Archives for April 2020
DIARY: Saturday, April 25, 2020
DIARY: Friday, April 24, 2020
DIARY: Thursday, April 23, 2020
DIARY: Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Cleveland Film Festival to stream Allan Miller’s Jeannette Sorrell documentary
by Daniel Hathaway
Playing With Fire, Allan Miller’s 70-minute documentary about Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell that made its debut in New York last October, will be streamed through April 28 by the Cleveland International Film Festival — which has now moved online. Click here to watch a trailer.
The film follows Sorrell as she rehearses and performs with her Baroque orchestra in Cleveland and at Tanglewood, as she works with the conducting class at the Aspen Festival, and as she prepares for a Messiah performance with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. Testaments to her leadership by a number of her musicians are seeded through the narrative.
Miller, who has received Academy Awards for his documentaries about Isaac Stern (From Mao to Mozart) and Zubin Mehta (The Bolero), and has filmed the musical activities of Kurt Masur and Valery Gergiev, was inspired to follow Sorrell around after hearing a New York performance by Apollo’s Fire. The conductor and harpsichordist told me about that encounter in a recent Skype conversation. [Read more…]
Downtime, anxiety, hope: checking in with five area musicians
by Jarrett Hoffman
How are you? That question feels more meaningful than usual right now, not just a greeting but a real entry point into each other’s changed lives.
I reached out to five area musicians to see how they’re steering themselves through the Coronavirus crisis, and how they’re spending their time when the slate of performance work has been wiped clean.
Their replies by email — a mix of serious, thoughtful, and lighthearted — touched on a variety of topics: their downtime, their feelings about social media, what they miss about live music, their anxiety, and their hopes for the future.
DIARY: Tuesday, April 21, 2020
CD Review — Solomiya Ivakhiv & Antonio Pompa-Baldi: Mendelssohn early violin concertos
by Hannah Schoepe
While Felix Mendelssohn’s Concerto in e is played by every violinist at a certain stage in their development, not many listeners are aware of the first violin concerto Mendelssohn composed — in d minor.
His double concerto for violin and piano might be even lesser known. Ukrainian violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv has dedicated her new album Mendelssohn, released by Brilliant Classics, to rediscovering these lost gems. By her side is Italian-born pianist and Cleveland Institute of Music faculty member Antonio Pompa-Baldi. Theodore Kuchar conducts the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra.
Cuyahoga Arts & Culture to Accelerate Grant Payments
Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC) will accelerate payment of $5.1 million in operating support grants to 65 arts and culture organizations impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
At their annual meeting on April 15, the CAC Board of Trustees approved a plan to expedite the payment of 2020 grant funds to General Operating Support grantees. Typically, the grants are paid out in three installments; under this approved plan, grantees can request all or part of their remaining grant funds now.
Additionally, the Trustees approved changes to the current Project Support grant agreements, which will eliminate the requirement to have matching funds; allow for reimbursements for projects that incurred expenses but had to be canceled; and provide grantees the opportunity to move their project to a date in 2021.