by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: Jonathan Moyer at Church of the Covenant, and Piano Cleveland Social Club at Forest City Brewery
•Xavier Foley, Ben Roidl-Ward, and Molly Joyce (pictured) in the news
•Almanac: a pair of Pulitzer winners in Norman Dello Joio and Leon Kirchner
HAPPENING TODAY:
Organist Jonathan Moyer is featured today on the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Noon Organ Plus series. The program includes works by Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Adam Reincken, J.S. Bach, and Felix Mendelssohn. A freewill offering will be taken up.
6:30 pm brings a different type of musical event: a meeting of the Piano Cleveland Social Club at Forest City Brewery. Click here if you’re interested.
You can find more details about both events in our Concert Listings.
INTERESTING READS:
This past weekend, The Washington Post released its annual list of musicians to particularly keep an eye on this year. Those include one name that was featured in a recent Akron Symphony concert (double bassist-composer Xavier Foley), and one artist with strong ties to Northeast Ohio (bassoonist-composer Ben Roidl-Ward, a graduate of Oberlin) — and many more. Read the article here.
And writing for The Wire, Pennsylvania-born composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Molly Joyce discusses the relationship between her artistic practice and her disability — her left hand was nearly amputated after she was involved in a car accident at a young age. “As my practice developed, I realised that my disabled experience is an inherent way I interact with the world and an essential channel to producing work…Rather than conform my physicality to the music, I cultivate the music from my physicality.” Read here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Two American composers who won the Pulitzer Prize were born on this date in music history.
First was Norman Dello Joio on January 24, 1913 in New York City. He started off his career in his early teens as an organist and choir director, something that must have proved influential because he is best known for his choral works. However, it was his string orchestra work Meditations on Ecclesiastes that brought him the Pulitzer in 1957. Click here to listen to a 2009 recording by the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Born six years after Dello Joio, Leon Kirchner was a fellow New Yorker by birth, but his formative years were spent in Los Angeles. He studied at UCLA with Arnold Schoenberg, someone who was highly influential on his aesthetics, although Kirchner never turned to serialism. When it came to his Pulitzer-winning String Quartet No. 3, characterized by fascinating dialogues between the strings and electronics, Kirchner wrote:
My Quartet No. 3 is not concerned with systems, rules, procedures…I composed the work because of sheer musical urge. It was fun, and while I composed it I was very conscious of the joy of creating music.
Listen here to a recording by the Orion String Quartet.