by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: organist Robert Myers, cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman with pianist Cicilia Yudha, and modern Italian folk group Alla Boara (left)
•Announcements: The Music Settlement’s new Creative Aging Department, and spring registration
•In the news: layoffs reported at Universal Music Group, particularly in the recorded-music division
•Almanac: a pair of American composers who won the Pulitzer Prize
HAPPENING TODAY:
First up, there are two lunchtime options.
At 12:15 pm, you can head to Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland to hear organist Robert Myers in music by Sweelinck, Pachelbel, and J.S. Bach as part of the Wednesday Noon Organ Concert series — a freewill offering will be taken up. Or you can make your way to the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown for YSU’s Music at Noon series, this week featuring faculty members Kivie Cahn-Lipman (cello) and Cicilia Yudha (piano). It’s free.
And at 7:30 pm, modern Italian folk group Alla Boara will celebrate the release of their second album with a concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. The vision of drummer and composer Anthony Taddeo, Alla Boara features vocalist Amanda Powell, guitarist Dan Bruce, trumpeter Tommy Lehman, bassist Ian Kinnaman, and accordionist and keyboardist Clay Colley — plus tonight’s special guests, Patrick Graney on percussion and Caitlin Hedge on violin. Read Mike Telin’s recent interview with Taddeo here, and get tickets here.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Music Settlement has announced the newly developed Creative Aging Department. It will be led by multi-instrumentalist and teaching artist Afi-Odelia Scruggs (right), and is aimed at “researching, designing, piloting, supporting, and expanding arts and culture opportunities for adults aged 55 and older throughout Northeast Ohio.” Read more about it here.
Also note that TMS’s spring semester begins on February 5. Check out their offerings here.
IN THE NEWS:
During the first quarter of the year, Universal Music Group will be laying off hundreds, particularly in the company’s recorded-music division, according to a report from Variety. Jem Aswad writes that while a recent Bloomberg article “painted an overly and arguably inaccurately bleak picture of the music business’ current macro outlook, there’s little question that the industry is seeing a leveling-off in growth since streaming revived its fortunes in the mid-2010s, and since the pandemic furthered that growth due to people sheltering at home, with more leisure time than usual, during much of 2020 and 2021.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Two American composers who won the Pulitzer Prize were born on this date in music history.
First, on January 24, 1913 in New York City, we have Norman Dello Joio, who 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, who made a significant impact on his pupil’s aesthetics, although Kirchner never turned to serialism. When it came to his 1967 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.