by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. COYO receives $5 million gift
. No Exit concert back online after silly snafu
. R.I.P. composer Ned Rorem at 99
. Henry Purcell neatly timed his all-too-early demise
TODAY’S EVENTS:
From 2:00 pm until 4:00 pm today it’s “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music,” hosted by Eric Charnofsky. The playlist includes Ingolf Dahl’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone, several choral selections by Randall Thompson, Out Yonder by Terry Riley, Ernest John Moeran’s Fantasy Quartet, and orchestral music by Silvestre Revueltas and art songs by Edvard Grieg. Click here to listen to the internet feed: or tune in to 91.1 FM in the greater Cleveland area.
IN THE NEWS:
The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) announced on Saturday that it will receive a $5 million gift from Geoffrey and Sarah Gund to The Cleveland Orchestra’s endowment, helping to ensure that this unique musical training experience continues for generations of young people.
No Exit new music ensemble is happy to report that after fighting a copyright strike by 3ants Development & Strategies SL, who confused the title of the new music ensemble’s online broadcast with that of a feature film, their fall 2022 online collaboration with Zeitgeist is back online for your viewing pleasure. Click here to watch and listen.
That reminds us of another online brouhaha we reported on this date in 2020 under TWO CHEERS FOR A.I.. “Viewers who hopped onto the Cleveland Musicians Local 4 “Tuning In” performance by violinist Emily Cornelius and Pianist Eric Charnofsky last night witnessed a jarring interruption when the Facebook Live stream was shut down — more than once. It seems that the FB bots that spread out over the network to nab copyright infringements mistook the live performance for a commercial recording. Local 4 Music Fund Executive Director Amber Rogers writes, “If you want to hear the performance SO GOOD that Facebook shut it down TWICE, it’s here, for you.”
Ned Rorem, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and the author of more than a dozen published diaries that were remarkable for their candid entree into elite gay and artistic circles from the 1960s onward, died Nov. 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 99. Click here to read Tim Page’s obituary in the Washington Post.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Henry Purcell neatly timed his all-too-early demise at the age of 36 and younger than Mozart — for the eve of the Patron Saint of Music’s feast day on November 21, 1695. That makes this an appropriate time to listen to one of the composer’s Odes written in her honor. Here’s a performance of Hail, Bright Cecelia by the Dunedin Consort led by John Butt.
And on this date in 1820, an 80-ton sperm whale attacked and sank the Nantucket whaling ship Essex 2,000 miles off the west coast of South America. That event inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 more-than-a-novel, Moby-Dick, and in turn, moved American composer Jake Heggie to write his opera of the same name on commission from Dallas Opera, San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, the State Opera of South Australia and Calgary Opera. I saw the premiere in Dallas in April, 2010 along with colleagues from the Music Critics Association of North America.
Heggie talked about the process of composing the work in a University of California TV interview in 2012. No time like the present to crack open Melville’s magnum opus, which just might be one of those classics we’ve never gotten around to reading. Melville’s Billy Budd also inspired the eponymous opera by Benjamin Britten.