by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7, Ohio Regional Music Arts and Cultural Outreach presents a Steel Drum Celebration with Joe Leaman and Friends at the Bop Stop.
Tonight at 7:30, CityMusic Cleveland begins its four-performance October Orchestra Series at Fairmount Presbyterian Church with a concert featuring Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson in Margaret Brouwer’s Viola Concerto.
At the same hour, the Lorain County Community College Signature Series will host pianist Ashlee Mack in James Romig’s Still, inspired by the American Abstract Expressionist painter Clyfford Still, and violinist Brendan Shea and pianist Yerin Kim will include Andrew Rindfleisch’s Two Pieces for Violin and Piano in a concert in Drinko Recital Hall at Cleveland State University.
Not happening today: Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project has canceled a performance by Natacha Diels/Uno Lady.
For details of these and other upcoming events, go to our Concert Listings.
NEWS HEADLINE:
Lydian String Quartet Dismissed By University Where It Was On Faculty For 44 Years — The Justice, student newspaper of Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.
INTERESTING VIDEO:
Cleveland Orchestra principal percussion Marc Damoulakis demonstrates his role in next week’s performances of Tan Dun’s Water Concerto, a work that uses water as percussion, in addition to wooden bowls, plastic tubes, and other unexpected instruments. Watch here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
English Renaissance composer Thomas Weelkes was born on October 24 in 1575. One of the most brilliant madrigalists of the era of Elizabeth I, his name appeared recently in the playlist of VOCES8, who sang his As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending on the Tuesday Musical Series.
That was one of 25 part-songs by 23 composers published in 1601 by Thomas Morley in The Triumphs of Oriana, apparently a tribute to “The Virgin Queen,” though its connection to Elizabeth has been disputed. In any case, the collection marshals the talents of British composers in its depiction of an idealized England where nymphs and shepherds cavort in the countryside. Each madrigal ends with the refrain, “Thus sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana: long live fair Oriana.”
Click here to listen to the entire collection, with some interpolated dance pieces, performed by the British ensemble i Fagiolini.
Centuries and worlds away, composer Sofia Gubaidulina celebrates her 93rd birthday today, having been born on October 24, 1931 in the Tatar region of Russia. The New York Times took notice of the celebrations planned for her 90th birthday in a 2021 online article, At 90, a Composer Is Still Sending Out Blasts (click here to read). And go here to listen to Gidon Kremer play her Offertorium — Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, with Charles Dutoit and the Boston Symphony. “…the moving piece established Gubaidulina’s international reputation as something of a spiritualist.”
