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Archives for September 2022

DIARY: Weekend, September 30—October 2, 2022

by

by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Choices to be made as the calendar fills up, Soweto Gospel Choir (pictured) reschedules Tuesday Musical concert

. Denyce Graves Foundation announces Shared Voices Partnership

. Almanac lists an array of first performances and anniversaries from September 30 through October 2.

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

Tonight at Severance, Franz Welser-Möst leads a stageful of musicians in Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony (stop by to admire the composer’s autograph manuscript, recently gifted to the Orchestra), and in Warner Concert Hall, Tim Weiss leads the Oberlin Sinfonietta in more recent fare.

On Saturday, the Firelands Symphony plays at Sawmill Creek in Huron.

On Sunday come the choices. [Read more…]

“American Fanfare” in Akron (Sep. 24)

by

by Stephanie Manning

Just before the Akron Symphony string section began a work by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate on Saturday evening, conductor Christopher Wilkins turned to the audience, raised a document, and began to read. What he had in his hand wasn’t program notes. As a pairing to the work by Tate — a member of the Chickasaw nation — Wilkins read a land acknowledgement for the city of Akron, honoring the Indigenous people to whom the land belongs.

The piece, along with that reading, is just one example of the Symphony’s aim this season to elevate the music of underrepresented composers. On September 24 in E.J. Thomas Hall, the ASO’s 2022-23 season began with “American Fanfare,” which explored the complexities of American identity and culture.

[Read more…]

Les Délices opens season
with “The Highland Lassie” 
(Sept. 24)

by

by Mike Telin

Why is it that people never seem to tire of 18th-century Scottish folk songs? The moment we hear the poems of A red, red rose, they conjure up the image of the lonely romantic, sitting alone next to a fireplace or in the corner of a village pub while a band entertains the other patrons.

On Saturday afternoon, September 24, Les Délices brought these images to life during their season opener, “The Highland Lassie.” The program mixed an entertaining set of songs steeped in romantic sentimentality, with fiddle tunes that made it impossible not to tap along. The venue — Dunham Tavern Museum — provided the perfect ambiance for the capacity crowd to sit back and enjoy the 60-plus minutes of top-notch performances that blurred the lines between folk song and art song.

[Read more…]

Gabrielle Haigh visits Respighi’s circle in debut CD with pianist Randall Fusco

by

by Daniel Hathaway

There are myriad paths to follow — both musical and literary — when curating an art song recital. For her impressive debut solo CD, soprano Gabriella Haigh chose to visit repertoire reflecting musical relationships that swirled around the 19th-century Italian composer Ottorino Respighi.

That idea was born when Haigh discovered that Respighi’s wife, Elsa (née Olivieri-Sangiacomo), who outlived him by some 60 years — she died at 102 — was both his pupil and a composer herself.

“This revelation led to the idea of performing a recital featuring art songs composed by Respighi’s most influential teachers, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Giuseppe Martucci, by his students Vittorio Rieti and Elsa Respighi, and of course several of his own,” Haigh wrote in her album notes. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, September 29, 2022

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Tonight: The Cleveland Orchestra celebrates Mahler 2 manuscript gift, and Oberlin Chamber Orchestra pairs classics with a student composition

•New date for the Soweto Gospel Choir at Tuesday Musical

•A handful of remote job openings

•Almanac: “Meet the Tcherepnins!” (particularly Alexander) and a plea for a synonym

[Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra 
& Cleveland Chamber Choir — 
together again at last 

by

by Mike Telin 

We all know that the pandemic forced many performing arts organizations to put their plans on hold. Case in point, the collaboration between BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and the Cleveland Chamber Choir that was scheduled for May of 2020. 

Now, after a long wait, the two ensembles will come together on Saturday, October 8 at 7:30 pm at the Church of the Covenant for a performance of Beethoven’s Mass in C and American composer Gwyneth Walker’s emotionally intense The Golden Harp, featuring Ideastream Public Media’s John Mills as narrator. A pre-concert talk will be presented by Oberlin Conservatory musicologist Charles Edward McGuire 30 minutes before the performance. The concert is free.

The performance will be under the direction of both Gregory Ristow, Associate Professor of Conducting and Director of Vocal Ensembles at Oberlin, and Daniel Meyer, Artistic Director of BlueWater.

I caught up with Ristow and Meyer via Zoom and began by asking them how they came to pair the Walker with the Beethoven.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, September 28, 2022

by

by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. The Cleveland Orchestra receives autograph manuscript of Mahler 2

. Two American musical scholars and three contemporary composers share birthdays

NEWS: 

On Tuesday, André Gremillet, President and CEO of The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, announced in a press release, the historic gift to the Orchestra of the autograph manuscript of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” generously donated by one of its Trustees, the noted Austrian media executive and philanthropist Herbert G. Kloiber.

Written in the composer’s own hand in 1894, the 232-page, unaltered document is the only complete autograph manuscript of the complete symphony in existence, and it contains the invaluable marks of Mahler’s alterations and annotations. Long recognized for its affinity with the Austro-German repertoire, The Cleveland Orchestra will preserve the manuscript in partnership with the Cleveland Museum of Art, making it available to scholars, and accessible for public viewing in the future. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series:
a conversation with “musical alchemist”
Francesco Turrisi

by

by Mike Telin 

For nearly 150 years, Oberlin College and Conservatory’s Artist Recital Series has been a centerpiece in the musical offerings of Northeast Ohio. Now, after a two-year absence, the series returns with a noon performance in Finney Chapel on Tuesday, October 4 featuring musical trailblazer Rhiannon Giddens. The Grammy Award winner, MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, and Oberlin alum will be joined by multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Click here to find out more about Giddens. Tickets are available online.

Turrisi, himself an award-winning multi-instrumentalist, has been called a “musical alchemist” and a “musical polyglot.” In 1997 he left his native Italy to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Since then he has released five albums as a leader and two as co-leader with the ensembles Tarab (which blends Irish and Mediterranean traditional music) and Zahr (which celebrates the connections between southern Italian traditional music and Arabic music).

Since Turrisi teamed up with Giddens in 2018, the duo has released two albums that combine Mediterranean music with music from the African diaspora in the Americas — There Is No Other (2019) and They’re Calling Me Home (2021), which won a Grammy for best folk album.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, September 27, 2022

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•A postponement from Tuesday Musical

•Three saxophone stories: an iconic player who has passed away, a young musician in the avant-garde jazz scene, and a Michigan basketball player

•Almanac: Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel

TMA POSTPONEMENT:

Tuesday Musical has announced that the Soweto Gospel Choir concert, scheduled for October 2, has been postponed until later this fall due to unexpected travel issues in South Africa. Tickets purchased for the original date will be automatically valid for the new date — to be announced soon — and refunds will be offered to those who cannot attend.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, September 26, 2022

by

by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Grandma’s classical playlists revisited

. Sirena Huang wins Indy violin contest, two live concerts (on Monday!) in Rocky River & Elyria

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Normally, Eric Charnofsky spends Mondays from 2-4 pm hosting a program “Not your Grandmother’s Classical Music” on the air from Case Western Reserve University.

Today, the lecturer, composer, and pianist turns that formula on its head and celebrates his grandmom’s birth anniversary with music by composers she actually knew or met — Leonard Bernstein, Dmitri Shostakovich, Elie Siegmeister, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Paul Robeson. As a bonus, music by George Gershwin celebrates his own natal day. Click here to listen to the WRUW internet feed, which is studded with rarities. [Read more…]

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