by Timothy Robson
The Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival concert on the afternoon of April 12 carried the title “Suites and Motets.” Fynette Kulas Music Hall, a former church worship space repurposed as a concert venue, was set up with the audience surrounding the orchestra and choir on three sides. Cellist René Schiffer, who performed three movements from Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites as “ear cleansers” between the motets, sat on what is normally the room’s stage platform. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The duo piano team of Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe combined virtuosity and entertainment at their afternoon concert on April 13 in Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium, as part of the 2019 BW Bach Festival. Johann Sebastian Bach’s works were filtered through the lens of composers as diverse as Heitor Villa-Lobos and György Kurtág, and through the duo’s own arrangements.
by Mike Telin
On Wednesday, April 17 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series will present The Spring Quartet, an all-star ensemble that includes drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxman Joe Lovano, bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Leo Genovese. The concert is part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Program. Tickets are limited and available online.
Click here to read a preview of tomorrow night’s concert. Here we continue our conversations with Lovano and DeJohnette to talk about their careers and how they came to jazz.
Joe Lovano was born in Cleveland, where his father was a noted tenor saxophonist. After graduating from Euclid High School he went on to study at the Berklee College of Music. Lovano is a self-proclaimed Cleveland ambassador and is thrilled to have recently spent two nights at the Bop Stop recording for National Public Radio’s Jazz Night in America. When I spoke to him, he was in a four-day residency at San Francisco Jazz.
by Daniel Hathaway
In the third of four back-to-back performances of J.S. Bach’s “Great Catholic Mass” on Sunday afternoon, April 14 in St. Raphael Church in Bay Village, the musicians of Apollo’s Fire showed no signs of fatigue despite heavy physical and musical demands. Led by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, soloists, chorus, and instrumentalists gave uniformly brilliant performances of a musical monument that the composer was only able to hear in bits and pieces during his lifetime. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
It’s a near-sacred tenet of the concert business that the show must go on. Happily for the Oberlin Artist Recital Series, French pianist Alexandre Tharaud made that happen when he stepped in on very short notice — and soon after an international flight — to replace Piotr Anderszewski in Finney Chapel on April 3. And with J.S. Bach’s daunting “Goldberg” Variations, no less. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Concerts at Transformer Station always come with surprises, and on Thursday evening, March 29, there were at least two from the get-go. The audience found themselves seated around one of Mexican artist Raúl de Nieves’ enigmatic beadwork and fabric installations. And in a way, the extraordinary concert by German violinist Carolin Widmann was already in progress when ticket holders arrived. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aka Notorious RBG
On Thursday, April 18 at 7:00 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, pianist Angelin Chang, soprano Patrice Michaels, and classical music producer James Ginsburg will present Michaels’ THE LONG VIEW: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Nine Songs. The cycle serves as the centerpiece of this one-act, 75-minute dramatic concert which also includes works by Vivian Fung, Stacy Garrop, Lee Hoiby, Lori Laitman, and John Musto as well as projection designs by Yee Eun Nam. A Question & Answer session will follow the performance. Admission is free and open to the public.
This nine-song cycle by Michaels (daughter-in-law of RBG) brings to light many aspects of Justice Ginsburg’s personal and professional life through letters, remembrances, conversations, and court opinions. The cycle has been recorded by Michaels for Cedille Records, the Chicago-based label of James Ginsburg (son of RBG). The album Notorious RBG in Song is available from Cedille.
by Jarrett Hoffman
Pianist Lara Downes will bring together two recent projects, one devoted to Leonard Bernstein, the other celebrating women composers, when she visits E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on Thursday, April 18 at 7:30 pm as part of Tuesday Musical’s Fuze Series.
Bernstein’s own works, new arrangements of his pieces, and works that were dedicated to him by John Corigliano, Lukas Foss, and Michael Abels will make up the first half of the program — mostly taken from Downes’ 2018 album For Lenny.
Next is The Answer is: Yes, a recent Bernstein-inspired piece by Tuesday Musical composer-in-residence Gregg Kallor, premiered in October. New to this performance is a dance aspect — Downes will collaborate with the Miller South Dance Ensemble, directed by Ashley Watts, and comprising students from Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts in Akron.
by Mike Telin
It’s been three decades since the Oberlin Conservatory launched its Jazz Studies Program, and beginning on Monday, April 15, the school will mark the milestone with a three-day celebration. (A full schedule is below.) The festivities will culminate on Wednesday, April 17 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel with an Artist Recital Series performance by The Spring Quartet, an all-star ensemble that includes drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxman Joe Lovano, bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Leo Genovese. Tickets are limited and available online.
The membership of the Spring Quartet spans three generations, something that DeJohnette, a 2012 NEA Jazz Master, said makes for a nice balance of older and younger generations. “There’s this exchange of inspiration from Esperanza and Leo and you need that young energy,” he said during an interview.
In a separate interview Joe Lovano said that the group shares a common musical vocabulary which is the reason the four members “clicked from the very first downbeat.”
DeJohnette agreed. “Sometimes people come together and the magic happens,” he said. “We have a lot of love and respect for each other as people and as artists, and the propensity to work together cooperatively is greatly enhanced because of that.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Patrons of Apollo’s Fire and the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival will have the rare experience this weekend of hearing J.S. Bach’s great B-Minor Mass performed locally for the first time on period instruments. Among those will be three natural trumpets and a single natural horn — both played without valves. The distinguished performers will include trumpeter Steven Marquardt and hornist Todd Williams.
Marquardt and his colleagues Perry Sutton and Stanley Curtis will be doing a lot of trumpeting during the Mass. “The Bach is really quite demanding. We play in eleven of the 27 movements, compared to only five in Handel’s Messiah — and two of those are back to back, so it’s more like four,” he said in a telephone conversation.
Williams, on the other hand, will be making a true cameo appearance, playing only in the “Quoniam” of the “Gloria,” an unusual bass aria supported by solo horn and a pair of bassoons. “The ‘Quoniam’ is not as stratospheric as the trumpet parts, though it has its own challenges,” he said in a separate conversation. “You sit there for 45 minutes, then you have to play a very difficult and quite famous solo. It’s sort of a wild movement, with a mood change that’s a bit shocking after what came just before. [Read more…]