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Archives for August 2018

CD Review — Ogni Suono to release SaxoVoce with a party at Historic St. John’s

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by Mike Telin

All musical instruments are an extension of the human voice. Even the best keyboard, string, and percussion players know how to create musical lines that breathe. While wind and brass players are keenly aware of how to use air to inflect a myriad of emotions, there is not a lot of music that requires them to incorporate their voices with their instruments. On their new recording, titled SaxoVoce, (to be released on September 7) the inventive saxophone duo Ogni Suono — Noa Even and Phil Pierick — take on the challenge of playing and vocalizing during seven eclectic works. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera Costume Retrospective showcases four decades of design

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by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com

The importance of costumes in theater or opera is easy to determine. Just think of how often a brief glimpse of a costume can not only tell you when the action is taking place, but frequently where as well. Think of The Mikado, for instance, or more recently, Brigadoon or My Fair Lady. But those costumes don’t just appear like magic.

Oh, no. There are numerous meetings with the other technical staff of the production in addition to Costume Design. Among these are Set and sometimes Prop Design, Lighting Design, more rarely Sound Design, plus the Stage Director, Choreographer, Stage Manager and Conductor. All of these people have an interest in how the production will both look and sound to an audience. Depending on the size of the show, these meetings may begin as much as a year in advance of opening night.

Obviously, I Do! I Do! (the famous two-person, one-set musical of 1966) isn’t nearly as demanding or complex as Phantom of the Opera, but either of them could easily have been ruined by a lack of proper attention to the necessities. For the former, that meant two nightgowns and a huge bed. For the latter, it seemed like half the population of Paris was onstage at times. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra in Copland and Orff (Aug. 25)

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by David Kulma

The American political landscape has broadened over the past few years to include socialist and fascist ideas previously unthinkable in the public sphere. Programming works from the 1930s, another time of torrent, The Cleveland Orchestra and guest conductor Adrien Perruchon gave their August 25 concert at Blossom Music Center an unusual political saliency. The performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana occurred fifty years to the date when it was performed during Blossom’s inaugural season (photo above).

[Read more…]

Summers@Severance: Cleveland Orchestra with Cohen & Bezuidenhout (August 24)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Any concert that features a first-rate ensemble, with a respected and rising conductor at the helm and a renowned soloist as a guest, will make for a great evening’s worth of music-making. However, some events seem to invite the audience to levitate in their seats, absorbed and enchanted. Jonathan Cohen drew extraordinary sounds from The Cleveland Orchestra in one such concert last week. When pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout joined in, the assembled musicians achieved something like transcendence.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra tribute to Fitzgerald & Sinatra at Blossom (Aug. 19)

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by Robert Rollin

On Sunday evening, August 19 at Blossom, Randall Craig Fleischer led The Cleveland Orchestra in “Frank & Ella: The Music of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra,” featuring soprano Capathia Jenkins and singer/pianist Tony DeSare in songs that Ella and Frank made famous. Jenkins has a gorgeous, well-controlled voice. DeSare’s talented rhythm section supported his wonderful piano playing. [Read more…]

Thoughts on Star Wars as TCO closes its Blossom season

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Before the action figures, t-shirts, and lunch boxes — before even a single sequel was on anyone’s mind — 20th Century Fox’s 1977 Star Wars was a movie that came in over budget, with low expectations. The studio moved up the release date so it wouldn’t have to compete with that summer’s Smokey and the Bandit. In terms of merchandise, toy company Kenner Products was caught so flat-footed by the success of Star Wars that Christmas shoppers had to settle for a box with a voucher: mail it in to get your toys next year, kids.

Those essentially empty boxes now go for $13K on eBay. A more wallet-friendly option for your Star Wars fix: $26 tickets to see the original film at Blossom this weekend, with John Williams’ score played live by The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of assistant conductor Vinay Parameswaran. Screenings of the film, now known as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, will take place from Friday through Sunday, August 31 to September 2, the festival’s closing night, all at 8:30 pm. After the red and green blaster rays, stay for more fireworks, weather permitting.

[Read more…]

Christie resigns from Oberlin, Holy Cross and Wellesley

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Internationally-known concert organist James David Christie has resigned as artist-in-residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA and will discontinue his services at Wellesley College in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse from several students reported in The Boston Globe on August 24.

He has also resigned from the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he has been professor of organ since 2001. Read the Boston Globe story here.

Adrien Perruchon to lead TCO in Carmina Burana at Blossom

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Depending on your point of view, the three Star Wars concerts at the tail end of August and into September either mark a thrilling end of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season, or serve as fun, galactic encores to the earthly drama unfolding this weekend.

On Saturday, August 25 at 8:00 pm, French conductor Adrien Perruchon will round up all the bodies at his disposal — the Blossom Festival Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, soprano Audrey Luna, tenor Matthew Plenk, baritone Elliot Madore, and of course The Cleveland Orchestra itself. They’ll all be needed for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

A number of firsts are in store for that performance: Perruchon and Luna will make their debuts with the Orchestra, while Plenk and Madore will take the stage at Blossom for the first time. Preceding the Orff will be Copland’s Statements — a work which Perruchon finds fascinating in its own right, as he told me in a recent telephone conversation from Paris.

[Read more…]

Opera tailgating at Dunham Tavern Museum

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by Mike Telin

Whether you’re an opera aficionado, a casual listener, or opera-curious, Cleveland Opera Theater’s Free Summer Concert Series is the way to experience all that the art form has to offer. On Sunday, August 26, gather your friends and family, pack up your blankets and lawn chairs, and head to Cleveland’s MidTown area for an evening of opera favorites at the Dunham Tavern Museum.

The grounds will open at 5:00 pm, and while picnics are welcome, Scott’s Fire and Ice Food Truck will be on hand with wood-fired pizzas and gelato available for purchase. Cleveland Opera Theater will be selling wine, the proceeds of which will benefit the free summer concerts. “It’s opera tailgating at its best,” Scott Skiba, the company’s executive artistic director (no relation to the food truck), said during a recent telephone conversation. “These concerts provide a family-friendly gateway to discover and experience opera. We see that people who have come will often return for a main stage production or our Opera UpClose series.”

At 6:30 pm you can settle in for a program of arias and duets performed by soprano Marian Vogel, tenor Benjamin Werley, baritone Young Kwang Yoo, and pianist Tatiana Loisha. [Read more…]

Summers@Severance: 10 minutes with conductor Jonathan Cohen

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Québec’s chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy got its name from France’s royal court orchestra of yore. But the group’s new leader, Jonathan Cohen, is not a Gallic king — neither in reality nor in ego.

“I come from a chamber music perspective and a chamber music world,” the Manchester-born conductor said during a recent telephone conversation from rainy London. For him, music-making should be a shared endeavor with shared responsibility. “It’s not like I’m ordering people to play and they just interpret it. We do that together, and I guide the process — that’s how I like to work.”

Cohen and pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout will make their Cleveland Orchestra debuts on Friday, August 24 at 7:00 pm in the last of the season’s Summers@Severance outings — “@” Severance Hall, with air conditioning, and without crickets. The program of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart represents Cohen’s specialty: music before late Beethoven. “That kind of music is my great passion and love. And in my opinion, most of it is chamber music.”

[Read more…]

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