by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•For your evening plans: a piano quintet, a solo guitarist, or a discussion about improvisation
•Two music camps and a family concert this month
•Knighthood for Stephen Hough
•And another Sir to celebrate: Edward Elgar, from graduation ceremonies to bassoon to facial hair
by Donald Rosenberg
This essay was written as an overview of ChamberFest’s tenth season. It is reposted with the permission of the author and ChamberFest Cleveland.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t have to be convinced that chamber music is a gift — anytime, anywhere. But we should be especially grateful this year, when we have cravings to connect (reconnect?) on so many levels. The pandemic has continued to disrupt our lives. A senseless war has placed the world at risk. So why chamber music? And why now? [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Ten years ago when ChamberFest Cleveland launched its first festival with the theme “Big Bang,” the organizers envisioned that it would become a world-class festival. Since then, the Festival’s programming has explored themes such as “(IT’S) About Time,” “Crossing Borders,” “Tales and Legends,” “Cycles: Phases!” “In Search of Freedom,” “Under the Influence,” and most recently “Together Again.” And over the past decade ChamberFest Cleveland has indeed become world-class. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
A particularly gratifying take-away from the May 22 Canton Symphony Orchestra MasterWorks program at Umstattd Hall was that one need not be in an actual rocket ship to experience the beauties and mysteries of the cosmos.
As this concert so wondrously demonstrated, an orchestra as sublime as the CSO is itself a carefully constructed mode of transport. Call it a well-traveled vessel, amply fueled by a composer’s art, with performance flight plans navigated by the always sure hand of the conductor at the helm, Gerhardt Zimmermann. [Read more…]
by Peter Feher
The Cleveland Orchestra worked overtime last weekend, making every note count. The season at Severance Music Center came to a close with final performances of Verdi’s Otello, plus two additional programs that showed just how much repertoire the players can master. These special, one-off concerts, presented under the banner “Breaking Convention,” fit the experimental model the ensemble has established in recent years, trying out tricky music in unconventional formats around the schedule of an opera.
The singers had the night off, but the full orchestra was onstage May 27, at ease with compositions calculated to unsettle. Music director Franz Welser-Möst led a trio of contemporary symphonic works where challenges abound for performers and listeners alike. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
After writing his doctoral dissertation for the University of Iowa on the subject of American composer George Frederick Bristow’s Mass in C, CSU’s director of choirs Brian Bailey decided that this previously unperformed work needed a full, formal premiere as well as the critical edition he created for the degree.
He scheduled that performance at Fairmount Presbyterian Church for mid-March of 2020 with Choral Arts Cleveland, the avocational chorus he has conducted since taking the position over from Martin Kessler. As we now know, due to the advent of COVID-19, most live performances began falling like dominoes around that time. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
If you see a sudden influx of cello cases on Cleveland streets and sidewalks this week, it’s because the Lev Aronson Cello Festival, usually held in Dallas, is convening here for a packed schedule of events that will mainly interest those who play the violoncello, but many of which will appeal to a wider audience as well.
The brainchild of founding artistic director and Cleveland Orchestra cellist Brian Thornton, the Festival honors his teacher, Holocaust survivor Lev Aronson, who played principal with the Dallas Symphony. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
A surge of coronavirus in January forced The Cleveland Orchestra to postpone its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert. Traditionally held around the time of MLK Day, this year the concert will take place not long from Juneteenth.
The Orchestra will honor Dr. King on Saturday, June 4 at 7:00 pm at Mandel Concert Hall with a program of music by several Black composers — Dolores White, Mary D. Watkins, Carlos Simon, Brian Raphael Nabors, William Grant Still, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and John Rosamond Johnson — as well as music in the African American spiritual tradition. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
WELCOME TO JUNE and the beginning of Summer in our hemisphere, with much in the way of outdoor chores to accomplish, as illustrated, left, by the Limbourg brothers in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1416). June has also become the month of music festivals in Northeast Ohio. Today’s newsletter features articles about some that begin this week.
Month-long celebrations in the U.S. make June African-American Music Appreciation Month, as well as Great Outdoors Month, LGBTQ+ Awareness and Pride Month, and National Oceans Month (time to do something about all that plastic).
And June is National Smile Month in the U.K., whose subjects also happen to be marking the 70th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth II — a nice coincidence for the first time that any British monarch has celebrated a platinum jubilee.
In recognition of the occasion, the U.K. will create a four-day Jubilee bank holiday from June 2-5 to include a “once-in-a-generation show” that will “mix the best of British ceremonial splendour and pageantry with cutting-edge artistic and technological displays.” [Read more…]