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Archives for March 2019

Apollo’s Fire: Jeffrey Strauss returns for the funeral of Telemann’s canary

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by Daniel Hathaway

When Jeffrey Strauss sings Georg Philipp Telemann’s Funeral Cantata for an Artistically Trained Canary with Apollo’s Fire in four performances this weekend (March 7-10), the baritone will be returning to the stage for the first time following major heart surgery in the fall.

The affliction that sidelined him for six months came as a complete surprise. After singing the ensemble’s Baroque Music Barn concerts last June, Strauss took to bed for a week with a fever that persisted, eventually sending him to his doctor in Chicago for tests. “A blood culture finally identified it as a serious but not that uncommon bacterial infection,” he said in a telephone conversation. After five days in hospital, Strauss was sent home with five weeks’ worth of intravenous antibiotics and an appointment with a cardiologist — the bacteria had damaged a valve in his heart that needed to be replaced.

“I had a wonderful surgeon,” Strauss said. “When he found out I was a singer, he immediately said, ‘I’ll tell the anesthesiologist to put a smaller tube down your windpipe.’ [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland launches House Concert Series: a conversation with Franklin Cohen

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by Mike Telin

It’s wonderful to hear great chamber music performances in a concert hall, but it’s an entirely different experience to hear it in someone’s home with light appetizers and your favorite beverage.

“As I get older I’m really enjoying situations where the audience is five feet away from you and you can feel everyone’s energy,” clarinetist and ChamberFest Cleveland co-artistic director Franklin Cohen said. “There’s something very special about that environment that I can’t even describe — it’s a wonderful thing.”

On Friday, March 8 at 7:30 pm, ChamberFest Cleveland will present the Cohen Candlelight House Concert, featuring Franklin Cohen and the Callisto Quartet. The program will include Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 1, “Métamorphoses nocturnes” and Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. Light appetizers and beverages will be served after the concert. Tickets are available online, and the address will be provided upon purchase.

Cohen said that the House Concert Series provides the perfect opportunity to present “a local ensemble that has received national recognition.” [Read more…]

Choice and chance: Ensemble Mélange comes to Sandusky Concert Association

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you’ve ever been sitting in a concert and just wanted to shout out what piece you want to hear, well here’s your chance — but just a chance.

That’s the concept behind the partly planned, partly unplanned program assembled by mixed sextet Ensemble Mélange for their performance at the State Room at Sandusky State Theatre on Thursday, March 7 at 7:30 pm.

It’s like a party game, and here are the rules: first, each member of the audience receives a printed program that looks kind of like a restaurant menu, with around twenty works or single movements divided into different categories. Those include types of classical music, like Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th-century, and opera, and other genres like latin, jazz, klezmer, and Broadway.

If you get lucky, the group’s random-number generator will match up with the number listed in the corner of your program — and you’ll have your pick of piece, so long as it’s on tap. (In other words, no shouting for Freebird.)

[Read more…]

Contemporary Youth Orchestra says happy 80th birthday to Joan Tower

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by Mike Telin

On September 6 of 2018, Joan Tower celebrated her 80th birthday. On Saturday, March 9 at 7:00 pm, in Cuyahoga Community College’s Metro Auditorium, the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, under the direction of Liza Grossman, will honor that occasion with a concert dedicated to the eminent composer’s music. The program will include the Ohio premieres of Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 6, Stroke, and In Memory (For String Orchestra), as well as Tambor. Tickets are available online.

Among her numerous accolades — Tower has just been named the recipient of the League of American Orchestra’s 2019 Gold Baton Award — she was the first woman to win the Grawemeyer Award for Music in 1990. The New Yorker called her “one of the most successful woman composers of all time,” and she has served as a source of inspiration to Grossman dating back to CYO’s fourth season in 1998. “I was researching women composers and Joan was one of the first to come up,” Grossman said during a telephone conversation.

The conductor said that she quickly became “fascinated” with Tower’s music and history. “The way she was carving a path for women composers and inspiring them to write really was inspirational to me.” Still, it was not until August of 2000 that Grossman decided that the orchestra was ready to play one of Tower’s works. [Read more…]

CityMusic: violinist Sayaka Shoji to premiere concerto by Avner Dorman

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Local listeners might know that CityMusic Cleveland’s music director, Avner Dorman, is also a composer. His separate but related talents of the baton and of the pen will be on display when he leads the orchestra in the world premiere of Still, his third violin concerto, in five free concerts from March 13-17.

The soloist is a familiar face. Sayaka Shoji — first prize winner at the 1999 Paganini Competition — has in recent years joined CityMusic for the Brahms and Tchaikovsky concertos.

We last spoke to her in 2015 in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on her Japanese, Italian, and German upbringing (she now lives in Paris), her interest in jazz, the beginning of her solo career, her early dream of singing opera, and her previous work with Dorman — including commissioning a violin sonata from him.

I caught up with Shoji over email, and began by asking about the first time she heard Dorman’s music — in Verbier, Switzerland, where they met.

[Read more…]

Charles McGuire on Cleveland Chamber Choir’s “March Choral Madness”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland Chamber Choir’s “March Choral Madness” concerts this weekend won’t feature dueling madrigals vying for slots on basketball-like brackets as they did in 2018. Instead, artistic director Scott MacPherson has chosen an interesting program of works by Johannes Brahms, Andrew Rindfleisch, and Benjamin Britten for the Choir’s mid-season programs on Saturday, March 9 at 7:30 pm at Brecksville Methodist Church and Sunday, March 10 at 3:00 pm at First Baptist in Shaker Heights.

I chatted on the phone recently with Oberlin Conservatory musicology professor Charles Edward McGuire, who will be giving pre-concert lectures 45 minutes before each of this weekend’s performances. What does he plan to tell the audience?

“I’ll be talking about my love for all three of these fantastic composers,” he said, adding that he’s trying to decide how interactive he wants to make the presentations. “You don’t have all the audiovisual aids in a concert venue that you would in a classroom. You have to rely on people’s imagination, slip in the occasional joke, and hope that the handheld microphone works.”

[Read more…]

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