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Archives for October 2018

Burning River Baroque: “Destructive Desires” (Oct. 20)

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by David Kulma

Burning River Baroque’s October 20 performance at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights was a case study in thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts. Titled “Destructive Desires” and framed by informed program notes and remarks, the performance invoked the ongoing #MeToo movement. Soprano and Baroque cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust also spoke about their own thoughts and experiences, bringing the feminist slogan “The Personal Is Political” to life.

[Read more…]

Gregg Kallor’s setting of The Tell-Tale Heart to open Tuesday Musical Fuze Series

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When Halloween is on a Wednesday, it’s only right to celebrate it all week, and on the two weekends that fall on either side. That applies to arts organizations as well: the schedule of the musically spooky continues on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron, when this year’s Tuesday Musical Fuze Series gets under way.

At the heart of the program is Gregg Kallor’s setting of a classic story which recently turned 175 years old: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. (Quick refresher for those with only vague memories of high school: the narrator hears the sound of a beating heart coming from under the floorboards…and it’s the heart of the person they’ve murdered under mysterious, grisly circumstances.)

Kallor will take the keyboard part in the Poe setting, joined by cellist Joshua Roman and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano. They’ll mix and match each other throughout the program, which also includes music by Brahms, Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and John Jacob Niles, in addition to further works by Kallor. Tickets are available online.

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Fresh Perspectives launches November 2: a new approach to curating concerts

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by Mike Telin

When I called Devin Hinzo at our appointed time we exchanged hellos: “I was just working on staging a dance for next week’s concert,” he told me. The thing is, Devin Hinzo is an oboist. But he’s also a person who likes all kinds of artistic disciplines and enjoys discovering ways for those disciplines to work together.

On Friday, November 2 Hinzo will launch his Fresh Perspectives series with a program titled “Then & Now: the evolution of tradition, at Lab Studios by Glo, a 5,000-square foot warehouse space in Cleveland’s Superior Arts District. The Art Gallery opens at 6:30 pm with dj white rims. The program, “Then & Now: the evolution of tradition,” featuring music for solo instrument + electronics including a new collaborative work for oboe, hip-hop dancer, and laptop begins at 7:30 pm. For more information visit the Fresh Perspectives Facebook page. A donation of $5 is suggested. RSVP here.

The evening will feature works by composers Brian Raphael Nabors, Elizabeth Hoffman, Carolina Heredia, Ivonne Paredes and J.S. Bach. Performers include Hinzo, hip-hop dancer Ron’dale Simpson, flutist Brittany Trotter, cellist Kellen Degnan, percussionist Torrell Moss, and violinist Julian Maddox. [Read more…]

Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project announces CUSP Concert Series

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by Mike Telin

With the debut of its highly successful Re:Sound New & Experimental Music Festival behind them, the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project sets its sights on a new endeavor: the free CUSP Concert Series. The inaugural event will be held on Sunday, November 4 at 7:30 pm at the Bop Stop.

“From the beginning we wanted to produce a concert series,” CUSP artistic director Sophie Benn said during a telephone conversation. “The lineup of artists is great, and we are so excited to share this music with the Cleveland community. We want CUSP to engage the community in different ways and this series is another way to do that.”

The concert will feature Nebraska-based tubist, composer, and audio engineer Aaron Hynds, who will perform his own project, Transformer, a large-scale, evolving work for tuba and computer. The work is inspired by the composer’s love of science fiction, and by the realization of the computer as an equal creative entity. [Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society Ana Vidović Recital (Oct. 20)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Concerts can inspire a range of moods: passionate engagement at best, shades of frustration or offense at worst. One such mood, rare and therefore precious, arises when it dawns on the listener that something amazing is happening onstage, and the sheer quality of the performance prompts rapt absorption. Audience members at guitarist Ana Vidović’s concert for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society last week would eventually solicit an encore with a high-volume ovation. During the main program, however, near-silence descended over the pews of Plymouth Church, dozens straining to hear each masterful nuance. [Read more…]

The U.K.’s Marian Consort at St. John’s Cathedral (Oct. 19)

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by Nicholas Stevens

To speak of our era as one of unlimited access to global cultures is to imply — often inaccurately — that availability necessarily leads to familiarity. In the cases of art forms with deep roots in a particular place, no amount of streaming audio or video can stand in for the kind of live exposure that knocks one backward with the full force and physical presence of the new. How fortunate for Northeast Ohioans, then, that the Cathedral of St John the Evangelist invited the Marian Consort to Cleveland as the penultimate stop on their first North American tour. Their concert of music inspired by the Virgin Mary spanned centuries of sacred music in the English choral tradition. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Gimeno & Kosower (Oct. 18)

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by David Kulma

As autumn finally slammed Northeast Ohio with colder temperatures, the Toronto Symphony’s new music director- designate Gustavo Gimeno led The Cleveland Orchestra in a stimulating and shining program for his Severance Hall debut on Friday, October 18. This concert featured an early, ecstatic overture by Samuel Barber, an Alberto Ginastera concerto starring principal cello Mark Kosower, and a melody-drenched warhorse by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

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A concert of thought-provoking music at Cleveland State University (Sept. 17)

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by Mike Telin

Music can be a powerful tool for the expression of social discourse. Sometimes it is subtle. Other times it is overt and unapologetic. Such was the case with Andrew Rindfleisch’s American Monster, which received its premiere on September 17 in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University. The concert was presented as part of No Exit’s season-opening series of concerts and CSU’s Cleveland Contemporary Players Artist in Residency Series.

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Belgium’s Vox Luminis choir makes third visit to Cleveland

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by Daniel Hathaway

Having on earlier tours performed twice on the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Lionel Meunier and his Belgian choir Vox Luminis will open this season’s Cleveland Museum of Art Performing Arts Series at Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, October 24 at 7:30 pm with an all-Bach program.

ClevelandClassical.com’s Nicholas Jones wrote that on October 31, 2014, Vox Luminis “presented a beautifully crafted program that was at once passionate and serene.” This writer reported that the choir’s April 26, 2017 concert was “flawlessly sung,” “made dramatic use of the cathedral space,” and featured “meticulous tuning and vocal blend” in a program of “sober but exquisitely beautiful music.”

Those earlier programs featured laments (Domenico Scarlatti’s 10-voice Stabat Mater) and funeral music (including Purcell’s musical obsequies for Queen Mary). Sensing that the repertoire might be perceived as a bit dour, Meunier said to the audience in 2017, “I have to confess: we do have happier programs!”

The Belgians will prove that on Wednesday with their concert of five Motets by Johann Sebastian Bach, part of a tour which will include the ensemble’s first Bach performances in the United States (above, rehearsing in Kansas City). [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: a conversation with Ingo Metzmacher

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by Mike Telin

Good things come to those who wait. And when German conductor Ingo Metzmacher returns to the Severance Hall podium on Thursday, October 25 at 7:30 pm, he will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a program he has been waiting to conduct for a very long time.

“When we agreed that Christian Tetzlaff would play the Berg Violin Concerto, I thought — here’s my chance,” Metzmacher said during a telephone conversation. “I said, how about combining that with the Webern Passacaglia, which is a wonderful piece, and Schoenberg’s Pelléas and Mélisande after intermission? And they accepted. I’m thrilled because it’s been a dream of mine to combine these pieces into one program.” Metzmacher’s “dream program” will be repeated on Saturday, October 27 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

While all three works are by composers of the Second Viennese School, a group that comprised Schoenberg along with his students and associates, Metzmacher noted that Pelléas (1903) and the Passacaglia (1908) were both written before those composers had abandoned Romanticism. “They come from before the break so to speak,” he said. “Both pieces end in d minor, so there is a link from the first to the last piece on the program.”

[Read more…]

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