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Archives for January 2024

Cleveland Composers Guild at Fairmount Presbyterian (Jan. 21)

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by Sicily Xiao

On January 21, a serene Sunday afternoon, the Cleveland Composers Guild curated the second concert of its 2023-2024 season at Fairmount Presbyterian Church. The program, dedicated to cutting edge chamber music compositions, included the 1st prize winner of the Guild’s 11th Collegiate Composition Contest.

The concert began with Ty Alan Emerson’s Pan Songs played by percussionist Dylan Moffitt on a version of the modern steelpan which avoided precise tuning, resulting in a distinctive harmonic and spatial system. The emphasis on sound, color, and rhythm beautifully showcased Emerson’s concepts. In the second movement, Moffitt traded mallets for brushes, more commonly used in jazz, adding a layer of flexibility to the timbral palette.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, January 31, 2024

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: organist Linda Kempke at Trinity Lutheran (12:15), and the CIM Orchestra (7:30)

•Announcements: COYO applications open, soprano and Oberlin student Elizabeth Hanje (pictured) named a finalist in the Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition, and limited tickets available this morning at 10 am for Jon Batiste’s February visit to CMA

•Almanac: Schubert, Glass, Lanza, and a peek at next weekend’s double-dip of Schubert symphonies in the area

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:15 pm, Trinity Lutheran Church’s Wednesday Noon Organ Concert series will feature Linda Kempke at the Beckerath organ. Program TBA. A freewill offering will be taken up.

And at 7:30 at CIM’s Kulas Hall, guest conductor Kazem Abdullah will lead the CIM Orchestra in George Lewis’ Weathering, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, and Alberto Ginastera’s Harp Concerto, featuring Rebekah Hou as soloist. It’s free, but reservations are required.

[Read more…]

Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series Sets the Stage for a Gospel Experience

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by Stephanie Manning
Reposted courtesy of Oberlin College and Conservatory

Trey McLaughlin & The Sounds of Zamar blur the boundaries of genre with contemporary gospel arrangements. Their latest tour, “The Zamar Experience,” arrives in Oberlin February 10 for a community workshop and concert on the Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel.

For Trey McLaughlin, each and every rehearsal is the creation of something special.

“It’s where  the magic first happens, you know,” says the vocalist and director. “It’s that moment where you’re starting a new piece and you’re starting to hear what it could be.”

For McLaughlin, who has been singing since age four, his love for rehearsing started early. “I would line up my mom’s perfume bottles on her dresser, or my toys, or anything that would stand, and I would have choir rehearsal,” he says. A CD recording would serve as the finished product. But that was almost an afterthought—his favorite part was the teaching.

The singer and arranger is leading plenty of rehearsals these days thanks in part to his touring group, Trey McLaughlin & The Sounds of Zamar. The contemporary gospel choir will take their latest show around the U.S. and Canada this February, stopping in Oberlin for the first time. Their February 10 performance in Finney Chapel is part of the 2023-24 Artist Recital Series. [Read more…]

Taking Up Serpents: Fire-and-brimstone at BW

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by Mike Telin

In her 2023 article “The History of Snake Handling in Religion,” published in Grunge, Sarah Crocker writes, “According to National Geographic, [the practice] is now most often understood as a uniquely American religious observance, typically practiced in rural Appalachian churches that are associated with Pentecostal Christians and other charismatic Protestant denominations.”

On Friday, February 2 at 8:00 pm in the Kleist Center for Arts & Drama, Baldwin Wallace Opera will present Taking Up Serpents. With a score by Kamala Sankaram and an original story inspired by librettist Jerre Dye’s roots in the Deep South, the opera tells the story of 25-year-old Kayla, the estranged daughter of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who is dangerously bitten by one of his own snakes. Kayla’s journey home forces her to confront her troubled upbringing.

[Read more…]

Canton Symphony: “Celtic Celebrations” (Jan. 20)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

“Celtic Celebrations” was the theme for the program comprising two Gaelic-themed symphonies performed by the Canton Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, January 20 at Umstattd Hall. A nice ring to it, even if actual Irishness or Scottishness was sometimes more in the mind than in the scores.

Gaelicism is present, of course, in the symphony nicknames — Felix Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” and Amy Beach’s “Gaelic” — as well as their respective germs of inspiration: Mendelssohn’s almost mystical giddiness after a trip to the Scottish countryside (though not realized in music until over a decade later), and Beach’s methodical use of Irish tunes (added to her own) to create an original (and American) synthesis. More concoctions of mind than authenticities, perhaps, but still — what’s not to like?

[Read more…]

Alla Boara: creating soundscapes from history at CMA (Jan. 24)

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by Max Newman

If there’s one thing that the Ohio-based group Alla Boara can do, it is allowing their listeners to explore the past by relishing in the present. And for those who packed into the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, January 24 for the ensemble’s performance celebrating the release of their new record, that is exactly what they got.

It was an evening of storytelling through word and song.

Bandleader Anthony Taddeo, the group’s composer and drummer, based his arrangements off of a series of Alan Lomax’s 1954 field recordings of Italian folk music. Throughout the night, Taddeo and other band members laid out historical context to the pieces on show with a backdrop of original images from Lomax’s Italian journey. It gave the audience a clear snapshot of Italy in the mid-1950s, and created an authentic atmosphere for each song played. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday January 30, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at noon, the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Organ Plus series presents Kailah Grace Robbins, flute, Kotomi Inaba, viola da gamba & cello, William Rehwinkel harpsichord & organ in a program of Baroque chamber music. There’s a live stream available as well.

And tonight at 7:30 pm at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland, Thomas Fielding (pictured) the cathedral’s new music director, introduces himself with an organ recital of works by Max Reger, J.S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, Thomas Fielding, Charles-Marie Widor, Henri Mulet and himself.

For details, visit our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Akron’s Tuesday Musical Association reminds us that applications for its 68th Scholarship Competition are being accepted online through this Thursday, February 1. The competition is open to Ohio students majoring in music performance and/or music education. Click here for more information.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

January 30 marks the death of French composer Francis Poulenc in Paris in 1963. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, January 29, 2024

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: The Busch Trio (pictured) visits Rocky River Chamber Music Society from Amsterdam

•Announcements: application deadlines for the Suburban Symphony’s Young Soloists Concerto Competition and the Kent Blossom Music Festival, and Jeannette Sorrell receives Ursuline College’s Women Who Light The Way award

•R.I.P. Kathleen Mylecraine, 71

•Almanac: Frederick Delius, Havergal Brian, Luigi Nono, and Matthias Pintscher

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society hosts Amsterdam’s The Busch Trio (pianist Omri Epstein, violinist Mathieu van Bellen, and cellist Ori Epstein) in trios by Ravel, Mozart (B-flat major, K. 502), and Tchaikovsky (a minor, Op. 50). A freewill offering will be taken up. The concert will also be livestreamed.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, January 27-28, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

This busy weekend will feature two more concerts connected to the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival.

On Saturday at 7 pm, the festival presents Bach 52, with Nicholas Phan, tenor (pictured), Debra Nagy, oboes & director, Gaia Saetermoe-Howard, oboes, Rebecca Reed, viola da gamba and cello & Mark Edwards, harpsichord and organ. In his ongoing Bach52 podcast and recording project, Phan asks  “Is Bach’s music for everyone?”

Then on Sunday at 2 pm. Steve Reich’s Proverb and Piano Phase will be presented side by side with Bach’s cantata, “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” BWV 4, featuring members of BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir and Rob Kovacs, piano. Both events will take place in Gamble Auditorium in Berea.

On Saturday and Sunday at 3 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art, CIM Opera stages Tom Cipullo’s 2007 opera Glory Denied, guest directed by Kathryn Frady & conducted by Kamna Gupta, based on the Vietnam-era experiences of Colonel Floyd James “Jim” Thompson, America’s longest-detained prisoner of war.

Also on Saturday, at 6:30 pm Emanuela Friscioni & Julia Russ will make the third attempt to play their twice-postponed-by-weather, four-hand piano concert, “Celestial Harmonies” at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Gates Mills. [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday January 26, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 2:30 pm in Cartwright Hall, the Kent State Orchestra sponsors a student composers workshop.

Tonight at 7, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival continues its ancillary events with “American Partita,” featuring Fire & Grace & Ash (pictured). Violinist Edwin Huizinga, guitarist William Coulter and mandolinist Ashley Hoyer will blend the music of J. S. Bach with American fiddle tunes in Gamble Auditorium.

And tonight at 8, visionary flutist Robert Dick and harpist Stephan Haluska will celebrate the release of their new album, Crop Circles in a Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project performance at Convivium 33 Gallery. Read a preview here.

For details, visit our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Ohio Light Opera has announced online orchestral auditions for its 45th season at the College of Wooster. Click here for the application form. [Read more…]

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