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Archives for June 2024

Ohio Light Opera: everything free and easy at Me And My Girl (June 20)

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by Stephanie Manning

Not only is it a challenge to walk out of Me and My Girl without the music stuck in your head, it’s also a challenge to pick which of the many songs you might be humming.

The charming, feel-good 1937 musical — with music by Noel Gay and book/lyrics by Douglas Furger & L. Arthur Rose — may not be much of a household name these days. But after its original success in London’s West End, a revised book by Stephen Frey and Mike Ockrent in the 1980s made the show a huge hit across the pond on Broadway. And the Ohio Light Opera’s dazzling premiere makes it easy to see why.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest goes outdoors with “Music on the Path” (June 16)

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by Max Newman

The 2024 edition of ChamberFest Cleveland has already seen a variety of wonderful events since its opening on June 12. However, the June 16 musical celebration of “CFC at the Nature Center: Music on the Path,” was the perfect addition to ChamberFest’s diverse programming and undoubtedly put a smile on the faces of all who attended.

Centered around the parking lot of the Nature Center, the sunlit late-morning event at Shaker Lakes had an inviting, family-friendly atmosphere. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, June 24, 2024

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: a lecture on improvisation at Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and a recital by Nigel North (pictured) at Cleveland Lute Fest

•Announcements: a webinar on analytics for organizations in the area, an arts & culture networking event, and extended auditions from Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra

•Almanac: “The Fatal Dance Manias of Medieval Europe”

[Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, June 22-23, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday, Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute puts its participants on display in chamber music of Paris & Versailles from 1660-1760 (1:30 to 5 pm, Orchestra Room & Kulas Recital Hall at the Conservatory), Ohio Light Opera presents Me and My Girl (2 pm) & The Sound of Music (7:30, in Freedlander Theater, College of Wooster), Tri-C JazzFest hosts sets by a wide range of artists with start times from 2:30 to 9 pm (Playhouse Square theaters), and ChamberFest Cleveland presents “In Other Worlds” featuring — among many other artists — soprano Susanna Phillips  (pictured, 7:30, Federated Church, Chagrin Falls).

On Sunday, ChamberFest Cleveland sponsors a Music & Art Exploration (1-3 pm  at the Pivot Center), Encore Chamber Music Institute presents its season finale, a family concert with Encore Camerata (3 pm, event moved indoors to Gates Mills Community House, 1460 Chagrin River Rd.), carillonneur Dennis Curry performs from the tower of St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights (6 pm), and Paul O’Dette headlines the week-long Cleveland Lute Fest (7:30, Harkness Chapel at Case).

For details, visit the Concert Listings page. [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, June 21, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Ohio Light Opera presents Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls (2 pm, Freedlander Theater, College of Wooster), Tri-C JazzFest features Jason Moran and the Bandwagon (5 pm, Allen Theatre, Playhouse Square), Cécile McLorin Salvant (pictured) 6:30, Mimi Ohio Theatre), Marcus Miller/Bob James Quartet (7:45, Connor Palace Theatre) & Scary Goldings (10 pm, Mimi Ohio Theatre).

ChamberFest Cleveland presents “Paradise Lost” (7:30, Mixon Hall at CIM), Renovare Music plays “Facing the Rising Sun” (7:30 at Lekko Coffee in Hingetown), Nightingale Opera produces its final performance of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon (Cinderella, 7:30, Goodyear Theatre, Akron), and Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute presents a faculty concert featuring music of Paris and Versailles, 1660-1760 (8 pm, Kulas Recital Hall, Oberlin Conservatory — note: very limited seating). [Read more…]

Jacob Allen on Ohio Light Opera’s 2024 season

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by Mike Telin

One of the neat things about a summer light opera festival is that there is always a family atmosphere. Ohio Light Opera is a perfect example of that, especially when it comes to associate artistic director Jacob Allen and his relationship with the company. 2024 marks Allen’s 18th season — and his sixth position within OLO after he started out as a young artist performer.

Allen is directing two shows this season: Guys and Dolls and Me and My Girl, the latter of which opens on Thursday, June 20 at 2:00 pm at Freedlander Theatre.

The show includes music by Noel Gay and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Allen by phone to talk about the two shows he’s directing — and his history with the company.

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera opens 45th season in Wooster with classic Broadway musicals (June 12 & 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Titles like Guys & Dolls and The Sound of Music may have been novelties in American lyric theater when they opened on Broadway in 1950 and 1959. But by now, at the age of 74 and 65, respectively, both shows have achieved classic status as successors to the European operetta tradition and no longer seem like interlopers in the repertoire of companies like Ohio Light Opera.

Marking its 45th season as a company and its 40th in Freedlander Theater at the College of Wooster, OLO delivered handsome productions of these venerable shows by the creative teams of Frank Loesser (music and lyrics) and Jo Swerling & Abe Burrows (book) in the case of Guys and Dolls, and Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics), and Howard Lindsay & Russell Crouse (book) for The Sound of Music.

[Read more…]

ENCORE: Voice of the Dunkleosteus (June 15)

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by Stephanie Manning

Perhaps nothing exemplifies a festival themed around “Planet Earth” quite like a concert performed underneath a prehistoric fish. Specifically, the 359-million-year-old Dunkleosteus terrelli, known as “ancient Ohio’s apex predator.” But you can just call him Dunk.

The ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival drew a packed crowd at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on June 15, and audience members were in for a treat at this concert in the visitor hall. The skeleton of Dunk may have been the closest to the action, but the bright and airy space was filled with other neat creatures for attendees to peruse. (On the left was a reconstruction of Lucy, the most famous human ancestor fossil, and to the right were the bones of Happy, a “reptile hipped” dinosaur.)

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: the first taste of “Sacred and Profane” (June 12)

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by Peter Feher

Like any good introduction, opening night at ChamberFest Cleveland this year left you wanting more. The sold-out concert on June 12 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall was a chance to savor a little of what the 2024 festival has to offer.

The theme behind this year’s programming, “Sacred and Profane,” was front and center for the first concert. So was the overriding idea that guides ChamberFest every season: bringing together great musicians and great music. Wonderfully, these aims aligned on Wednesday in an arresting performance of Claude Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane featuring harpist Bridget Kibbey. It was the shortest work of the evening, but also the standout.

In exploring the fundamental dichotomy between heaven and earth, eternity and reality, the spirit and the body, Debussy was simply trying to demonstrate everything that a modern harp could do. He had been commissioned by a French manufacturer to write a showpiece for the company’s new instrument, yet the resulting work wasn’t strictly contemporary when it premiered in Paris in 1904.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, June 20, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The Summer Solstice will occur today at 4:51 pm EDT when the sun reaches its most northern point in the sky during the year.

Before that happens, at 2 pm Ohio Light Opera will present the opening performance of Me and My Girl in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster, and at 7 pm, a new series, Third Thursdays at Transformer Station, will feature Ideastream’s Amanda Rabinowitz and Talons’ — the event is sold out. And The Canton Symphony has canceled its 6:30 pm Summer Serenade at the Canton Garden Center due to extreme heat.

Even though summer will have officially begun, tonight at 7:30, ChamberFest Cleveland will continue its series with “Rite of Spring,” a program featuring duo-pianists Roman Rabinovich & Yaron Kohlberg (pictured) & percussionists Tom Sherwood & Alexander Cohen in an arrangement of Stravinsky’s iconic work along with many other vernal selections in CIM’s Mixon Hall.

Meanwhile, at 7:30 pm in Akron’s Goodyear Theater, Nightingale Opera will present Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon, a take on the beloved fairytale of Cinderella (repeated on Friday). And this evening at 8, Tri-C JazzFest, will kick off a busy weekend with a performance by Take 6 in Playhouse Square’s Mimi Ohio Theatre. [Read more…]

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