Archives for May 2025

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 6 pm at Heights Arts, you can sit in on an open rehearsal of the Omni Quartet’s Beethoven quartet program and watch the process of preparing for the concert that Amy Lee & Alicia Koelz, violins, Joanna Patterson Zakany, viola, and Tanya Ell, cello, will give on Sunday.

Tonight at 7 pm, No Exit will present music from The Collective, an international consortium of composers including Agata Zubel, Mathew Rosenblum, Douglas Knehans, Spiros Mazis, Amy Kaplan, Constantine Koukias, Edward Smalldone, and Timothy Beyer (pictured) in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art (it’s free).

And at 7:30, Apollo’s Fire takes its summer program ¡HISPANIA!, led from the harpsichord by Jeannette Sorrell and featuring flamenco guitarist Jeremías García, to Harkness Chapel at Case.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1805, Italian composer Luigi Boccherini died in Madrid, Hungarian composer György Ligeti was born in Transylvania in 1923, and German baritone and conductor Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau took his first breath in 1925 in Zehlendorf. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

12:00 pm – Tuesdays at the Covenant: Oberlin Conservatory Organ Majors. Noah Duckwall: Michelangelo Rossi’s Toccata settima & William Byrd’s Fantasia in a, BK 13 | Evan de Jong: Dietrich Buxtehude’s Praeludium ex g, BuxWV 148 & Anthoni van Noordt’s Psalm 24 | Owen Metz: Percy Whitlock’s Fantasie-Choral in D-flat. Church of the Covenant, 11205 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering.

7:30 pm – Apollo’s Fire. ¡HISPANIA! – A Voyage from Spain to the Americas. Jeannette Sorrell, harpsichord & direction, featuring Jeremías García, flamenco guitar. Music by Diego Ortiz, Gaspar Sanz, and Santiago de Murcia, plus Sephardic ballads from the Jewish communities of Spain and Argentina. The Bath Church UCC.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Canton Symphony Orchestra is looking for dedicated volunteers. “Whether you’re greeting concertgoers, assisting with special events, or supporting behind-the-scenes operations, your time and energy help bring the power of live music to life. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND:

On Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 8,  The Cleveland Orchestra continues its Opera Festival with Vox Humana (works by Francis Poulenc, J.S. Bach, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Richard Strauss, with Franz Welser-Möst, conducting, Sarah Aristidou, soprano, Tony Sias, narrator, and The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.

Also on Saturday, at 7:30 Carl Topilow leads the Firelands Symphony Orchestra in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, with Andrès Cárdenes, plus works by Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and John Williams at Sawmill Creek Convention Center, in Huron. Tickets available online.

And on Sunday at 3 pm, Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in the third and final performance of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa (pictured, photo by Roger Mastroianni).

Same day same hour, Cleveland Chamber Collective presents Music of America VIII, featuring works by Missy Mazzoli, Eric D. Gould, and Katherine Hoover, plus premieres of works by Ty Alan Emerson and Eric Charnofsky (Disciples Church in Cleveland Hts., free and live streamed here.) [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra presents the second of three performances of Leoš Janáček’s 1904 opera Jenůfa. Franz Welser-Möst, conducts a cast featuring Latonia Moore, soprano (Jenůfa), Samuel Levine, tenor (Laca), Miles Mykkanen, tenor (Števa), Nina Stemme, soprano (Kostelnička) and The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. Read our review of the opening performance here.

And at the same hour at Neighborhood Connections, Renovare Music presents A Hive’s Song: The Frequency of Sisterhood, an evening of instrumental music and original documentary songs written in collaboration with My Sistas Keeper, a collective of black, female, urban beekeepers in Greater Cleveland.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1874, Giuseppi Verdi’s Requiem was first performed at the church of San Marco in Milan, ending a long saga for the composer, who had originally proposed a collaborative work by several Italian composers to honor Gioachino Rossini after his death in 1868. [Read more…]