Vinay Parameswaran. The evening’s highlight was 20th-century Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, a massive, three-movement piece that filled the stage with young musicians. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland native Martin Kessler graduated from Heights High, then went off to Harvard College, where he conducted the student-run Bach Society Orchestra and Leverett House opera productions. After a year in Europe on a traveling fellowship, the composer-conductor came back to town for graduate studies, and went on to log impressive years of service with several area institutions.
After 32 years on the faculty of University School, where he taught until 2011, 38 years as conductor of the Suburban Symphony, and 15 years at the helm of Choral Arts Cleveland, Kessler will officially mark his retirement in a concert by Suburban and Choral Arts on Wednesday, May 16 at 8:00 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in University Circle.
“There’s something youth-inducing about doing something repetitively,” Kessler said in a recent telephone conversation. “You feel like you’re the same person you were when you started.” The conductor added that he feels it’s better to leave a little bit early than a little bit too late. “My mother retired at 70 from a career as a psychology professor, then ran a bookstore for 20 years. I’m using her as a model.”
by Mike Telin
In Greek mythology, Prometheus not only defied the gods by stealing fire, he gave that fire to humanity so that civilization could progress. “I think in a way everyone can be a Prometheus,” Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst says during a video where he discusses examples of Promethean heroes and the difficulty of freedom. “MLK is one, Dr. King clearly…was extremely powerful in taking that fiery spark of an idea and carrying that torch with him to the very end of his life. When you read his speeches there’s constantly that talk that we have to empower people.”
This week at Severance Hall, The Cleveland Orchestra will conclude its centenary season with “The Prometheus Project,” a festival celebrating Beethoven’s Promethean ideas about how art can transform humanity. On Wednesday, May 9 at 7:30 pm in Reinberger Hall, Franz Welser-Möst will discuss his conception for the project and the idea of re-examining Beethoven’s music for modern audiences by looking at the composer’s own thoughts, and the ideas and beliefs of the revolutionary era he lived in. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
It’s a familiar feeling for musicians: to have mastered a difficult piece, then discover someone a quarter their age playing it twice as well. “It’s amazing from year one to now,” Marc Damoulakis said in a recent conversation about the Modern Snare Drum Competition. “Stuff that we used to think was hard, these kids are coming in younger and younger and playing with ease. And I honestly don’t think it would’ve happened without this competition.”
Damoulakis, who joined The Cleveland Orchestra in 2006 and was appointed principal percussion in 2013, has been a fixture on the competition’s judging panel. This 11th edition, to be presented by Pearl and held at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Saturday and Sunday, May 12 and 13 — open to the public on Sunday — will mark his 10th time judging.
by Daniel Hathaway
After losing its previous performing venue — the Masonic Auditorium having been sold — Cleveland Opera Theater has found a new home in the Maltz Performing Arts Center at CWRU. On Friday, April 27, stage director Scott Skiba and conductor Domenico Boyagian brought the tragedy of Cio Cio San, alias Madama Butterfly, to life in an elegantly simple production on the wide stage of the former temple.
by Mike Telin
“I’m excited about this particular program because I’ve been doing the ‘Beyond Boundaries’ project for many years,” vocalist Amanda Powell said during a telephone conversation. In the past the project has focused heavily on jazz. “I’ve always wanted to create an iteration of it that included some folk artists. And this program is the beginning of that leg of my exploration.”
On Sunday, May 13 at 4:00 pm at First Church in Oberlin, Music at the Meeting House will present Amanda Powell, lutenist Brian Kay, and bassist Dave Morgan in a free concert titled “Beyond Boundaries: Songs of the People.”
Powell said that she and her colleagues came up with the idea for Sunday’s program when they were creating another project for Apollo’s Fire. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Kent State University Keyboard Series ended its current season on Sunday, April 22 with spectacularly lucid performances of Bartók and Liszt by University of Michigan piano professor Logan Skelton. The former was Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, an unlikely subject for a piano arrangement, the latter Liszt’s sometimes intractable Sonata in b, brilliantly brought to heel on this occasion.
by Daniel Hathaway
Singers Companye, Samuel Gordon’s Akron-based chamber choir, gave three performances of its spring program “An Unclouded Day: A Celebration of Love” in Cleveland, Fairlawn, and Hudson on April 20, 22, and 28. In their first concert at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood, they presented assured performances of modern choral works, including several by composers with Scandinavian and Baltic roots who write in expressive, opulent textures.
by Nicholas Stevens
The musicians’ collective Urban Troubadour offers not mere concerts, but adventures. In a cultural moment when encounters with chamber music range from formal recitals with traditional programs to party-like gatherings in living rooms, bars, and galleries, alternative formats have become common in Northeast Ohio and across the country. Yet even in the crowded field of efforts to “disrupt” the world of staid programming, Urban Troubadour’s multi-part evenings feel distinct and vital.
by Nicholas Stevens
The 2017-18 performing arts season celebrated several auspicious anniversaries in Northeast Ohio, and last week in Rocky River, the West Shore Chorale marked its first half-century. Any ensemble with an extensive record of uniting communities through music deserves a commemoration of grand scale and ambition, and the Chorale offered just such a program for its own anniversary at Magnificat High School.