by Mike Telin
IN THE NEWS:
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced its 2021-2022 Severance Hall season: click here to view the rundown.
STREAMED & IN PERSON CONCERTS:
With the Memorial Day weekend approaching there are fewer concerts than usual, but check our Concert Listings page to see what events are happening.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On May 24 in 1803, Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 (“Kreutzer”) was premiered in Vienna by violinist George Bridgetower, with Beethoven at the piano. You can read more about the work’s interesting history — and less than stellar first performance — here.
Our birthday list is highlighted by three Americans. In 1936 composer and poet
Harold Budd came into the world in Los Angeles. Although Budd was first known for his minimalist and avant-garde pieces he was better known later for his work with Brian Eno and Robin Guthrie.
In 1947, composer Michael Horwood was born in Buffalo, New York. on May 24, 1947. A student of composition and theory at the State University of New York at Buffalo, his teachers included Lejaren Hiller, Lukas Foss, and Istvan Anhalt. He served as professor of music and humanities at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto, Ontario. He also formed the improvisation ensemble Convergence, in which he played piano and percussion.
And in 1955, composer Phil Fried was born in New York City. His catalogue of works include free improvisation, orchestral music, vocal music, solo, and chamber music. On his website he writes: “For me there are two kinds of improvisation: 1) collaboration with others which is a shared experience of reacting to others to make the form, and 2) solo improvisation which is composing in the moment.”
There is one passing to mention: in 1996 composer Jacob Druckman left the world in New Haven at the age of 67. Known for his extensive work in electronic music, he also wrote for small ensembles and orchestras. In 1972 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Windows, and served as composer-in-residence of the New York Philharmonic from 1982 until 1985. Druckman taught at Juilliard, The Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood, Brooklyn College, Bard College, and Yale University. Click here to watch an interview with Druckman during which he talks about his compositional process — “the first measure of a piece is just too terrifying beyond words,” he says.
Click here to listen to Aureole: for orchestra (1979) performed by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Gunther Schuller.
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
HAPPENING TODAY ONLINE:
A virtuoso is a highly skilled performer, and a virtuoso performance is one that astonishes the audience by its feats. In ancient Greece the cities would hold male competitions in acrobatics, conjuring, public reciting, blowing the trumpet, and acting out scenes from Homer’s epics, the winners of which would have been praised as virtuous, or “full of manly virtues.” —
The Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s live-streamed 62nd season came to a rousing conclusion on Monday, May 17, when five wind players and a pianist came together around quintets by masters of old and new.
In a normal season (remember those?), Daniel Meyer would describe his job as music director and conductor of the Erie Symphony, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and the Lakeside Symphony. Since COVID hit, things have changed. “I’ve apparently become a film producer,” he told me in a recent telephone conversation. “That’s a skill set I didn’t know I had before the pandemic, but it’s helped justify our existence.”
STREAMED CONCERTS:
Now, on to the birthdays. It’s always interesting to scroll through the list of musicians born on any single day and see who catches your attention. Although I found today’s list to be a bit sparse, aside from singers Joe Cocker and Cher, one name particularly caught my eye. On May 20, 1927, composer and teacher Walter Aschaffenberg was born in Essen, Germany in 1927.
Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival founder Armin Kelly was planning to celebrate the second decade of the event when the novel coronavirus crashed the party. “The 2020 shutdown was too close to our festival time to put an alternate plan together,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “So we put up one streamed concert, and that was our 20th anniversary season.”
Oberlin Conservatory has announced that its successes in implementing online education over the past year have given rise to entirely new opportunities for virtual learning developed for a worldwide audience. This summer marks the launch of Oberlin Conservatory Global, which begins with a series of courses designed for music students, teachers, and lifelong learners of all backgrounds.
The new music ensemble No Exit continues its longstanding collaboration with Zeitgeist, their counterparts from Minnesota’s Twin Cities, with “New Sound Worlds,” a free