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Broadway School of Music and the Arts plans its annual benefit concert at Trinity Commons on May 30

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by Mike Telin

BSMA BldgThe Broadway School of Music and the Arts (BSMA) will present Old World/New World: An Intimate Evening of Chamber Music, on Friday, May 30 beginning at 7:00 pm at Trinity Commons in downtown Cleveland. This annual benefit supports BSMA’s music and arts instruction and programming for underserved children and adults.

Hosted by WCLV 104.9 FM’s Bill O’Connell, the evening features Dvorak’s Drobnosti Op. 75 and Quintet in E-flat Major Op. 97 as well as Mark O’Connor’s folk-inspired FC’s Jig performed by Cleveland Orchestra members Katherine Bormann, Elayna Duitman and Sae Shiragami violins; Lisa Boyko and Lembi Veskimets violas; and Bryan Dumm and Alan Harrell cellos. Tickets are available on the BSMA website or by telephone at 216.641.0630.

“The Student Financial Aid Fund is a very important piece of what we do at the school,” BSMA executive director Barbara Bachtell said during a recent conversation in her office at the school. “Over the past 10 years we have given out roughly $75,000 in tuition assistance. We try to keep our rates low, but there are still families who cannot afford them.” Currently, 30-minute individual lessons range from $16.20 to $18.00. [Read more…]

Twenty Cleveland Orchestra musicians to participate in “Prelude to a Cure” benefit at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights

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by Mike Telin

May30-1On Friday May 30, the not-for-profit foundation Shaking with Laughter will present Prelude to a Cure, an evening of chamber music performed by twenty members of The Cleveland Orchestra in the newly-renovated sanctuary of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. The concert, sponsored by Northeast Ohio Medical University, will benefit The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Among the works to be performed are J.S. Bach’s Sonata in e minor for Oboe D’amore and Harpsichord, Beethoven’s String Quartet op. 135, Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, Ravel’s Adagio from Piano Concerto in G, Thea Musgrave’s Impromptu no. 1 for Flute and Oboe, Bernard Garfield’s Quartet for Bassoon and Strings, and the world premiere of Jeffrey Rathbun’s Voyage for English Horn and Strings.

Shaking With Laughter was founded by Cleveland obstetrician and gynecologist Karen Jaffe and her husband Marc, a comedian and writer, after she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder. The foundation presents humor-related events that have already raised over $460,000 for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Archives: The Cunning Little Vixen continues the tradition of technological innovations at Severance Hall

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by Mike Telin

The Cunning Little VIxen: dress rehearsal (Roger Mastroianni)

The Cunning Little Vixen: dress rehearsal (Roger Mastroianni)

With its made-for-Cleveland production of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen featuring state-of-the-art digital animation, The Cleveland Orchestra finds itself once again at the cutting edge of opera technology. Once again? A visit to the Cleveland Orchestra archives reveals some fascinating information about technological innovations that can be traced back to the opening of Severance Hall on February 5, 1931.

An Associated Press preview published in the Washington D.C. Star carried the headline, “Death March or Minuet Mood Produced by Lighting Device: Mechanism Like Organ in Cleveland Hall Gives Visual Accompaniment for All Music Types”. The article continued,

“The apparatus, an important example of what engineers have been able to do with the tiny electron that shoots off from an atom of hot metal, will be put into operation Thursday night when the Cleveland Orchestra plays dedicatory music. [Read more…]

Review: CityMusic Cleveland and Quire Cleveland at Fairmount Church, Cleveland Heights (May 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CityMusic-Schubert-Rehearsal

Quire Cleveland joined CityMusic Cleveland for a brisk, expressive performance of a gorgeous late Schubert work led by CityMusic music director Avner Dorman at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights on Wednesday, May 14. This was the opening concert of five that the two ensembles will present around the metropolitan area this week. (Rehearsal pictured above.)

Schubert’s Mass No. 6 in E-flat, written during the last month’s of the composer’s life, rarely gets heard these days. That’s a great pity. Though ill, Schubert found alluring and often surprising ways to set ancient liturgical texts, and applied his recent lessons in counterpoint to some of the most inventive fugues since J.S. Bach’s. The E-flat mass offers a long sequence of gorgeous melodies, innovative textures, arresting harmonies and enthralling conversations between chorus and orchestra. [Read more…]

Review: Blue Water Chamber Orchestra at Plymouth Church (May 10)

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by Guytano Parks

JOHNSTON-KenBlue Water Chamber Orchestra concluded its 2013/2014 season on Saturday evening at Plymouth Church in Shaker Hts. with a concert billed as “Iron Composer and Iron Violinist”. Conducted by Carlton R. Woods, the program featured BWCO concertmaster Kenneth Johnston as soloist in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and included Two Pieces for Small Orchestra by Delius and Around the Blue-S by 2013 Iron Composer Competition winner Jakub Polaczyk.

Iron Composer is an instant composition contest held at Baldwin Wallace. Five composers are invited to compete in person. On the morning of the event, the finalists are assigned an instrumentation and a secret musical ingredient. They have just five hours to write a piece of music that incorporates those two elements. Their work is then performed and judged on a public concert that same evening. Blue Water Chamber Orchestra and the Iron Composer Competition have a collaborative venture in which works by competition winners are given a performance on its regular concert series. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Cunning Little Vixen — a conversation with tenor David Cangelosi

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TCO-Vixen-Mockup

by Mike Telin

Opera librettists take their inspiration from novels, novellas, plays and legends, but rarely from a daily comic strip. “The Adventures of the Vixen Sharp-Ears,” a serialized cartoon by Rudolf Těsnohlídek and Stanislav Lolek in the Czech newspaper Lidové novini gave Leoš Janáček the idea for his comic opera, The Cunning Little Vixen, for which he wrote the libretto himself.

Is it a children’s entertainment? The characters include animals, birds and insects, as well as a few human beings, but Janáček himself seems to have intended it to be a philosophical reflection about the cycle of life and death. The plot is open to a whole spectrum of interpretation, “but I can tell you that this production will appeal to the widest public components possible,” said tenor David Cangelosi, who sings the roles of the Schoolmaster and the Mosquito. “It just has something for everybody – the littlest of kids straight through to the most seasoned opera or symphony goer.” [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland takes Schubert’s last Mass on the road with Quire Cleveland

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by Daniel Hathaway

DORMAN-Avner2“I always knew that Bach was my favorite composer,” said CityMusic artistic director Avner Dorman, “but these days I think it’s Schubert. That’s how much I like this piece!”

The work Dorman was referring to in a recent telephone conversation is Franz Schubert’s Mass in E-flat, written in 1828, the last summer of the composer’s life, on commission from the choirmaster of the Alserkirche in Alsergrund, a suburb just north of Vienna’s Innere Stadt. That church was the venue for Beethoven’s funeral the year before (Schubert served as a torch-bearer).

Alas, the composer didn’t live long enough to hear the last of his six masses performed; its premiere ultimately took place in October of 1829 under the direction of his brother, Ferdinand. This week, Avner Dorman will lead CityMusic and Quire Cleveland in five performances of the E-flat Mass around the metropolitan area, beginning on Wednesday, May 14. [Read more…]

Review: CIPC laureate Stanislav Khristenko gives a sensational preview of his Carnegie Hall recital (May 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

Khristenko-at-pianoIt’s one thing to win a major international piano competition by a pleasing a panel of jurors, and quite another to go on to make a successful career by enthralling audiences with your playing. Stanislav Khristenko, who took first place in the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2013, left no doubt in his Carnegie Hall preview recital on Sunday evening, May 11 in CIM’s Kulas Hall that he has all the right stuff to thrive on the international concert circuit.

On Sunday evening, Khristenko was on a mission. While some pianists serve up little hors d’oeuvres — a few Scarlatti sonatas or some pre-prandial Haydn or Mozart just to get the digestive juices flowing — the Ukrainian-born artist plunged headlong into Béla Bartók’s Sonata before even bothering to fasten his seat belt. Rhythmically incisive and explosive with accents, his opening salvos took hold of the crowd and probably nobody did much breathing until the three-movement work ended in a riotous dance. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra Family Concert — The Composer is Dead

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by Mike Telin

STOOKEY-NathanielThe Composer is Dead, a funny musical whodunit by children’s author Lemony Snicket and composer Nathaniel Stookey (left) that “investigates” every section of the orchestra, returns to Severance Hall on Friday, May 16 beginning at 7:30 pm when Brett Mitchell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a special Family Concert. The concert features the composer as narrator.

Since its premiere with the San Francisco Symphony in 2006, the piece has quickly become a hit with audiences and orchestras across North America. Prior to the work’s Cleveland Orchestra premiere in April 2010, we had the opportunity to speak to Nathaniel Stookey by phone from his home in San Francisco. The engaging composer told us about his ties to Cleveland as well as the series of “fortunate events” that led to the commissioning of The Composer is Dead. The following is an excerpt from that interview.

Mike Telin: Have you ever worked with the Cleveland Orchestra before now?

Nathaniel Stookey: Only as an usher during the 1988-1989 season while I was a student at the Cleveland Institute of Music studying with Donald Erb. So other than that no, I have not worked with them. But I am very excited about this opportunity. [Read more…]

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