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Archives for April 2024

BW Bach Festival: Featuring JSB’s Music from 1724 (Apr. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Coming between a performance by the Baroque string band ACRONYM on Friday evening and the St. John Passion on Sunday afternoon, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival concert on Saturday evening, April 13 featured a selection of works that the composer wrote in 1724, his second year as Cantor in Leipzig.

That was the year he completed and premiered the first version of the St. John Passion, and launched the ambitious and ultimately uncompleted long-term project of composing a five-year cycle of cantatas for nearly every Sunday and major festival in the church year..

For this occasion, festival director Dirk Garner drew on BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir, a small but mighty ensemble of fifteen voices. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, April 18, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, guest conductor Klaus Mäkelä begins his second week of Cleveland Orchestra performances featuring pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in George Gershwin’s Concerto in F. Mäkelä begins the program with Darius Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le toit, and ends with Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (program repeated Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 8).

And tonight at 7, the Avon High School Chamber Orchestra will present Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons featuring professional soloists Mary Beth Ions, Victor Beyans, Samuel Rotberg and Carrie Singler. Proceeds benefit the student musicians and the Avon Local School District music program.

For other forthcoming performances, visit our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

On Wednesday, The Cleveland Orchestra announced details of its 80th international tour. “Over the course of two weeks from August 26 to September 7, the Orchestra will travel to Berlin, Helsinki, Lucerne, Ansfelden, Bratislava, and Vienna, and will be joined by Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson in Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto for four of the performances.” Download a press release here.

Violinist Jinjoo Cho has been appointed to the faculty of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL beginning in September.

[Read more…]

Keeping Creation Collaborative with Silkroad

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by Stephanie Manning

Ask Haruka Fujii what instrument she plays, and she won’t be able to tell you exactly.

“I play anything that makes noise,” the percussionist says. “Anything that I can make music with—including pure water, to ceramic rice bowls, to anything.”

A specialist in contemporary music, Fujii says she focuses on working with living composers to “innovate and invent the boundary of what the percussionist can do.” Since 2010, she’s been doing just that as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, a musical collective dedicated to cross-cultural collaboration.

On April 26, she’ll be coming to Oberlin for the first time, as part of the group performing Silkroad’s program “Uplifted Voices.” Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Polenzani & Drake
on Chamber Music Society (Apr. 9)

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by Kevin McLaughlin 

I’ve been enjoying watching the tenor Matthew Polenzani’s masterclasses on YouTube. There’s one at Ravinia from a few years ago where he approaches students like a shy visitor, then gently teaches like he performs — guilelessly and penetratingly.

It was this sort of unaffected honesty that Polenzani brought to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Disciples Christian Church on Tuesday, April 9, in a recital program of Schubert, Schumann, Finzi, and Ives. Out of keeping with the series’ regular fare of string quartets and instrumental chamber music, the freshness was doubly felt.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical to host Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

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by Mike Telin

“It’s Duke Ellington’s 125th anniversary and the Akron concert is dedicated to Duke’s music,” saxophonist Ted Nash said during a telephone conversation.

On Saturday, April 20 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical will present the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. The evening of large-ensemble jazz led by a beloved jazz master will showcase fifteen of the finest soloists, ensemble players, and arrangers in jazz today. Tickets are available online.

Saturday’s program will include Ellington’s music from the late ‘20s through the ‘70s, including movements from his later suites. “We’ll also be playing music from his films, like Paris Blues,” Nash said.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, April 17, 2024

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by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY:

A 12pm Brownbag Concert at Trinity Cathedral will feature soprano Jacqueline Josten and mezzo-soprano Kira McGirr (pictured) in duets from Monteverdi to Mozart. A freewill offering will be taken up.

IN CLASSICAL MUSIC NEWS:

Last week in an article by Sammy Sussman for New York Magazine, hornist Cara Kizer shared details of the evening of July 24, 2010, when she was a member of the New York Philharmonic and the ensemble was in residency in Vail, Colorado. She alleges that she was drugged by oboist Liang Wang and raped by trumpeter Matthew Muckey, both of whom were her orchestra colleagues at the time. A Vail police officer recommended that charges be filed, but the Fifth Judicial District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute.

In 2018, the Philharmonic contracted an independent investigation into this and other allegations against Wang and Muckey, which resulted in their firing from the ensemble, only for a challenge from the musician’s union and a ruling by an independent arbitrator to force their rehiring.

This week, the Philharmonic announced that Wang and Muckey “would not take part in rehearsals or performances for the time being after a magazine article detailed the allegations of misconduct that had been made against them,” as Javier C. Hernández writes for The New York Times.

Read the New York Magazine article here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, April 16, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Two of Cleveland’s distinguished pianists will be featured in events today. At noon, Antonio Pompa-Baldi will play in the Atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and tonight at 7:30, faculty pianist Sergei Babyan will solo in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with guest conductor Sarah Hicks and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center. Also on the program, Boulanger’s D’un matin du printemps & Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (1919).

Also today at noon, organist Noah Duckwall will play works by Francisco Correa de Arauxo, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Matthias Weckmann, J.S.Bach & Dieterich Buxtehude at the Church of the Covenant. Click here for the live stream.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Cleveland Orchestra violinist Jessica Lee is leaving the ensemble to take up a position as full time chair of the violin department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Read a press release here.

“Rhiannon Giddens, the genre-defying singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who trained as an operatic soprano at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, will deliver the keynote address for Oberlin College and Conservatory’s Commencement ceremony honoring the Class of 2024 on Monday, May 27. She will also be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree.” Read a press release here.

The Canton Symphony has announced the opening of part-time positions on its administrative staff for marketing & development assistant and personnel manager. Read more here. [Read more…]

Klaus Mäkelä and Cleveland Orchestra treat listeners to a magical musical feast (Apr. 11)

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by Daniel Hathaway | Cleveland Classical

Originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Music can transport you — not only emotionally, but physically — to another time and place.

Cleveland Orchestra fans who hopped on guest conductor Klaus Mäkelä’s magic carpet at Severance Music Center on Thursday evening were swept away to the streets of Lima to hear Peruvian street vendors hawking their goods, then to England for a ramble through the Malvern Hills, and finally to ancient Iraq to quaff wine with the king of Babylon and a thousand of his idol-worshiping lords. Although the evening didn’t turn out well for Belshazzar, Walton’s music raised the roof of Mandel Concert Hall by a yard or two with resplendent orchestral and choral sound.

[Read more…]

Music at Main:
singer-songwriter Marye Lobb (Apr. 6)

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by Max Newman

One of the most marvelous things about live music in Cleveland is the wonderful and unexpected places that it takes you. Places where one would not expect to witness joy-inducing song, places that make you feel as though music, in this city, is truly everywhere. 

One such location is the third floor of the Cleveland Public Library, on an expansive landing between two gloriously intricate staircases. It was here where I watched singer-songwriter Marye Lobb perform a series of heartfelt and powerful songs on the afternoon of Saturday, April 6. 

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, April 15, 2024

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•JazzFest: application deadline tonight to perform outdoors, and tickets available for indoor concerts

•Akron Symphony announces 2024-25 Classic Series

•Audition appointments open for Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, Blossom Festival Chorus, and Cleveland Orchestra Youth and Children’s Choruses

•Almanac: Johann Friedrich Fasch, Bessie Smith, and Sir Neville Marriner

[Read more…]

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