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Archives for February 2022

DIARY: Monday, February  28, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

In this entry:

• On today: Eric Charnofsky hosts an unusual playlist from CWRU, Rocky River Chamber Music Society concert features Oberlin clarinet professor & friends

• Concert updates from Tuesday Musical & the ReSound Festival

• An amusing story about pianist Richard Goode’s trip to the dentist

• Anniversaries of a composer who bred famous horses and another who retired at the age of 37 after penning 34 stage works since he turned 18

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today’s edition of Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music from Case Western Reserve university visits a violin concerto by Michael Torke, Piano Preludes by William Grant Still, a Rossini String Sonata, Paul Harvey’s Concertino for tenor saxophone and piano, and John Alden Carpenter’s jazz ballet score Krazy Kat, inspired by a famous cartoon strip. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, February 26 & 27, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS ENTRY:

Weekend concerts include Oberlin faculty recitals, two Cleveland Chamber Choir concerts with Cecilia McDowall (pictured, plus an appearance at Trinity Cathedral), CIM Shakespeare virtual Operas, pianist Nathan Carterette with Verb Ballets, duo-pianists Chang and Siskind, Les Délices goes live, Uchida with The Cleveland Orchestra, CIM’s organ studio at CMA, White-Gould & Jenkins at West Shore UU, CityMusic with Groundworks Dance at St. Stanislaus, and West Shore Chorale’s winter concert.

IN THE NEWS:

The tragic drowning of Cleveland Opera Theater’s Megan Thompson, Valery Gergiev’s Putin links result in more cancellations, and a Van Magazine satire gets taken seriously.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

Remembering Howard Hanson, Marie-Claire Alain, and Van Cliburn. [Read more…]

Oberlin students add their personal touch to silent films at the Birenbaum (Feb. 15)

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by Stephanie Manning

What do you get when you combine the sounds of an organ, accordion, guitar, violin, and piano? A creative soundtrack to Les Vampires, of course.

This unusual ensemble made up one of three groups from “Performing Silent Film Scores from Historic Photoplay Music,” an Oberlin Conservatory Winter Term project led by Oberlin musicology professor Emily Laurance with the assistance of Rodney Sauer, director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Using resources from Sauer and his group, the students in the project compiled their own scores to a variety of silent film selections, culminating in a performance on Tuesday, February 15 as part of the inaugural Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, February 25, 2022

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by Mike Telin

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.— Charles Mingus

IN TODAY’S ISSUE:

• Concerts by Carillonneur George Leggiero, pianist Caroline Oltmanns, the Krantz/Carlock/Lefebvre trio, The Cleveland Orchestra, Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and Les Délices.

• Ian Pomerantz says that it’s time to talk about antisemitism in the early music field.

• The Cleveland Cello Society has rescheduled their annual fundraiser, i Cellisti, And Valery Gergiev will not conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in concerts at Carnegie Hall.

• Almanac: the births of Dame Myra Hess (pictured) and Maryanne Amacher. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, February 24, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN TODAY’S ISSUE:

•An article about Ukrainian musicians and national pride

•Concerts from CIM Opera Theater, Cleveland Composers Guild, The Cleveland Orchestra, and Oberlin faculty and guests, plus a jazz piano master class and more from CSU

•Micro-operas now on-demand from the Operas [in Place] festival, an extended deadline for Orchestrating Change Leadership Program nominations, and a piano and keyboard donation program from Piano Cleveland

•Coming up on the calendar: Apollo’s Fire’s “Feeling Blue: Baroque Meets Jazz”

•Almanac: Ukrainian-born American composer and pianist Leo Ornstein, once one of the most recognizable names in American classical music

[Read more…]

Oberlin Winter Term opera: premiere of The Puppy Episode (Feb. 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

“It takes so many people to put on a production, especially a new one,” Oberlin Opera professor and director Christopher Mirto said in a recent interview with this publication. And lots of time as well, especially when the gestation period for a new work coincides with a pandemic.

Matthew Recio’s The Puppy Episode, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, stage direction by Mirto, musical preparation by Dan Michalak, and set design by Julia Noulin-Merat, received its premiere performance on the stage of Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory on February 16. Tiffany Chang conducted the eight-piece orchestra. [Read more…]

Harlem Quartet at Tuesday Musical:
“Los hermanos” López-Gavilán reunited

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Among the wide-ranging works of pianist and composer Aldo López-Gavilán is one that was inspired by the relationship between him and his brother, violinist and Harlem Quartet founder Ilmar López-Gavilán.

As Ilmar said during a recent telephone call, “This piece speaks to the moments that we did not have together.”

On Tuesday, March 1 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical will present a program titled “Los Hermanos Reunited.” The two Cuban-born brothers will come together with Ilmar’s quartet-mates in Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat and Aldo’s classically-influenced, stylistically-varied brand of Afro-Cuban jazz. Tickets are available here.

As a prelude to the concert, Tuesday Musical is collaborating with Akron’s Nightlight Cinema for screenings of Los Hermanos / The Brothers on Monday, February 28 at 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm. (Tickets are still available for the matinee.) The documentary is about their shared childhood, their separation as a result of geopolitics — Ilmar lives in the U.S., Aldo in Cuba — their reunion, and their subsequent performances across America.

[Read more…]

Fatoumata Diawara makes her visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Balance is a key word in describing singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor Fatoumata Diawara.

There’s her music, where she aims to respect her Malian roots while embracing international influences.

There’s her love of pop music, contrasted with her lyrics, which can venture into heavy subjects — the antithesis of bubblegum.

And there’s the fact that, against those sometimes dark lines of text, she radiates joy onstage.

Clevelanders were deprived of that music and that stage presence two years ago, when Diawara’s trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art was canceled. So it was good news when her name appeared on the lineup for the Museum’s Performing Arts Series this season: she’ll finally make her visit to Gartner Auditorium next Wednesday, March 2 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available here.

[Read more…]

Richard Hawkins & Friends at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

When the Oberlin Conservatory’s Richard Hawkins was asked to curate a concert for the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, he knew right away that it was an opportunity to program works that would include his Oberlin Conservatory faculty friends. “It’s always nice to present chamber music for winds and strings that people might not know,” the clarinetist said during a telephone conversation.

On Monday, February 28 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Hawkins will be joined by Sibbi Bernhardsson (violist), Kirsten Docter (viola), James Howsmon (piano), Dmitry Kouzov (cello), Drew Pattison (bassoon), and Jeff Scott (horn) in a forgotten quintet from the turn of the 20th century, a light-hearted trio from the early 1980s, and a masterpiece sextet from 1935. The performance is free and face masks are required. The event will be live streamed on the RRCMS Facebook page. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Israel in Egypt (Feb. 17)

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by Peter Feher   

When it comes to Handel’s oratorios, another repeat isn’t always a welcome thing. But Apollo’s Fire knows how to make an evening exciting, and the group’s reprise performances of the composer’s Israel in Egypt last week — in a streamlined version first presented by the ensemble in 2017 — kept the intrigue factor high.

Artistic director Jeannette Sorrell adapted the Baroque score with certain modern expectations in mind. Her production retains Handel’s solemn opening, achieving a kind of period authenticity, but jettisons much of the repetition and inessential action in the rest of the music. The result is a lean and engaging dramatic arc — less than two hours — that translates 18th-century entertainment for the 21st century.

[Read more…]

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