by Mike Telin
It’s a privilege to be asked to perform the closing concert of any festival. It also requires the artists to create a program that both celebrates the past and looks to the future. At this year’s Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, the honor of presenting the final concert has been bestowed upon guitarist Colin Davin and soprano Estelí Gomez. The Festival runs from Friday June 8 through Sunday June 10 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Tickets can be purchased online.
On Sunday, June 10 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, Davin and Gomez will present Nomads by Nature. The evening will include repertoire standards — some with a new twist — as well as two World Premieres which are grounded in 21st century cultural esthetics.
In a joint telephone conversation, Davin and Gomez said the program’s title is taken from a line in the text of Henri Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage which opens the concert. Davin first encountered Duparc’s setting of Charles Baudelaire’s poem when he was asked to play at the 90th birthday party for French painter, critic, and author, Françoise Gilot. “They requested some French music and we settled on this piece,” Davin said. [Read more…]
Oudist, lutenist, and guitarist Brian Kay has teamed up with vocalist Amanda Powell and artistic director and keyboardist Jeannette Sorrell to curate Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts show, “Tarantella! Rhythms of the Old Mediterranean.” The program will receive five performances in Hunting Valley, Avon Lake, Chardon, and Bath from June 8-12.
Beginning on Friday, June 8 and continuing through Sunday, June 10 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the 2018 edition of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival will feature thirteen artists and ensembles, five concerts, nine master classes, and three lectures. 
As a high school student, George Leggiero enjoyed collecting chiming clocks. When he arrived as a freshman at Case Western Reserve University, he couldn’t help but notice the mammoth chiming timepiece in the tower of the Church of the Covenant — especially when he moved next door into Mather House for his junior and senior years. “My room overlooked the tower, so you either got to love the bells or you moved,” he said in a telephone conversation.
This Friday, ENCORE Chamber Music begins its 2018 summer season, titled “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” ENCORE will present concerts every Friday and Sunday from June 8 to July 15. 
For the past seventeen years, the 
Whisking the listener away on a diverse journey of sounds, the AHA! Festival will present a piano trio from a fellow local summer series, ChamberFest Cleveland. Pianist Roman Rabinovich, cellist Oliver Herbert, and violinist David Bowlin will come together to play gems of the chamber music repertoire by Brahms, Kodály, and 
Life has been good for
Nicholas Underhill’s solo piano recital at Heights Arts on Saturday, June 2 featured a complex program by 20th- and 21st-century composers who seemed to be attempting to dismantle tonality. A member of No Exit, Underhill played eight compositions that he worked on for over a year. The concert was part of the ensemble’s summer series.