by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Klaus Mäkelä leads the Cleveland Orchestra and choruses with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson in the second of three performances of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (7:30 at Severance Music Center, repeated Saturday at 8).
No Exit New Music (pictured) continues its new season with a triptych of concerts and a trio of world premieres (7 pm at Waterloo Arts).
And Apollo’s Fire plays J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 6 (7:30 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights.)
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Wish a happy birthday to the legendary Wynton Marsalis, who turns 63. Among the many accomplishments of that trumpeter, composer, educator and Jazz at Lincoln Center artistic director, he wrote the first jazz composition to receive the Pulitzer Prize.
That honor came in 1997 for Blood on the Fields, his oratorio about the history of slavery in the United States. Listen to “Work Song” from that piece here, as performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, vocalists Paula West and Kenny Washington, and pianist Eric Reed under the direction of Marsalis in 2013.
Turning 78 is Canadian composer Howard Shore, a three-time Academy Award winner for his scores to the film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. Click here to listen to the Prague Film Orchestra and conductor George Korynta play music from The Fellowship of the Ring.
French composer Charles Gounod, who passed away on October 18, 1893, is most famous for his twelve operas, including the popular Faust. Listen to the “Ballet Music” from that work, played here by Yondani Butt and the London Symphony.
Another passing to honor is that of Dayton-born songwriter Gussie Lord Davis, who died on this date in 1899. Rejected from Cincinnati’s now-defunct Nelson College of Music because of his race, Davis received private lessons in exchange for low-wage janitorial work, and went on to become the first Black songwriter to reach fame in New York’s Tin Pan Alley scene. Head to YouTube to listen to his first song, published in 1880 and sung here by Vernon Dalhart: We Sat Beneath The Maple On The Hill.
