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Archives for March 2023

DIARY: Weekend, March 31 – April 2, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Concerts and more concerts

. Almanac

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

This morning at 11 at Severance Music Center Thomas Adès leads The Cleveland Orchestra Thomas with Pekka Kuusisto, violin, in Sibelius’ Prelude & Suite No. 1 from The Tempest and Six Humoresques, Ades’ Märchentänze and The Tempest Symphony (United States Premiere, a Cleveland Orchestra co-commission). The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm.

At 12:15 pm the McGaffin Carillon Concert & Live Stream features Sheryl Modlin, Carillonneur in an eclectic program for spring at Church of the Savior.

And at 7 pm at BW’s Kulas Music Hall Jesse Blumberg, baritone & Martin Katz, piano perform a guest recital. Program to be announced.

[Read more…]

Composers Guild joins Cleveland Chamber Choir for Joint Concert

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Sunday, April 4 at 4 pm in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, Cleveland Composers Guild will join  Cleveland Chamber Choir for a program that combines new works by Northeast Ohio choral composers with masterworks from the last five centuries.

I recently met up on Zoom with Chamber Choir interim music director Gregory Ristow and Composers Guild chair Margi Griebling-Haigh to learn more about this Sunday’s concert.

Daniel Hathaway: It takes two to tango, but usually when two organizations end up collaborating, the original idea came from one of them. Who instigated this project?

Margi Griebling-Haigh: Neither of us was in a decision-making capacity when the idea first came up — which I believe was in a brainstorming session for the 2019 season. Probably somebody said, ‘Hey, I’ve heard that Cleveland Chamber Choir is terrific. Let’s work with them.’ So I’m pretty sure we approached them for the first concert. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, March 30, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Tonight: Cleveland Orchestra, Youngstown Symphony, and Renovare Music

•R.I.P. Dolores White, pictured

HAPPENING TODAY:

Three concerts tonight will take place at 7:30 pm.

The Cleveland Orchestra will be joined by conductor Thomas Adès and violinist Pekka Kuusisto in works by Sibelius (the Prelude and the Suite No. 1 from The Tempest, and the Six Humoresques) and by Adès himself (Märchentänze and The Tempest Symphony). Tickets are available here.

The Youngstown Symphony will present “A Night for Jazz,” featuring vocalist Brianna Thomas and led by conductor Dean Buck. Tickets here.

And at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, Renovare Music will put on a free concert composed of three different elements: string music, poetry by spoken word artist Vision, and African drumming by Ali Boyd, Rashon Blake and Derick Barnes. The program includes José Elizondo’s The Dawn of Hope, J.S. Bach’s Aria from the Goldberg Variations, Ludovico Einaudi’s Experience, Hirono Borter’s Goldberg Meditation, Sabrina Jean Louis’ Clair de Lune, William Travance’s Blood Runs Black, and more.

R.I.P. DOLORES WHITE:

ClevelandClassical.com mourns the passing of Cleveland-based composer and musical trailblazer Dolores White, who died on Friday at the age of 90.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera: Candide
(March 12)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin Opera’s wonderful mid-March production of Candide combined several layers of brilliance.

First, the source: the anonymous 1759 novella Candide, or the Optimist. Later owned up to by the French Enlightenment philosopher François-Marie Arouet — better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire — it was a deliciously wicked send-up of the absurd teachings of optimist philosophers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who taught that everything was for the best “in this best of all possible worlds.”

Then in 1956 came the first staged version of Candide as a comic opera with a witty libretto by Lillian Hellman and a high-spirited score by Leonard Bernstein — originally conceived by Hellman as a play, but Bernstein’s intentions of making it an operetta won out. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, March 29, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Harps at noon & new jazz compositions this evening

. Remembering Beethoven

HAPPENING TODAY

At noon the ​​BrownBag Concerts present the Salzedo Harp Duo. Harpists Nancy Lendrim and Jody Guinn bring artistry and beauty in an inventive program for harp duo. Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave. Free.

At 7:00 pm the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra meets Cleveland Composers Guild. From the Cleveland Composers Guild, new music from: Karen Greibling, Bryan Kennard, William Rayer & Nicholas Underhill. From the CJO, new music from: Chas Baker, Aidan Plank & Brad Wagner. A swinging evening of eight brand new “3rd Stream” compositions that combine jazz and classical elements. Bop Stop, 2920 Detroit Avenue. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

CD Review — Weiss’ Arc II,
an exploration of loss & grief

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by Nicolette Cheauré 

There may be nothing more unifying than humanity’s response to loss. Where words fail to describe feelings as complex as those associated with death and grief, music takes over — and it’s hard to imagine anything ringing more true in that regard than pianist Orion Weiss’ latest album, Arc II, released in November of 2022.

The recording opens with Ravel’s atmospheric Le Tombeau de Couperin, and the six movements provide Weiss the opportunity to express the many facets of his musical personality. The Prelude was dreamlike and flowing, saturated with traditional Ravel color changes, while the Fugue was full of constant motion before a quiet conclusion.

[Read more…]

Klezmer and Kreutzer 
with CityMusic (Mar. 16)

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by Stephanie Manning

Most clarinetists are no strangers to playing on all the different varieties of their instrument. But using three of them over the course of just one piece? That’s a little more unusual.

On March 16, Daniel Gilbert sat facing a packed crowd at the Temple Tifereth-Israel with a B-flat, A, and bass clarinet all laid out in front of him. The work he was about to embark on with conductor Joel Smirnoff and the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra was also a little unusual — but in a very intriguing way.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, March 28, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Chamber music concerts in Akron and Cleveland.

. Moussorgsky and Rachmaninoff make their exits.

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:30 pm the UA Kulas Concert Series presents Sandbox Percussion, contemporary percussion chamber music. In collaboration with Tuesday Musical and Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts. Guzzetta Recital Hall. Tickets are available online.

Also at 7:30 pm the Cleveland Chamber Music Society hosts Anthony McGill, clarinet, Elena Perrroni, Soprano, and Myra Huang, piano. (pictured) Their program features Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock) and Sonata in a, “Arpeggione” arranged for clarinet and piano,Lee III’s Chavah’s Daughters Speak, and Still’s Romance. Disciples Christian Church. Read a preview article here. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

CIM Opera Theater: Dialogues des Carmélites (Mar. 5) 

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIM opera theater presented Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music twice earlier this month in a production directed by JJ Hudson with Harry Davidson and the CIM Orchestra in the pit. I attended the matinee performance on Sunday, March 5.

A theater piece based on such a true story — the mass execution of a convent of Carmelite Nuns at Compiègne during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution — may seem an odd choice for a student production, but in practice, the piece is a gift for opera departments like CIM’s that are long on female voices.

The dark and serious subject matter may also seem an odd choice for the composer, whose musical style frequently leans toward the popular and theatrical (think of the ending of the “Laudamus te” from his Gloria, where the music seems about to morph into a Cha-Cha!).

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society:
an important second performance

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“First is the worst, second is the best…” It may not be the most profound of old sayings, but there might just be some slight bit of wisdom — I said slight — that can be gleaned from that schoolyard refrain. After all, when it comes to new music, premières get most of the attention, but the far-less-common deuxième performances (aren’t we fancy?) can be just as significant.

Perhaps that’s especially true when it comes to Chava’s Daughters Speak by James Lee III (left). Its premiere in May 2021 at New York City’s 92nd Street Y was presented virtually, with only a limited in-person audience due to the pandemic. And what was to have been the second performance, in Boston last year, was canceled at the last minute when soprano Susanna Phillips developed laryngitis.

That brings us to tomorrow, Tuesday, March 28, when the piece will receive that long-awaited second hearing — its first in front of a full audience — as part of a Cleveland Chamber Music Society concert at Disciples Christian Church. Two of the three performers are holdovers from the premiere: clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Myra Huang, who will be joined here by soprano Elena Perroni. Tickets are available here. [Read more…]

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