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Archives for October 2024

DIARY, Friday, October 25, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

Tonight at 7, Trobár Medieval presents “A Room of Her Own: Christine de Pizan’s Defense of Women,” in the words of the 15th-c. author (pictured), performed by actor Chris Szajbert and reflected in the music of her contemporaries, played and sung by Allison Monroe. Elena Mullins Bailey, and Sian Ricketts (St. Paul’s Church, Cleveland Hts.)

Three orchestra concerts all begin at 7:30:

  • CityMusic Cleveland continues its four-performance October Orchestra Series at St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills with a concert featuring Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson in Margaret Brouwer’s Viola Concerto, 
  • the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra presents clarinetist Taein Yi in Carl Nielsen’s Concerto at the Maltz PAC,
  • and Carl Topilow leads the Cleveland Pops Orchestra in Broadway’s Best at Severance Music Center.

Also at 7:30, Kent State Faculty & Graduate Students perform their works in the Roy Minoff Award Concert (Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus).

For details of these and other upcoming events, go to our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

Art of the Afghan Rubâb and Tabla at Finney Chapel (Oct. 6)

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by Peyton Avery

On October 6, in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel, tabla artist Salar Nader and rubâb player Homayoun Sakhi brought the music of their Afghan homeland to life in a performance that resonated deeply with cultural heritage and artistic innovation.

The evening’s compelling program featured the talents of Oberlin’s Performance and Improvisation (PI) Ensemble, a multidisciplinary group breaking down the barrier between classical music and jazz. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony traverses the cosmos in “The Planets” (Oct. 19)

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by Stephanie Manning

Just before the Akron Symphony began their October 19 concert with Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question, the audience was suddenly presented with a question of their own. Why were the musicians leaving the stage right after tuning?

Although bemused clapping and laughter followed, this conundrum luckily had an easy answer. Ives specifies that the string orchestra be hidden, which left only the four flute players and conductor Christopher Wilkins visible. So E.J. Thomas Hall darkened even further, leaving only the music stand lights and the haze diffused from backstage. In other words, it was an auspicious start to a concert with some deep ideas about the cosmos. [Read more…]

Gregorio Benítez takes flight in Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (Oct. 11)

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by Peter Feher

Some of the best birdwatching in Cleveland this season has, unusually, been at Severance Music Center.

The songs of dozens of different species could be heard in Reinberger Chamber Hall on Friday evening, October 11, when Spanish pianist Gregorio Benítez presented selections from Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (Catalog of birds).

This just happened to be the same weekend that The Cleveland Orchestra, upstairs in Mandel Concert Hall, was performing two avian-inspired works: Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto, which ends with an echoing seagull effect, and Jean Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, whose finale is meant to depict swans in flight.

[Read more…]

Inspired conducting and solos grace Cleveland Orchestra’s performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (Oct. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio —  On Thursday evening at Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra launched a trio of performances of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkëla at the helm and the assistance of mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson, the upper voices of the Cleveland Orchestra chorus, and the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus.

Mahler 3 is a famously long piece — its first movement alone lasts as long as the following five. Paying close attention to the composer’s explicit instructions, and never letting things get too big too soon, Mäkëla expertly paced the work, creating an arch that gathered the 110-minute performance into a glorious whole rather than treating it as a continuous series of unrelated climaxes. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Imani Winds go all out with Michelle Cann (Oct. 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Imani Winds has mastered the art of extemporized risk-taking. If most of the notes on Tuesday, October 15, were predetermined, the specialness was in what was not on the page. It’s what one aspires to hear from the best chamber music performances and in jazz: aligned individual and group invention, conversational interplay, courage of dynamics, tempos, and timbres edging on extremes — music-making never again to be heard in exactly the same way.

Flutist Brandon Patrick George, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mark Dover, horn player Kevin Newton, and bassoonist Monica Ellis were joined by pianist Michelle Cann — a potent spark of invention in her own right — in a program of varied, but logically grouped works by Paquito D’Rivera, Lalo Shifrin, Francis Poulenc, and Valerie Coleman. Ellis described the evening’s sequence as “concentric circles” coinciding in Paris, or at least in a French aesthetic.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir begins 10th season with “Meditations and Mysticism”

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by Mike Telin

In a recent Zoom conversation, Gregory Ristow said, “We talk so much about how music heals. And that idea provided me with threads into how composers engaged with the notion of music as a centering device — as a way of finding one’s own place in the world or observing the broader context of the world beyond oneself.”

On Saturday, October 26 at 7:00 pm at Trinity Cathedral, Ristow will lead the Cleveland Chamber Choir in “Meditations and Mysticism.” The program celebrates the healing power of music. The concert, presented in partnership with the award-winning mental health program, Ghetto Therapy, will launch the ensemble’s tenth anniversary season.

The program will be repeated on Sunday at 4:00 pm at First Lutheran Church in Lorain. Oberlin College & Conservatory Professor Charles Edward McGuire will present a pre-concert talk 45 minutes prior to each performance. Click here to register for a “pay what you will” ticket.

[Read more…]

DIARY, Thursday, October 24, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

Tonight at 7, Ohio Regional Music Arts and Cultural Outreach presents a Steel Drum Celebration with Joe Leaman and Friends at the Bop Stop.

Tonight at 7:30, CityMusic Cleveland begins its four-performance October Orchestra Series at Fairmount Presbyterian Church with a concert featuring Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson in Margaret Brouwer’s Viola Concerto.

At the same hour, the Lorain County Community College Signature Series will host pianist Ashlee Mack in James Romig’s Still, inspired by the American Abstract Expressionist painter Clyfford Still, and violinist Brendan Shea and pianist Yerin Kim will include Andrew Rindfleisch’s Two Pieces for Violin and Piano in a concert in Drinko Recital Hall at Cleveland State University.

Not happening today: Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project has canceled a performance by Natacha Diels/Uno Lady.

For details of these and other upcoming events, go to our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

Quince Ensemble at CIM: patience pays off (Oct. 16)

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by Stephanie Manning

The Quince Ensemble doesn’t specialize in instant gratification. The vocal quartet likes “slow music,” as soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett has explained in interviews, and she repeated that sentiment onstage on October 16. “Not slow in tempo, but slow in development.”

That ethos can also form the arc of entire programs, as Quince demonstrated to its audience at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Before the concert in Mixon Hall reached its apex with Courtney Bryan’s Requiem, the quartet built up to the finale by demonstrating just what their voices can do.
[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 23, 2024

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by Stephanie Manning

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:00 noon, hear organist Robert Myers perform reformation music” by J.S. Bach, Buxtehude, Kaufmann, and more at Trinity Lutheran Church. As always, the Music Near the Market series is free.

And tonight at 7:00 pm, hear some chamber music at the Cleveland Museum of Art from the young musicians of Stars in the Classics (pictured). “An Enchanted Program” is themed around the Halloween season. This free performance takes place in the Ames Family Atrium.

For more information, visit our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Ohio Light Opera has unveiled the six shows on their summer 2025 calendar: Carousel, Brigadoon, Tip-Toes, Patience, Bittersweet, and The Cousin from Batavia. The performances will run from June 14 to August 3 at the College of Wooster. Check out the calendar and learn more about the shows here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Daniel Hathaway

Russian choral director and composer Alexander Andreyevich Archangelsky was born on (or near) this date in 1846. A niche figure in the greater stream of Russian music, he mainly wrote Russian Orthodox Church music, including an All Night Vigil and masses, and led a choir that made successful tours of Russia and Europe, eventually transitioning from all-male voices to male and female singers. [Read more…]

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