Blossom Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra to host evening with André Gremillet April 5

March 29, 2016 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

Here’s your opportunity to meet the new executive director of The Cleveland Orchestra. On Tuesday, April 5 at 6:00 pm, the Hudson Chapter of Blossom Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra will sponsor an evening of conversation with André Gremillet, who assumed his new post as executive director of the Orchestra in January following the retirement of Gary Hanson.

Gremillet most recently served as managing director of Australia’s Melbourne Symphony, and before that was president and CEO of the New Jersey Symphony. A native of Quebec, Gremillet is a conservatory-trained pianist who also served for four years as president of Canada’s premier organ-building firm, Casavant Frères.

The evening, to be held at Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland (334 East Hines Hill Rd. in Boston Heights), will be moderated by WCLV’s president and longtime Cleveland Orchestra commentator Robert Conrad.

Some tickets remain at $125, $100, and $75 (all but $40 of the price is tax-deductible). RSVP by calling Connie Van Gilder at 330.656.1073.

Published on ClevelandClassical.com March 29, 2016.

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About Daniel Hathaway

Daniel Hathaway founded ClevelandClassical.com in September, 2008, after a thirty-one year tenure as music director of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, where he founded the Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert Series and Trinity Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School, he also studied historical musicology at Princeton and Harvard Universities. Before coming to Cleveland in 1977, he served as head of humanities at the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City and as head of arts at Groton School in Massachusetts. In Cleveland, he has served on the music staff of Cleveland Opera, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the faculty of Laurel School. As an organist, Hathaway has played recitals in the U.S., England, France, Germany, and Austria. He team-teaches Music Journalism at Oberlin College and Conservatory and is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra crosses the pond without ever leaving Cleveland (Nov. 23)

By Peter Feher

On Saturday, Nov. 23 at University Circle’s Church of the Covenant, the outstanding BlueWater Chamber Orchestra transported listeners across the Atlantic with a pleasantly English program of Gerald Finzi, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Franz Joseph Haydn. Artistic director Daniel Meyer described his affinity for this repertoire — and explained how Haydn happens to qualify as an “honorary Englishman” — in several amiable asides throughout the evening.

Yet the focus of this concert was undoubtedly on the exceptional caliber of musician that one can find right here in Cleveland.

Violinist James Thompson — a Northeast Ohio native, graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as well as BlueWater’s guest concertmaster this season — was the star of the night. He soared while soloing in Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, that sentimental favorite that somehow never loses its shine.

[Read on…]

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By Peter Feher

Mariah Carey may be pop music’s undisputed “Queen of Christmas.” But among classical singers, the title has yet to be taken, and this year, superstar mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is vying for the crown.

As far as royalty is concerned, DiDonato has a distinct advantage. This isn’t to imply any sort of better-than-thou diva demeanor, which she’s conspicuously avoided cultivating over the course of a 25-year opera career. Offstage, whether she’s coaching a master class or sharing a bit of herself on social media, DiDonato is known for her openhearted, inviting manner.

[Read on…]

Les Délices visits 14th Century Avant-garde at Pivot Center (Nov. 24)

by Daniel Hathaway

As the historian Barbara Tuchman revealed in her book A Distant Mirror, the 14th century in Europe was both eventful and full of contradictions.

On the traumatic side, the Great Famine and the bubonic plague claimed a great swath of the population, the Hundred Years’ War raged, and the papacy moved from Rome to Avignon in France, marking the beginning of the decline in influence of the Catholic Church.

On the positive side came the flowering of experiments in music, a subject that Debra Nagy and her Les Délices colleagues charmingly explored in their “14th Century Avant-garde” program on Saturday, November 23 at the Pivot Center on Cleveland’s West Side, a converted 1919 building once used for making ships’ sails and awnings. [Read on…]

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