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Archives for October 2023

Andrew Sords plays Vivaldi with Snowbelt Symphony

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by Mike Telin

It is easy to assume that a violin concerto by Antonio Vivaldi was written during his tenure at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, however, that’s not always the case. In fact, the origins of a few of his concertos for the instrument have and continue to baffle musicologists. One example is the Violin Concerto in e, RV 278 which is not part of any collection published during the composer’s lifetime.

On Sunday October 22 at 4:00 pm at the New Promise Church in Kirtland, Andrew Sords will perform that concerto with the Snowbelt Symphony under the direction of Greg Hillis. The program, Brilliant Baroque, will also include music by J.S. Bach, Handel, and Boyce. Tickets are available online.

“Not a lot is known about the concerto,” Sords said during a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

CUSP to host Jaap Blonk

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by Mike Telin

The self-taught Dutch composer, vocalist, poet, and visual artist Jaap Blonk will present a unique program on the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project series at Convivium 33 Gallery on Friday, October 20 at 8pm.

I reached the sound poet by Skype at his home in Arnhem, Netherlands and began by asking him what the audience can expect to hear on Friday.

Jaap Blonk: I’ll do two sets. The first will be me interpreting some poetry from the history of Dada. And the second will be my own work for voice with some electronics. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, October 19, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, CIM alumna Elisabeth Kufferath (pictured) will play mostly contemporary music both on violin and viola on the LCCC Signature Series in Elyria.

At the same hour, CityMusic Cleveland clarinetist Daniel Gilbert will “Celebrate Black Elegance” with soprano Elizabeth Hanje, tenor Trevis Guillory & bass-baritone Benhur Mosazghi at East Mount Zion Baptist Church (repeated on Friday at 8:30 La Sagrada Familia, Saturday at 7:30 at the Shrine of St. Stanislaus & Sunday at 4:30 at St. Sebastian in Akron).

Also tonight at 7:30, the Canton Symphony’s Divergent Sounds series will present JT’s Electrik BLACKOUT at The Auricle.

For details, visit our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READ:

San Francisco Classical Voice remembers publisher Stephen Rubin, who founded the Rubin Institute for Musical Criticism, which now funds a number of print and online classical music publications including ClevelandClassical.com. Read that article here, and his New York Times obituary here. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: Considering Matthew Shepard

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by Mike Telin

Statement from President Joe Biden on the 25th Anniversary of the Tragic Death of Matthew Shepard:

October 12, 2023

Twenty-five years ago today, Matthew Shepard lost his life to a brutal act of hate and violence that shocked our nation and the world. The week prior, Matthew had been viciously attacked in a horrific anti-gay hate crime and left to die – simply for being himself.

Matthew’s tragic and senseless murder shook the conscience of the American people. And his courageous parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, turned Matthew’s memory into a movement, galvanizing millions of people to combat the scourge of anti-LGBTQI+ hate and violence in America.

On October 6, 1998 Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, accepted a ride home from two men at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie. Instead, Shepard was driven to a remote area where he was pistol-whipped, tortured, tied to a fence, and left for dead. Shepard died six days later from brain damage.

Shepard’s murder would later become the inspiration for Craig Hella Johnson’s fusion oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard.

[Read more…]

Returning to Cleveland, pianist Mahani Teave talks about building her island’s first music school and fighting the climate crisis

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you had to pick one thing that symbolizes Mahani Teave — pianist, cultural ambassador, and environmental activist — an easy choice would be the Rapa Nui School of Music and the Arts, the first music school on that remote island 2,000 miles off the coast of mainland Chile, with a population of 8,000.

Co-founded by Teave, the school brings together the studies of classical music and of the traditional music of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. It’s also a symbol of conservationism, built out of recycled tires, bottles, and cans, and made self-sustainable thanks to rainwater collectors and solar panels.

It says a lot that when Teave received the attention of just about the entire classical music world in 2021 with her debut album, Rapa Nui Odyssey, she found herself not so much overwhelmed by the attention, or basking in the glow of fame, but rather grateful for the opportunity to spread the word about her school and help keep it going — not an easy endeavor.

Now she is in the midst of a North American tour in which she is largely playing selections from that album — and the tour is bringing her back to Northeast Ohio, where she studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 18, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: a pair of free concerts from pianist Nathan Carterette and the Choir of Notre-Dame Cathedral

•Announcements: CIM, BW & Cleveland Opera Theater recognized for Digital Excellence in Opera, and two upcoming events at BW — “Queer Arts in Northeast Ohio” and a conversation with Eric Whitacre

•Interesting reads: findings from studies on gender imbalance at opera companies and arts & economic prosperity

•Almanac: Wynton Marsalis, Howard Shore, Charles Gounod, and Gussie Lord Davis — the first Black songwriter to reach Tin Pan Alley fame

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, pianist Nathan Carterette will play music by Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff in a Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert.

And at 7:30, the Choir of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, France (pictured), directed by Henri Chalet and featuring organist Yves Castagnet, will play works by Jehan Alain, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, Louis Vierne, César Franck, Francis Poulenc, and Castagnet himself at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. The performance is part of the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series.

A freewill offering will be taken up at both events.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus welcomes Eric Whitacre

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by Mike Telin

“What if our departed loved ones are not truly gone, but are closer than we think? How can we mourn those we have lost while still moving forward? We have all experienced the loss, in one way or another, of someone or something we have loved deeply. How do we know when it’s time to move forward?”

-Charles Anthony Silvestri

Written in 2018, The Sacred Veil — with music by Eric Whitacre (pictured left) and text by Charles Anthony Silvestri — tells a story of love, loss, and grief. Silvestri’s wife, Julie, died of ovarian cancer at age 36 in 2005, leaving behind two young children. “It’s an extensive, twelve-movement work that is just beautiful,” Lisa Wong, The Cleveland Orchestra’s Director of Choruses, said during a telephone conversation.

On Friday, October 20 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Whitacre will lead the 140-member Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and 14 singers from the College of Wooster in The Sacred Veil for SATB choir, solo cello, and piano — his most recent collaboration with Silvestri. The concert also includes Reena Esmail’s When the Violin for chorus and cello, based on a 14th-century text by Persian poet Hafiz, conducted by Wong. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

An evening with Bombino at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Oct. 11)

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by Max Newman

Really good concerts will allow you to enjoy the music on show; the best ones will allow you to live inside of it. Tuareg musician Bombino’s performance at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, October 11 was certainly an example of the latter. The concert was magical from start to finish.

For someone known as the “Sultan of Shred,” Bombino started off with rather subtle, serene instrumentation: Bombino himself on acoustic guitar, Kawissan Mohamed Alhassan on a more quiet, textural electric guitar, Corey Wilhelm on a large hand drum, and, most interestingly, Djakrave Dia on a seemingly hollow wooden dome, loudly mic’d, that made a water drop-esque noise when softly hit.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, October 17, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at Noon, organist Jonathan Moyer will play music by Georg Böhm & Franz Liszt on both organs at the Church of the Covenant.

Tonight at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society opens its 74th season with the Belcea Quartet (pictured), formed in 1994 when its members were studying at the Royal College of Music in London. On the menu: quartets by Schubert, Dvořák & Bartók. Come early and hear a 6:30 pre-concert interview with Eric Kisch. But don’t — out of habit — come to Plymouth Church. The concert has been moved to the Disciples Cultural Arts Center in Cleveland Heights.

For details, visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On October 17, 1849 Frederic Chopin died in Paris. Having planned ahead, his coffin was sprinkled with earth he had brought from Poland before his remains were interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery. You can visit his grave there along with those of such luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Édith Piaf.

On this date in 1943, Naumburg prize winning violinist, violist conductor and soprano Susan Davenny Wyner was born in New Haven. She made her Met Opera debut — her only performance in that house — in October of 1981 as Woglinde in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, and later settled in Ohio to lead the Warren Philharmonic and Opera Western Reserve.

And shockingly, a trio of promising composers — Victor Ulmann, Pavel Haas, and Hans Krása — were murdered by the Nazis on this date in 1944 in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 16, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Stephen Rubin, 81

•Announcements: BW named a top school for music business, Oberlin grad Tyreek McDole named a finalist in the Sarah Vaughan competition

•Almanac: Marin Alsop, Joan Tower, and Fanfares for the Uncommon Women

STEPHEN RUBIN, 81:

Stephen Rubin (above), the longtime publishing executive who released bestsellers such as The Da Vinci Code and Fire and Fury, and who co-founded the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism with his late wife Cynthia, passed away on Friday at the age of 81 after “a brief and sudden illness,” according to his nephew, David Rotter.

Read an obituary by Hillel Italie for the Associated Press here, and read a 2018 profile of him by Sridhar Pappu for The New York Times here.

[Read more…]

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