by Jarrett Hoffman
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Sixth Annual Northeast Ohio Keyboard Festival, hosted by Youngstown State University and the University of Akron, continues through Wednesday in this year’s online edition, which includes workshops, master classes, and lessons. Jeanette Louise Yaryan and Ralitsa Georgieva-Smith serve as guest artists. Check out Piano Cleveland’s Facebook page to read more and to receive an observer’s pass.
Speaking of Piano Cleveland, that presenting organization of the Cleveland International Piano Competition has also started a new series offering a glimpse of “what music is inspiring some of our past competitors these days.” Listen to 2015 CIPC For Young Artists medalist Chaeyoung Park’s playlist on Spotify, and read about how she curated it on Facebook.
Last week, the Cleveland Chamber Choir announced its all-virtual sixth season, including a video concert scheduled for November 14 that will mix themes of “time and timelessness, plague and pestilence, and prayer and consolation.” In a message on the ensemble’s website, safety for both audience and musicians was the point of emphasis: “In our desire to create music together, safety will not be sacrificed.” Read more and watch the season-six trailer here.
Earlier this month, we shared the news that No Exit will begin its season on Friday, October 2. Now, the new music ensemble has added another feature to the calendar: they’ll present Boston-based marimba and bass clarinet duo Transient Canvas on Saturday, October 3. That will be the start of a year-long collaboration in which the duo will work with Northeast Ohio’s student composers, “culminating in a concert of their music (January 29) written for the ensemble.” Read more here.
Cleveland Opera Theater is partnering with arts and youth development organization Refresh Collective to expand their after-school program “Stories of Struggle and Success” into a four-week, virtual intensive, free for ages 13-18. The focus will be on music history, “with an emphasis on storytelling through music, highlighting the similarities between opera and hip-hop.” The program runs from September 29 through October 22. Read more and register here.
And for anyone looking to spice up their mask wardrobe, the Canton Symphony Orchestra is selling face coverings to help protect you from “wayward hacking, ludicrous sneezing, and enthusiastic talkers who may have more than words escape their mouths” (props on that colorful copy, CSO). Check out those masks and more in the Orchestra’s merch store.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Sharing birthdays today are French composer Florent Schmitt (1870) and American composers Vivian Fine (1913) and Laura Kaminsky (1956). Meanwhile, American jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis and French composer Eugène Bozza died on this date, both of them in 1991.
It’s fun when guest artists introduce Northeast Ohio’s audiences to composers rarely heard in the area. That’s been the case in recent years with both Schmitt (as covered in our Diary on August 17) and Kaminsky (pictured below), whose work The Full Range of Blue was performed by Boston-based Hub New Music at Cleveland State University in April 2018.
“In light of the tumultuous political climate, we found this piece to be especially relevant,” flutist and Hub executive director Michael Avitabile told me in an interview. “Laura’s a brilliant composer, and her work has been given a lot of attention, mainly her opera As One about the transition of a trans person. Much of her work has social-political commentary.”
The Full Range of Blue is a favorite work of the ensemble’s, and YouTube offers several of their recordings. You can also watch Kaminsky’s As One in this excerpt from the premiere in 2014 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or in this full performance presented as part of the Kennedy Center’s Direct Current festival in 2019.
And in more recent news from Hub New Music, in August the ensemble released their debut album Soul House, featuring Robert Honstein’s work of the same name, in which the composer depicts a different part of his childhood home in each of the nine movements — Bay Window, Backyard, etc., and ending with Secret Place.
Soul House was also on Hub’s 2018 program at CSU. ClevelandClassical.com’s David Kulma wrote of the performance, “It was clear that the quartet felt deeply for this beautiful celebration, and a joy to hear them bring it to life.”