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Archives for December 2023

DIARY: Monday, December 11, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: SalonEra continues with “Songs for Social Justice,” featuring tenor Haitham Haidar and countertenor Michael Walker (left to right).

•Announcements: a program to introduce U.S.-based performing artists to international presenters, Ohio Arts Council grants, and two new ASO hornists

•Interesting reads: a bill focusing on consumer protections for tickets to live entertainment, the effects of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recent visit to China, and the creation of KSU marching band half-time performances

•Almanac: Hector Berlioz and his Sacred Trilogy, and the debut concert of The Cleveland Orchestra

HAPPENING TODAY:

Les Délices’ SalonEra series continues its fourth season with “Songs for Social Justice,” premiering tonight on YouTube and Facebook at 7:30 pm, and already available in podcast form. “Renaissance lute songs, African American Spirituals, and traditional Lebanese melodies become vehicles for storytelling as Michael Walker (countertenor) and Haitham Haidar (tenor) explore themes of identity and representation, struggle and resilience, and community and belonging.” The episode was filmed in front of a live studio audience at Heights Theater earlier this fall — a first for SalonEra.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, December 9-10, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

We recommend 18 events in our calendar for Saturday and Sunday this week. Let’s cut to the chase and send you directly to our Concert Listings for details of these performances.

Recognize anyone in this photo? See the almanac!

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Board of Trustees of Cuyahoga Arts & Culture will hold its regular meeting on December 13 at 3:30 pm in the 2nd Floor Learning Commons, Louis Stokes Wing, of the Main Cleveland Public Library. The public is invited to attend either in person or via livestream.

The Agenda includes the approval of 2024 resident-led arts & culture grants, approval of a 2024 Support for Artists grant to Assembly for the Arts, and routine matters of business.

Click here to view the agenda and handout materials for the meeting.

INTERESTING READ:

Born before the outbreak of World War I, French pianist Colette Maze began making albums in the 1990s. She released her latest, 109 Ans de Piano, this year. Widely considered the world’s oldest recording pianist, Maze died on Nov. 19 in the same Paris apartment where she had lived since she was 18, with views of the Eiffel Tower and the Seine River. She was 109. Read an article in the New York Times here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, December 8, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Happy Hanukkah!

Many events to list for Friday, December 8!

City Music (7:30 at Lakewood Congregational Church), Cyrus Chestnut & Friends: A Charlie Brown Christmas (7:30 at Severance Music Center), Akron Symphony & Choruses (7:30 at E.J. Thomas Hall), Procession of Advent Lessons & Carols (7:30 at Holy Trinity Lutheran, Akron and online), Accent a cappella (pictured, 7:30 at the Cleveland Museum of Art), Oberlin Collegium Musicum (7:30 in Fairchild Chapel and online), and Oberlin Orchestra (7:30 in Finney Chapel and online).

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other performances,

INTERESTING READ:

James Gaffigan, former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor (not the comedian), is the new Music Director of Berlin’s Komische Oper. In a rangy Van Magazine interview, Olivia Giovetti speaks with him about the art of anticipation, his hope for an overhaul of the symphonic concert format, and shoplifting Toscanini records from the Metropolitan Opera gift shop. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Dynamic Buffet from Pianist Jeremy Denk (Nov. 30)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin alumnus Jeremy Denk returned to Finney Chapel on Thursday, November 30 to play an intriguing program on the Artist Recital Series. Inspired in part by Judy Chicago’s 1979 permanent installation at the Brooklyn Museum that sets 39 personalized place settings for famous women at an enormous table, for the first half of his program, the pianist chose pieces by nine women to create a dynamic musical menu.

The second half featured a pair of 19th-century works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, composers with close personal connections to Clara Schumann, whose Romanze, Op. 21, No. 1 launched the whole evening. [Read more…]

Marc-André Hamelin at Severance (Nov. 19)

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by Peter Feher

If Marc-André Hamelin had never studied music, he might have become a great novelist instead. At least, that was the impression that the expert Canadian pianist gave during an engrossing solo performance in Reinberger Chamber Hall on November 19.

Hamelin’s program, perhaps the most ambitious entry in The Cleveland Orchestra’s recital series at Severance Music Center this season, offered a master class in sensitive storytelling.

And the narrative brilliance had everything to do with the alchemical mix of performer and repertoire. On Sunday, Hamelin tackled three multi-movement works whose composers shared a couple of important inclinations. They all were good, but not great pianists themselves, and they all wrote programmatic music, or pieces that tell a story. [Read more…]

Oberlin Small Jazz Ensembles at The Cat (Nov. 19)

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by Max Newman

Oberlin Conservatory’s jazz department has a storied and star-studded history, with alumni such as pianist Sullivan Fortner, trumpeter Theo Croker, and violinist Jenny Scheinman, as well as a faculty that includes saxophonist Gary Bartz, an NEA Jazz Master and two-time Grammy winner. There is clearly a pipeline of talent here that has not ended, as heard at the Oberlin Small Jazz Ensembles concert on November 19. 

This was clearly a display of possible future stars. However, what was really striking was how each ensemble worked as a group to create distinct atmospheres and feelings. There was the emotionally intimate Gabi Allemana Ensemble, whose gorgeous arrangements filled the room with bliss, sadness, longing, contemplativeness, and everything in between. There was the playful, organ-centric Ori Josell Ensemble, who, even in the absence of their saxophone player, managed to get the audience on the edge of their seats with a series of arrangements impossible not to bob your head to. There was also the ragtime- and New Orleans jazz-inspired Colin Leonard Ensemble, whose energetic performances closing out the night felt celebratory.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, December 7, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

First opportunities to hear two repeating programs:

The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes guest conductor Semyon Bychkov for Martinů’s Concerto for Two Pianos with Katia and Marielle Labèque (pictured), Julian Anderson’s Symphony No. 2 (“Prague Panoramas”), and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture (7:30 at Severance Music Center, repeated on Saturday at 8).

And City Music presents “Christmas, Beethoven, and Mambo” with guest conductor Stefan Willich and Cleveland Orchestra French hornist Hans Clebsch (7:30 at Fairmount Presbyterian, repeated at the same hour on Friday at Lakewood Congregational Church and Saturday at the Shrine of St. Stanislaus, and Sunday at 4:00 at St. Noel Catholic Church).

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other performances,

NEWS BRIEFS:

Baldwin Wallace reports that the university has claimed two national awards for opera productions this month, the latest on Monday night in New York. “The national recognition includes kudos for a virtual opera festival featuring new Micro Operas performed by BW voice students, as well as applause for the spring production of We’ve Got Our Eye On You.” Read the article here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, December 6, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: “Holiday Organ Spectacular” at Trinity, impressionism in front of impressionism at CMA, holiday favorites from Cynthia Cioffari and the BassoonaRoos, “Carols and Cocoa and the Dana Holiday Concert,” Opera Scenes and Trombone Choir at Oberlin, and Apollo’s Fire’s “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas”

•Announcements: Application deadlines for the Cleveland International Piano Competition and the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability Conference, and honors for harpist Yolanda Kondonassis from Musical America

•Almanac: Bright Sheng, Dave Brubeck, and Lead Belly

HAPPENING TODAY:

At this time of year, the list of concerts grows tall with holiday and end-of-semester events — and even taller as new performances pop up with holiday spontaneity, threatening to fall through the cracks. But phew! — the heroic writers of our Diary series can come to the rescue, mapping out the long-scheduled events as well as whatever happenings have suddenly come on our radar. Today’s list is a mix of both.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas” — Tina Bergmann talks about the hammered dulcimer

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by Mike Telin

Imagine that it’s Christmas night in Ireland, 1849. Families and friends gather for an evening of singing, storytelling, and due to the Potato Famine, tearful farewells. 

This setting serves as the inspiration for Apollo’s Fire’s “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas.” Written and designed by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, this theatrical concert follows the journey of the Irish immigrants who crossed the Atlantic to America through carols, reels, and stories.  

Led by Sorrell, the program features Irish singer Fiona Gillespie, vocalist Sam Kreindenweis, Kathie Stewart on wooden flutes, fiddlers Susanna Perry Gilmore, Emi Tanabe, and Caitlin Hedge, Tina Bergmann on hammered dulcimer, and Anna O’Connell on vocals and Celtic harp. Performances begin on Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30 at Bath Church UCC and run through December 17. Irish actress Derdriu Ring joins the company December 14-17. See our Concert Listings for times and locations. Tickets are available online.  

Bergmann, who is a regular on Apollo’s Fire crossover programs, first met Sorrell nearly 30 years ago while the conductor was looking for a hammered dulcimer player for an early American program. “She went to the Kent State Folk Festival, which is sort of my home festival, and came to one of the workshops where a good handful of hammered dulcimer players were presenting,” Bergmann recalled during a telephone conversation. “She approached me afterward and I invited her to my apartment. She had me play for her, and that’s how it started. I think it was in 1994, so it’s been an incredible journey.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s pairing of  Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with Betsy Jolas is a perfect match (Nov. 30)

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by Kevin McLaughlin
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Orchestra’s pairing of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the U.S. premiere of Betsy Jolas’ “Ces belles années…” at Severance Music Center on Thursday night had you scratching your head at first. But the minute soprano Lauren Snouffer began to sing Jolas’ words, it started to make sense.

Snouffer walked onto the stage cautiously — as if unsure she should be there at all — at about the three-quarter mark to deliver a series of musically angular but disarming lines about celebrating the joy of one’s experiences.

A Cleveland Orchestra co-commission, “Ces belles années…” also contains hidden allusions to the classic “Happy Birthday” tune as a nod to Jolas’s beloved Aix-en-Provence Festival, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2022. [Read more…]

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