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Archives for March 2025

DIARY, Tuesday March 11, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Violin Channel reports that “Cellist Melissa Kraut has recently joined the faculty at DePaul University as a Professional Lecturer in the cello department … For the last nineteen years, Kraut served as co-head of the cello department at the Cleveland Institute of Music.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

With no performances on the agenda today in Northeast Ohio, we’ll jump backwards in classical music history to mark some important arrivals.

by Mike Telin

March 11 is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to celebrating birthdays. There’s composer Henry Cowell (Menlo Park, California) in 1897, accordionist and orchestra leader Lawrence Welk (Strasburg, North Dakota) in 1903, composer Xavier Montsalvatge (Girona, Spain) in 1912, composer and bandleader Mercer Ellington (Washington D.C.) in 1919, and vocalist and conductor Bobby McFerrin (New York, N.Y.) in 1950. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra brings the “Wild” inside (Mar. 2)

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by Kate MacKenzie

On Sunday, March 2, animal print was à la mode at Severance Music Center, as concertgoers donned masks of leopards, crocodiles, and other creatures for Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony. The program was presented as part of The Cleveland Orchestra Family Concert Series.

Conductor Daniel Reith led the ensemble, but the star of the stage was Wild Symphony’s author and composer. Although best known for his novel The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown recently made his debut in the genre of juvenile fiction. A life-long lover of classical music, Brown was inspired by works like Peter and the Wolf and The Carnival of the Animals to write his own introduction to the orchestra. A marshland walk prompted the first composition: a poem and short piece modeled after the chorus of frogs he’d heard. Over the years, the project expanded to more than twenty poems and brief orchestral works representing different animals. Wild Symphony was published as a picture book in 2020, along with an app designed to play each movement as the pages are turned.

[Read more…]

DIARY, Monday March 10, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

Piano Cleveland will present Arts Alive: A Space Odyssey, featuring students from the Paul L. Dunbar Elementary School’s PianoLab on Wednesday, March 19, from 7-8 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

“The students will guide audiences on an exhilarating journey, featuring musical works, dynamic choreography, captivating visual art, and evocative written word. As the stars align, you’ll travel to distant planets, get up close with a black hole, and witness the cosmos unfold in a breathtaking display of young talent.” The event is free, but tickets are required. More information here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Five years ago, The Cleveland Orchestra began the week by announcing that “due to ongoing developments related to coronavirus (COVID-19), the Orchestra will not travel to Europe (Linz, Vienna and Paris) and Abu Dhabi for the ensemble’s previously announced tour scheduled to take place during the next several weeks.”

That began a cascade of postponements and cancellations that effectively brought a halt to live music in Northeast Ohio, causing institutions, presenters and touring artists to come up with clever ways to cope with an uncertain future. (Photo above: Roger Mastroianni) [Read more…]

DIARY, Weekend March 7-9, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

THIS WEEKEND:

Over these three days, Les Délices, The Cleveland Orchestra, Oberlin Opera Theater, Cleveland State University’s Keyboard Area and The Lakewood Project, Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s Young and Emerging Composers, the Stow Symphony, classical guitarist Marko Topchii, Canton Symphony with the Steel Wheels, pianist Jeffrey Siegel, and the Parma Symphony, will all contribute performances — some repeated — to Northeast Ohio’s busy schedule of classical concerts. Please visit our Concert Listings for details.

Reminder: Daylight Savings Time starts at 2 am on Sunday (clocks advance by one hour).

NEWS BRIEFS:

Msn.com reports that “the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music have ‘paused’ the Emerging Black Composers Project, citing a memo from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that called diversity efforts ‘repugnant’ and ‘shameful’ and directed schools to eliminate them or risk losing federal funding.”

The article adds that “representatives from the Conservatory and the Symphony said in a joint statement to the Chronicle that they’re trying to save the project. Among the workarounds, the organizations are floating the possibility that the Symphony, which is not subject to Department of Education orders, fully adopt the program.

And the Oberlin Conservatory reports that “Associate Professor of Jazz Studies Billy Hart was named a Mellon Foundation Jazz Legacies Fellow and recognized as a ‘hero of jazz rhythm and esteemed mentor.’ [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera embraces the fun and games in La finta giardiniera

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by Stephanie Manning

The Oberlin Opera students have recently been learning to see their stage as a playground — literally.

In Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, “ these characters are sort of playing games in regards to their romantic relationships,” director Stephanie Havey explained. “ So we’ve incorporated different children’s games and playground activities into the action, as a metaphor for how they’re manipulating each other.”

This comedic Mozart opera from 1775, which boasts enough mistaken-identity plotlines to set one’s head spinning, will be presented this weekend at Oberlin’s Hall Auditorium. Conducted by Christian Capocaccia, the Thursday, March 6, Friday, March 7, and Saturday, March 8 performances are at 8:00 pm, while the Sunday, March 9 performance is at 2:00 pm. [Read more…]

No Exit Presents: John Faieta at Trinity Cathedral (Feb. 28)

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by Mike Telin

Although seventy-six trombones may have led the big parade, when John Faieta brought his one-man show to Trinity Cathedral on Friday, February 28, the trombone virtuoso proved that one trombone —  matched with an acoustically pleasing space —  is all that is needed to provide a fascinating listening experience.

Under the banner of No Exit Presents, Faieta’s beautifully-constructed program treated the good-sized audience to five musically diverse works that stretched the sound and technical capabilities of the instrument. And a subtle sense of humor imbued his charming and informative stories about each work and how it came to be written.

The program opened with Leonard Bernstein’s Mippy II, a tune the composer wrote as a eulogy for his brother’s beloved dog. It’s a jaunty work with a smooth-talking melody, and Faieta delivered a sparkling performance.

[Read more…]

DIARY, Thursday March 6, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

This evening at 6 at Market Garden Brewery, Les Délices takes a break from its usual French Baroque fare to play a pirate-themed event including a costume contest and sea shanty singalongs, and at 7 at Heights Arts, violinist Emily Cornelius and percussionist Ross Karre join in a pay-what-you-can concert.

More this evening: at 7:30 in Mandel Hall at Severance, Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and Concerto in G with pianist Seong-Jin Cho (pictured), and at at 8 in Hall Auditorium, Oberlin Opera Theater opens a four-performance, double-cast run of Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, directed by Stephanie Havey and conducted by Christian Capocaccia.

INTERESTING CLIP:

Film concerts: Performing movie music live

“An increasingly popular symphony orchestra concert is a movie screening accompanied by a live performance of the film’s music—reeling in new audiences to the concert hall. CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue attends a New York Philharmonic screening of Jaws, featuring John Williams’ iconic score, and finds out how the technically complicated concert is managed.” Watch here (Tattled from The Cleveland Orchestra’s newsletter entry about the forthcoming screenings of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther with score led by expert film conductor Anthony Parnther.) [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Classical Sparks” at St. Raphael, Bay Village (Feb. 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Three composers whose lives intertwined and whose music inspired one another — Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Joseph Bologne, and Joseph Haydn — were the subject of Apollo’s Fire’s latest series of concerts, “Classical Sparks.” I attended the performance on Friday, February 28 at St. Raphael Catholic Church in Bay Village, for which artistic director Jeannette Sorrell had assembled a full classical orchestra of period instruments.

Mozart was represented with a delightful overture from his three-act opera La Finta semplice (“The Fake Innocent”), plus an aria from Don Giovanni, and the supreme Violin Concerto no. 3 in G, K.216. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: JR Fralick & Friends (Feb. 24)

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by Kate MacKenzie

From somber Shostakovich to carousing cabaret, tenor JR Fralick displayed a range of his abilities on the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s February 24th’s concert at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church.

Fellow Baldwin Wallace faculty members Christine Fuoco, piano, Steve Sang Kyun Koh, violin, Lembi Veskimets, viola, and Khari Joyner, cello, collaborated with the vocalist for an evening of song.

Shostakovich’s Seven Romances on Poems by Aleksandr Blok was a dark but gripping start to the evening. Though written for tenor and piano trio, the full ensemble rarely played at once; instead, a dramatic range of moods and timbres emerged as the composer explored different combinations of instruments song by song. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Symphony puts its annual spotlight on composing’s next generation

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by Stephanie Manning

The Cleveland Chamber Symphony has changed plenty since its founding more than 40 years ago. But some things are still the same.

In addition to the Symphony’s performing work, founder Edwin London “firmly believed that it could be an educational tool as well,” music director Steven Smith said. So in 1983, the Young & Emerging Composers Concert was born — an annual opportunity for the ensemble to play an entire program of new works by local student composers.

This tradition is set to continue on Saturday, March 8 during the Symphony’s “NEOSonicSpring” program, presented at 4:00 pm in Baldwin Wallace Conservatory’s Gamble Auditorium. [Read more…]

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