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Archives for January 2025

DIARY, Friday, January 31, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, Chicago’s Schola Cantorum celebrates the 500th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina with a performance on the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at St. John’s Cathedral. Michael Anderson will direct “a wide sampling of Palestrina’s sacred works, from motets and psalm settings to settings for the Mass and spiritual madrigals.

At the same hour, The Resonance Project (Guillermo Salas-Suarez, Baroque violin, Qin Ying Tan, harpsichord, and Brian Kay, Baroque guitar and percussion) will visit early Spanish Music in a program at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

by Jarrett Hoffman

Franz Schubert was born on this date in 1797 in Vienna, while Philip Glass followed suit in 1937 in Baltimore. The connections don’t stop there: Glass has cited Schubert as an important influence, and in an interview in 2011, he even called Schubert his favorite composer. [Read more…]

Old Friends, New Collaboration: Anthony McGill and Emanuel Ax bring recital tour to Oberlin

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by Stephanie Manning

Reposted with the permission of Oberlin Conservatory

Throughout his decades of playing chamber music, Emanuel Ax has kept his friends close. “ It’s wonderful to have people on stage that you like,” the pianist says. “I’m pretty gregarious as a person, so I like being with someone, especially old friends.”

Now in his 70s, the esteemed musician has performed with many of the same collaborators for decades, including cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinists Issac Stern and Leonidas Kavakos. But his next recital tour brings him together with someone new: clarinetist Anthony McGill.

The duo’s upcoming performances feature a program of wide-ranging music, and their travels include a stop at Finney Chapel. That concert, on February 4 at 7:30 pm, will be presented as part of Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera’s Ada Lovelace is as free as a bird (Jan. 26)

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by Stephanie Manning

Ada Lovelace’s “infinite energy” was more mental than physical. Lovelace, a 19th-century English mathematician, was chronically ill for most of her life — yet her agile mind worked magic on numbers, paving the way for important scientific discoveries.

That dichotomy is a cornerstone of The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace, composer Kamala Sankaram and librettist Rob Handel’s opera about the brilliant woman often considered the first computer programmer. Oberlin Opera Theater presented a simple but effective staging on January 26, directed by Cara Consilvio. [Read more…]

Wayne Center Presents: Chamber music among friends in Wooster

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by Stephanie Manning

A ’60s cafetorium might not sound like a great place to hear chamber music. But at the Wayne Center for the Arts, there’s more to the concert venue than meets the eye.

“ Crazily enough, it has unbelievably sharp, nice acoustics for chamber music,” Jarrod Hartzler said in a recent interview. “ It is not fancy. It is not super comfortable. But it is acoustically great.”

Hartzler is the vice president and managing director of ESQYRE, an Ohio-based music education non-profit partnered with the Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster. The two organizations have created a concert series called “Wayne Center Presents,” featuring musicians both local and otherwise. The third season began earlier in January and will present monthly chamber music concerts through May 2025. Tickets are available online.
[Read more…]

Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and Musical Theater Project (Jan. 25)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Many things about George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 show Girl Crazy set it apart — the cast of future superstars (Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman), the creativity of the Gershwin brothers, the artistry of orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett — all distinguishing it as a landmark musical. But in the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and The Musical Theater Project’s ninth annual collaboration on Saturday, January 25 at the Maltz, the songs were the stars.

Though the weather outside was frightful, your heart would have to have been frozen solid not to be affected by songs like “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” “Bidin’ My Time,” “But Not For Me,” and “Boy! What Love Has Done to Me” — songs memorable, charming, and tender, that set Girl Crazy apart as one of Broadway’s most endearing scores.

[Read more…]

Pahud and Bax perform magnificently for Cleveland Chamber Music Society (Jan. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At the latest Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concert at Disciples Church on Tuesday evening January 21, flutist Emmanuel Pahud and pianist Alessio Bax, performed magnificently, but also made quite an impression on the young audience, perhaps for years to come.

Pahud, the longtime principal flutist of the Berlin Philharmonic and something of a rock star in the flute world, received a Beatles-like reception from the many flute students in attendance. There were shrieks of excitement and standing ovations, and at intermission an extended period of selfie-taking and high fives with the star.

Established and new works by J.S. Bach and Nicolas Bacri were featured, as well as transcriptions of violin pieces by Mozart, Clara Schumann, and César Franck by Pahud. [Read more…]

When Grammy nominees are also friends: chatting with Elaine Martone & Erica Brenner

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by Mike Telin

This year’s Grammy Awards recognize the best recordings, compositions, and artists from September 16, 2023, to August 30, 2024, as chosen by the members of the Recording Academy.

While Cleveland artists have been well-represented at the Grammys for some time, when the 67th award ceremony is held at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 2 and broadcast at 8 pm EST on CBS, there will be two special reasons to pay attention.

Elaine Martone (left) and Erica Brenner (right), who have been among past Grammy nominees and winners, have both been nominated this time around for Producer of the Year, Classical (Category 82).

[Read more…]

DIARY, Thursday, January 30, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, the Canton Symphony’s Divergent Sounds series presents Soleo. “Experience the mesmerizing fusion of Middle Eastern influences and progressive rock energy” at The Auricle. Tickets available online.

CANCELLATION:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the CIM Opera Theater’s performances of Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters on February 1 and 2, at the Cleveland Museum of Art have been canceled. Refunds are being issued to all ticket holders.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

New York’s OnSite Opera Shuts Down

From The New York Times; “For more than a decade, On Site Opera, a small but nimble performing arts group, brought opera to unexpected places: the Bronx Zoo, Madame Tussauds, cafes and soup kitchens. The company won acclaim for its innovative approach, including a Beethoven song cycle performed by phone during the pandemic.

“But on Tuesday, On Site Opera announced that it was shutting down, saying it could no longer keep up with rising costs. The company’s three full-time employees will lose their jobs; no further performances are planned.” The company was formed in 2012 by Oberlin alum Eric Einhorn (pictured above), who stepped down in 2023. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, January 29, 2025

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by Stephanie Manning

HAPPENING TODAY:

Guest conductor Tito Muñoz (pictured) leads the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra tonight in a program of two staples: Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. That’s at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center.

Admission is free, but register online for tickets. CIM student Zachary Brandon is the featured violinist.

For more details on this and more upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Prague Summer Nights Young Artists Music Festival will be holding live auditions next Wednesday, February 5, from 5:40 – 7:40 pm at Oberlin Conservatory. The month-long program in the Czech Republic will put on four orchestra concerts and six fully-staged operas between June 16 and July 14. Application information is available here.

INTERESTING READ:

“Morgiane” — maybe the oldest existing opera by a Black American — was never staged after composer Edmond Dédé completed it in 1887. Until now.

The history of the 545-page epic, its relatively recent discovery, and the composer’s connection to Black opera in 19th-century New Orleans are all chronicled in a recent feature for the New York Times.

Kevin O’Brien writes: “Now, almost 125 years after Dédé’s death, an unlikely team, including a historian, an antiquarian music dealer, two librarians, and a pair of New Orleans natives, has come together to salvage Dédé, make relevant his legacy and stage his greatest work for the first time.” [Read more…]

CIM Opera Theater: Direct from the Headlines — Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters

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by Mike Telin

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the CIM Opera Theater’s performances of  Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters on February 1 and 2, 2025, at the Cleveland Museum of Art have been canceled. Refunds are being issued to all ticket holders.

“As an artistic and stage director who enjoys telling stories, this is a very compelling work and something that our students can sink their dramatic teeth into. It’s also a piece that audiences can get lost in, and ask questions about as the story goes along.”

That’s how CIM Opera Theater’s interim artistic director JJ Hudson characterized Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters in a telephone interview. In his synopsis, the composer notes that the 2009 work — his first opera — follows one woman’s dangerous attempt to escape her life as a member of the FLDS Church (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), a sect that split from mainstream Mormonism in the early 20th Century, largely because of the LDS Church’s renunciation of polygamy. [Read more…]

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