by Mike Telin
Charles Bernard and Mary Lynch at Mahall’s (Photo: Roger Mastroianni)
Beginning on Saturday, May 17 and continuing through Saturday, May 24, The Cleveland Orchestra will bring a variety of musical activities to Lakewood during its second annual Northeast Ohio neighborhood residency.
Residency events include performances in a wide range of venues by Cleveland Orchestra musicians, ensembles from the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Youth Chorus, a Cleveland Orchestra concert preview, a kickball match between Cleveland Orchestra musicians and YMCA youth, and extensive educational programs for local students, all culminating in a free concert by The Cleveland Orchestra at Lakewood Civic Auditorium. All of the events are free and open to the public.
The Lakewood residency follows last season’s highly successful Gordon Square residency — although Julie Kim, director of operations at The Cleveland Orchestra, points out that this residency is considerably different because of two important factors. [Read more…]
Not every wind that blows into Cleveland from the North is a bone-chilling polar vortex. The boreal breeze that accompanied the 80-degree weather on Thursday evening, May 8, was a refreshing one that brought Finnish conductor (and newly reappointed Minnesota Orchestra music director) Osmo Vänskä to Severance Hall with striking symphonies by his countrymen Aulis Sallinen and Jan Sibelius in hand. The Grieg concerto, featuring frequent guest pianist Garrick Ohlsson, added another Scandinavian voice to the evening.
As The Cleveland Orchestra makes the final preparations for its second annual Northeast Ohio neighborhood residency from May 17-24 in Lakewood, (a complete listing of dates and times can be found 
On Sunday, April 27 the CMA Concerts at Transformer Station series concluded its inaugural season with a stunningly beautiful performance by Norwegian virtuoso classical accordionist Frode Haltli.
When you mostly present ensembles as portable as string quartets, what do you do when an ensemble requires a whole lot of percussion? In the case of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society and eighth blackbird, you move the concert to where the percussion lives — to Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium, where the celebrated new music sextet performed their acoustic program, “Still in Motion,” on Tuesday evening, April 29.
Arts Renaissance Tremont crowned its 23rd season at Pilgrim Church Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, April 27 with an excellent concert of music for winds and piano featuring Cleveland Orchestra members Mary Lynch, oboe, Robert Woolfrey, clarinet, Barrick Stees, bassoon and Richard King, horn, with Youngstown State University faculty member Cicilia Yudha, piano. A new Yamaha concert grand piano was the sixth performer.
Has winning the 2013 Cleveland International Piano Competition changed Stanislav Khristenko’s life? “It definitely has,” the 29-year-old Khristenko said en-thusiastically during a recent telephone conversation. “At this point I feel very happy that I am able to do what I always wanted to do — and that is to play concerts.”
Through a combination of scheduling conflicts and the sin of sloth, I had never heard a performance by the highly regarded Cleveland Baroque ensemble Les Délices until Sunday afternoon May 4, in the Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church, Shaker Heights. Les Délices are artists in residence at the church, so this was home base, although they regularly perform in other venues around town. The evening before they had presented this program, “The Leading Man,” at the William Busta Gallery. These concerts ended their 2014/15 series, and the Sunday afternoon concert was, with a couple of niggling reservations – more about them later – an unalloyed pleasure.