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Heaven on Earth: An Overview of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2024 Season

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by Donald Rosenberg
Reposted courtesy of ChamberFest Cleveland

“A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox,” sing Ruth, Frederick, and the Pirate King in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. They could be mulling over the theme of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2024 season — “Sacred + Profane.” In chicken-and-egg metaphorical fashion, did the season’s title come first or the vast, fascinating selection of music?

In the end, it’s all rhetorical. ChamberFest audiences this year will be the beneficiary of glorious repertoire performed by stellar artists, whether or not the philosophical question of thematic priorities can be answered. What’s for certain is that co-artistic directors Diana Cohen, Franklin Cohen, and Roman Rabinovich are always on the lookout for a concept that will help them devise coherent, meaningful, and engaging programs.

A title is “always a jumping-off point for us to be thinking in a certain direction,” says Diana Cohen, “and then all kinds of other suggestions come through because of personnel or instruments or different considerations. It’s just a beginning.” [Read more…]

Fourth Year Soprano Elizabeth Hanje Wins Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition

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The operatic singer emerged from 900 international applicants.

by Cathy Strauss

Reposted courtesy of Oberlin College and Conservatory

After an exhaustive international search and multi-round competition, Oberlin Conservatory fourth-year soprano Elizabeth Hanje has won first prize and $10,000 at the 36th Annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers. Hanje is a student of Professor Salvatore Champagne.

While this is a highly anticipated vocal competition, the event also serves as a job interview for the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio, one of the world’s most prestigious operatic training programs for young artists. Each of the young artists in the Studio has access to regular coaching sessions with industry professionals, roles in Houston Grand Opera (HGO) mainstage productions, recital performances, and other concert engagements. HGO is one of the largest, most innovative, and most highly acclaimed opera companies in the United States.

[Read more…]

Obituary: Mary Ann Griebling, 87

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Mary Ann (Rimmel) Griebling, 87, of Akron, Ohio passed away peacefully on Tuesday, November 14, 2023. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Mendell Eugene Rimmel and Marthena W. (née Diver) Rimmel, on April 29, 1936. She is survived by daughters Karen Griebling (Robin Brown) and Margi Griebling-Haigh (Scott Haigh), and granddaughter Gabrielle Haigh (Mark Nelson). She was a curious, clever, and creative woman who was deeply ambitious on behalf of her family.

As the daughter of a Methodist circuit minister who would later become a professor of Calculus at Kent State University, Mary Ann moved many times throughout Northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania during her childhood. Her fondest memories from this time were of riding her tricycle in the attic of a church rectory in Greentree, Pennsylvania. She inherited her gift for music from her much adored paternal grandfather, Alfred Rimmel, who had worked as a child coal miner, but loved music, had absolute pitch, and reportedly built his own violin. Read the complete obituary here.

The Making of a World Premiere: Paul Desenne’s double flute concerto has its day in Oberlin

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The performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on November 1 in Finney Chapel and it will be streamed live.

Reposted with the permission of Oberlin Conservatory

by Cathy Partlow Strauss

“I’ve been trying to get this concerto to see the light of day for years,” says Oberlin flute professor Alexa Still about Paul Desenne’s Concerto for Two Flutes and Orchestra. The acclaimed cellist and composer started writing the piece in 2012, completing the commission in 2013. It has now been a 10-year-long route to the debut, and on Wednesday, November 1, Still’s championship of this piece will be realized in a performance with conductor Raphael Jiménez leading the Oberlin Orchestra, and with her student Dylan Masariego as co-soloist.

It’s a 30-minute, three-movement work scored for a relatively large orchestra, and it explores the notion of the meta-instrument—a compositional technique born from the idea of merging timbres into an autonomous entity that acts beyond the sum of its parts and produces an acoustic illusion in listening. The composer’s note describes, “This two-headed, versatile, and sometimes dizzying soloist undertakes a great musical journey through diverse panoramas imagined within a modern Latin American, Caribbean, and Venezuelan Baroque.”

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Published on ClevelandClassical.com November 1, 2023.   

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Refreshed Oberlin Artist Recital Series Returns This September

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This article is posted with the permission of the Oberlin Conservatory

Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series has presented celebrated musical artists for more than 140 years. That legacy continues with this season’s lineup of brilliant performers and ensembles whose music ranges from classical to gospel to jazz to world music.

The series kicks off on September 22 with the Emerson String Quartet as they give one of their “Farewell Concerts”—and their only performance in Ohio this season—after nearly five decades of performing together. The following programs through April will showcase artists and ensembles presenting an expanded range of music and musicmakers for this historic series, concluding with a performance of folk and ancestral music by Silkroad.

All programs on the six-concert series will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Finney Chapel at 90 N. Professor Street in Oberlin.

A bonus concert at 7:30 p.m. on March 7, featuring Imani Winds, will be held in the Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Giving Birth to the Imagination

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The following is posted with the permission of ChamberFest Cleveland and the author.

By Donald Rosenberg

What a difference a year can make. In 2022, we were still overwhelmed by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which had an impact on every phase of life. Arts organizations responded by programming with an ear toward symbolism, inclusivity, and hope. ChamberFest Cleveland was among the groups that reflected the times with a spectrum of enlightening repertoire if not solemn, then often serious in expression.

ChamberFest’s 2023 season has a markedly different thrust.

“We wanted this season to be lighter and more upbeat,” says co-director Diana Cohen. “Last year was the fog of Covid. There were a lot of dark pieces.”

The season’s theme began to come into focus after co-director Roman Rabinovich reread Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The 1984 novel’s musings about the human condition and music, Rabinovich sensed, would be a big help in inspiring a compelling selection of works, which they clearly did, without rigidly dictating the season’s content. “We didn’t want it to be a literal translation in musical terms, but to give birth to the imagination,” Rabinovich says. “It gives us a frame. That’s what we’re after — that telescope to look through, a certain lens of ideas, and then we can be free with it.”

[Read more…]

Dolores White ’54, Composer, Educator, and Pianist, Dies at 90

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This article is posted with the permission of the author and Oberlin Conservatory

by Cathy Partlow Strauss

Oberlin Conservatory alumna Dolores Rae (Miller) White ’54 died after a brief illness on Friday, March 24, 2023 at the Cleveland Clinic. She was 90.

A prolific composer, Mrs. White enjoyed a lengthy and diverse career incorporating teaching and performing into her artistic practice, while raising a family and supporting her husband, Donald, a cellist and the first Black member of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Her music reaches into American traditions and draws on ethnic and international influences. In a November 2021 interview for the Oberlin News Center, Mrs. White said, “I’ve always thought the average person needs to know about different cultures. It’s important to have exposure to different music, different genres, and different histories.” Of her composition work, she said “I take risks, I dream big, and I use humor in my works in different ways which helps to keep my optimistic views.”

[Read more…]

Stephen Haluska: Harpist, Improviser, and Experimentalist  

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This article is posted with the permission of No Exit

On Saturday, March 4 at 8:00 pm, at SPACES, No Exit Presents will host harpist Stephan Haluska in a free concert that will include music by Carol Finer, Yasunao Tone, Rhodri Davies, and Stephan Haluska.

No Exit’s Laura King caught up with the improviser and experimental musician.

Laura King: The harp has ancient origins and is such a unique instrument. Can you give us a short overview of its early manifestation in Mesopotamia and its evolution?

Stephan Haluska: What a question about the harp that I don’t get asked very often. Let’s simply define a harp. We might say it’s a plucked instrument with strings stretched between a resonating body and supported by some kind of post. Using this definition, anthropologists generally regard harps as one of the most primitive instruments invented. Harps were independently invented all over the world, in ancient Egypt, sub Saharan, East Asia, and I believe the oldest were found in Mesopotamia. Those Mesopotamian harps evolved into the harps described in the Bible and spread to ancient Greece, which then further spread throughout the European continent.

In medieval Europe, there was a desire to play more complex music on the harp and various developments were added—first they added more strings and then added sharpening levers. Pedal harps, the kind of harp used in classical music and seen in orchestras were developed by various instrument builders throughout the 18th century and by the end of the century, Sebastian Erard refined the design into what we consider to be the modern pedal harp.

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Published on ClevelandClassical.com March 1, 2023.   

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Trail Blazing Musician Wu Man in Residence at Oberlin

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by Cathy Partlow Strauss

This article is posted with the permission of the author and Oberlin Conservatory

The pipa is not an instrument on which students at Oberlin Conservatory perform, but the lute-like instrument developed in China more than 2000 years ago is influencing increasingly more concert music found on stages throughout the world.

This is due in large part to the artist Wu Man, recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and a leading ambassador of Chinese music. She’ll be in residence at Oberlin February 24-25 and take part in three events across campus that culminate in a concert with Oberlin College quartet-in-residence, the Verona Quartet. All events are free and open to the public.

Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer, giving the pipa a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. The creative projects she has initiated have resulted in the instrument finding a place in numerous musical settings and genres, as well as in collaborations in theater productions, film, dance, and with visual artists.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man was an early trailblazer. She was hailed as a child prodigy at age 13 and went on to earn the first master’s degree in pipa the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She moved to the U.S. in 1990 and was awarded a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard Radcliffe in 1998.

Since then, she has performed as a soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras and is the leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music written by composers including Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Tan Dun, and Bright Sheng.

Her notable career has also been marked by several “firsts.” She was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive the United States Artist Fellowship and the first artist from China to perform at the White House. In 2013, she was named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year.

She is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble and is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as the Kronos and Shanghai Quartets.

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Remembering Ms. Olga:
a personal reflection 

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by Cicilia Yudha

It was around 8:20 pm on October 10, 2001. I was sitting in Baldwin Auditorium at Duke University listening to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat, K. 271, Le Jeunehomme. My teacher of six years, Olga Radosavljevich, known as “Ms. Olga,” was performing with the Duke Symphony Orchestra led by her longtime friend, conductor Harry Davidson. As a Cleveland Institute of Music Artist Diploma candidate, I understudied the piece and traveled to Durham, NC with Ms. Olga. She was having health issues that fall and was not sure if she could perform.

After the first movement was splendidly done, Ms. Olga stood up. There was an audible gasp from the audience. She stood up, hunched down at the piano looking as if she had lost an earring. Maestro Davidson spoke to her and after a few minutes, she sat down at the keyboard again. The orchestra began the heart-wrenching introduction of the slow movement in c minor. Ms. Olga joined in with the piano’s melody. However, after a few bars, she stopped. Something was clearly wrong. Was she having a memory slip?

[Read more…]

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