by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Following the Semi-Final round on Sunday afternoon, the jury announced the four finalists in the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition: Maxim Lando (USA), Evren Ozel (USA), Giuseppe Guarrera (Italy), and Zijian Wei (China).
They’ll undoubtedly be spending today practicing for the Salon Round on Tuesday and Wednesday at Glidden House, and the Final Round on Friday and Saturday at Severance Music Center with The Cleveland Orchestra.
Meanwhile, at 10 am, the competition jurors will coach piano students from around Northeast Ohio in master classes at The Music Settlement (free and open to the public).
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassicaal.com Concert Listings.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Cleveland Jazz Orchestra has announced its 40th Anniversary season at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, with subscriptions to go on sale August 9.
Events include “The Sean is You,” with trumpeter Sean Jones (November 1), a Kate Reid Christmas (December 6), Terri Lyne Carrington in “Thee Pulse of Progress” (March 28) & “Past, Present, & Future, an array of CJO voices from across generations (May 9). Additional events include “Sinatra at the Coliseum: with Lou Armango at Music Box Supper Club (September 21), and “Girl Crazy” with The Musical Theater Project at the Maltz (January 25). Still to come this summer: the CJO Little Big Band at Tremont’s Lincoln Park on August 23 at 7 pm (picnics welcome).
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume Du Fay was presumably born on this date in 1397. Associated on and off throughout his career with Cambrai Cathedral, where he was buried, he became the most celebrated composer in Europe while working at different times for the Papal Chapel, noble Italian families, and the Duke of Burgundy, among others.
Du Fay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores, written in 1436 for the consecration of Brunelleschi’s dome for the Cathedral of Florence, reflects the composer’s rich contrapuntal gifts. Listen here to a September, 2014 performance by Quire Cleveland led by founder Ross W. Duffin, whose program notes reveal the elaborate symbolism behind Du Fay’s musical construction.
Other local performances of Du Fay’s works include his secular motet, Ma belle dame souveraine, performed on a March, 2013 Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert by the Case Collegium Musicum, Debra Nagy, director, and his Gloria, sung by Contrapunctus Early Music in March, 2015 at St. John’s Cathedral, directed by David Acres.
And here’s an unusual entry: On this date in 1978, Parowan, Utah, named a local mountain Mt. Messiaen to honor the composer of Des canyons aux etoiles (‘From the canyons to the stars’) commissioned in 1971 by Alice Tully to celebrate the American bicentennial in 1976. Olivier Messiaen was inspired by the natural beauty of Bryce Canyon, and this seems like an important time to revisit one of the country’s remarkable natural landscapes. Listen here to the 90-minute work for mixed ensemble in a performance by Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony.
