by Jacob Strauss
ENCORE Chamber Music held a musical tasting on Sunday afternoon, July 3rd at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts. “Tales of Travel and Transformation” featured members of the Verona Quartet, artistic director Jinjoo Cho, and other faculty of the summer institute.
Cellist Max Geissler led off with composer-in-residence Andrew Rindfleisch’s Quiet Music for Solo Violoncello. Gymnastic hand positions land on natural harmonics in “Waltz Music.” Heavy rhythmic lines roll under chords played assertively by Geissler in “Fast Music,” then become quiet while wind chimes glisten in “Slow Music.” [Read more…]
Si j’etais vous, I would not trust anyone who tries to solve your problems for you. You have to do it yourself, face up to the bleak black wall looming above and keep standing straight. You succumb if you don’t, and that spells long, regressive rest. Atrophying strength. Decomposition.
IN THIS EDITION:
Gilbert & Sullivan might be the Ohio Light Opera signature, but the company in residence at the College of Wooster each summer has made other traditions out of its love for lyric theater. One curious case is the 1924 operetta The Student Prince, which OLO reprises for a seventh time in a production running through July 29 at Freedlander Theatre.
Before Austrian composer Franz Lehár hit the Viennese operetta bull’s eye with The Merry Widow, he composed a less well-known show, The Mock Marriage (Die Juxheirat), whose complicated plot, set in America in 1904, gives a nod to such contemporary societal issues as gender identity and the empowerment of women.
The Fantasticks 
If you missed the tail end of ChamberFest Cleveland’s season, don’t be too worried. The highlights from each summer of brilliant, collaborative performances have a way of sticking around — online on the Festival’s YouTube channel and, more recently, on the radio with WCLV. Certainly this year’s finale, on July 2 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, was full of such memorable musical moments.
One can never predict where life will take you, but wherever it does, friendships, artistic and personal, endure. If in doubt, just ask pianists Yaron Kohlberg and Bishara Haroni.
Tri-C JazzFest went out with a bang this year. The stages at Playhouse Square got bigger and busier with each act on the schedule for Saturday, June 25. Steady momentum was the theme all around, not least for the Festival itself, which this summer returned to full size, following a detour online in 2020 and the move to a smaller venue, Cain Park, in 2021.
TODAY’S ENTRIES: