by Nicolette Cheauré
Margaret Brouwer’s latest album, Reactions: Songs and Chamber Music, released in April of this year, is an exploration of shared humanity, connection, love, and responses to universal life experiences.
Through a mix of instrumental and vocal chamber music featuring Sarah Beaty (mezzo-soprano), Brian Skoog (tenor), Mari Sato (violin and narration), Eliesha Nelson (viola), and Shuai Wang (piano), Brouwer offers a study of the range of human emotion. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Textile artist Jodi Kanter has developed a second career as a musical impresario. As artistic director of M.U.S.i.C. (Musical Upcoming Stars in the Classics), she heads a non-profit organization that searches out talented young musicians, gives them the opportunity to perform in concerts they curate themselves, and compensates them for their services.
Those opportunities come in the form of two styles of concerts each season: Classical Cabarets and Musical Salons. The latter, presented in the intimate settings of private homes, include Mid-Winter Musical Salons, Spring Salons, Halloween Salons, and Holiday Salons.
Recently, Kanter has added outdoor events to the mix. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ENTRIES:
. Hello Dolly! at Ohio Light Opera
. Almanac: Sir Peter Pears, Jeffrey Mumford, and Darius Milhaud celebrate anniversaries of their debuts
ON TODAY:
At 2:00 pm Ohio Light Opera presents Cinderella, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II at Freedlander Theatre, 329 E. University St., Wooster. Purchase tickets here.
To check out live concerts happening this week in Northeast Ohio, see our Concert Listings. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Violinist Alexi Kenney was in his early twenties when he made his ChamberFest Cleveland debut. Still, his résumé up to that point was already impressive. He had won the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, had given recitals at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and was the recipient of top prizes at the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition and the Mondavi Center Competition.
Since then Alexi Kenney has established a career that is his own. He regularly creates experimental programs, commissions new works, solos with major orchestras around the world, and is a constant figure at renowned chamber music festivals. He is also the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.
And this week Kenney will once again return to ChamberFest. I caught up with the violinist by telephone.
by Jarrett Hoffman
“The piece that you’re going to hear is not the piece that I wanted to write,” composer Yevgeniy Sharlat said during an interview.
Sharlat’s Dumka-22, a commission from ChamberFest Cleveland that will receive its premiere on Saturday, June 25 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Institute of Music, was originally conceived around the idea of family — in particular the family at the core of ChamberFest.
That would be Franklin Cohen (clarinet), his daughter Diana Cohen (violin), and her husband Roman Rabinovich (piano) — the three co-artistic directors — as well as Diana’s brother Alexander Cohen (percussion), a frequent performer at the Festival.
So, how about a “family piece” written for that quartet? That was the pitch to Sharlat, the Russian-born composer who was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and who teaches composition at the University of Texas at Austin.
by Noah Auby
Amber Rogers is no stranger to overcoming logistical hurdles. As Executive Director of the Cleveland Federation of Musicians’ Local 4 Music Fund, she is in her second year of coordinating She Scores — a concert series solely dedicated to living female composers. Rogers is grateful that her series has been renewed and revitalized in a big way.
She Scores 2022 will kick off on June 23rd at 7:00 pm in Case Western Reserve’s Harkness Chapel and continue at the same time and location on June 24th and 25th. A pre-concert talk will be given by Destinee Siebe on the 23rd at 6:30 pm. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.
I caught up with Amber Rogers via Zoom and asked the Duluth, Minnesota native about She Scores 2022 as well as about her music career. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•World music on the horizon from Tuesday Musical
•Winners of the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism announced
•Two storied institutions closing their doors: the San Antonio Symphony and the community music school McGill Conservatory
•Almanac: Pavel Haas, Alan Hovhaness, and Gunther Schuller
by Daniel Hathaway
“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” a line from The Book of Job, inspired the title of a full-length opera that received its Cleveland premiere last weekend at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. I saw the last of four performances on Sunday afternoon, June 12.
With libretto and music by Cathy Lesser Mansfield, the opera, which really more resembles a staged oratorio, filled the stage of Silver Hall with the 40-member cast and chorus.
The Sparks Fly Upward traces the saga of three families, two Jewish (the Rosenbaums and the Steins), one Christian (the Webers), beginning in the fall of 1938, when the Nazis start deporting Jews to Poland and the atrocities of Kristallnacht signal troubles to come. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Violinist Geneva Lewis has been hailed as “clearly one to watch” by Musical America. She is the recipient of a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Competition. Other honors include Kronberg Academy’s Prince of Hesse Prize and being named a Finalist at the 2018 Naumburg Competition, a Performance Today Young Artist in Residence, and Musical America’s New Artist of the Month.
Cellist Gabriel Martins’ accolades include the Concert Artists Guild – Young Classical Artists Trust Grand Prize, the Sphinx Competition Gold Medal, the David Popper International Cello Competition Gold Medal, and the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians Silver Medal, to name only a few. He has performed at the Wigmore, Carnegie, and Merkin Halls, 92nd Street Y, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and with the Houston, Indianapolis, Memphis, Pacific, and Phoenix Symphony Orchestras. The Strad Magazine declared his New York City recital debut to be “flawlessly played” and “a deeply moving experience.”
Later this week the two “rising stars” will make their ChamberFest Cleveland debuts. We caught up with Lewis and Martins by Zoom and began by asking how the ChamberFest invitations came about. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ENTRIES:
. Yesterday was Juneteenth, celebrating the end of slavery in 1865, but only established as a federal holiday in 2021 and not widely implemented until 2022. Since it falls on Sunday this year, we celebrate it on the following Monday
. Almanac: the birth of pianist André Watts in 1946, the debut of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring at Glyndebourne in 1947, and the first public demonstration of Columbia Records’ 33-rpm “Long Playing” discs at a press conference in New York City in 1948
. Early warning: astronomically speaking, Summer begins tomorrow, Tuesday, June 21 at 5:13 am with the Summer Solstice
ON TODAY:
Tune in to Eric Charnofsky’s “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music” today at 2pm for two hours’ worth of newish music, with works by Frank Martin, Joan Tower, Stephen Whittington, Zvronimir Nagy, Marin Marais, and Mark John McEncroe. (Question: which of these composers is a stowaway on a program of recent music?) [Read more…]