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Preview: Oberlin Artist Recital Series — Imani Winds with pianist Gilbert Kalish on February 9

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Imani2“It’s just badass,” said Imani Winds bassoonist Monica Ellis about Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which Imani will perform on February 9 in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel as part of the ensemble’s concert on the Artist Recital Series. “It’s this huge iconic piece that’s been pared down to a quintet, which is crazy in and of itself. Behind all that is this crazy cool rhythmic action, melodic action.”

All that “crazy cool rhythmic action” is one thing that connects The Rite of Spring to much of Imani’s repertoire. In addition to Ellis, the quintet consists of oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mariam Adam, flutist Valerie Coleman, and French hornist Jeff Scott. They often perform works from outside the traditional classical repertoire, especially focusing on African-American and Latin composers. “We’re attracted to this music because it’s close to us, it has soulful qualities, it’s ‘jazzy.’ It has a story behind it. Things that have a backbeat, a driving rhythm, are fun to play.”

Sunday’s concert program is in some ways an overview of Imani’s repertoire. [Read more…]

CD Review: Messiaen: Harawi — Jacob Greenberg & Tony Arnold

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Harawi-CDOlivier Messiaen is unique in music history. He is perhaps the most intensely religious composer since J.S. Bach, despite living in the 20th century, when most artists and intellectuals abandoned faith. Yet his belief was anything but orthodox: sensual love and sacred mystery mix on a cosmic scale.

He was synesthetic, so that he heard chords as colors. And he originated total serialism, where pitches and rhythms are standardized, so that a specific note will always have the same articulation and duration in a piece. Serialism became the predominant compositional method during the 1950s. It is some of the most difficult and maligned music existent, but Messiaen’s use of it is comprehensible and attractive.

The solo piano piece Cantéyodjayâ (1949), with which pianist Jacob Greenberg opens his and soprano Tony Arnold’s excellent new CD of the song cycle Harawi (New Focus Recordings), is a case in point. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin String Quartet Intensive & Festival Gala Concert with the Jupiter Quartet (January 25)

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Ob-SQI&F-JupiterOn January 25, Oberlin Conservatory’s String Quartet Gala Concert, the biggest event of its month-long String Quartet Intensive and Festival, drew an exceptionally large crowd to Warner Concert Hall despite the cold and snow. The program featured Oberlin’s quartet-in-residence, the excellent Jupiter String Quartet; Timothy Lees, the concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Oberlin faculty; and the students who participated in the Festival.

That’s an awful lot of performers for chamber music, and as the night progressed, the ensemble size grew from four to eighteen. Conversely, the music grew older, beginning with a work from the twenty-first century and ending in the nineteenth.

The Jupiter, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Megan Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel, and cellist Daniel McDonough, opened the night with Dan Visconti’s Ramshackle Songs, written for them in 2009. [Read more…]

Review: Tri-C Classical Piano Series — Nina Schumann & Luis Magalhães at the Cleveland Museum of Art (January 26)

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by Mike Telin

Two-PianistsThough South African-born Nina Schumann and Portuguese-born Luis Magalhães fell in love “at first sight” when they met as graduate students at North Texas State University, their assigned performance of a duo piano work resulted in “a total disaster” and they vowed never to play together again.

Good thing they thought better of that decision. During their two-piano concert on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art on January 26 the South African-based duo played music by Bach, Barber and Adams like one musical mind connected to four hands.

Facing each other, the couple (who perform under the name TwoPianists) began their program with Josef Rheinberger’s two-piano version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The arrangement was made by the Lichtenstein composer in 1883 for “domestic music-making” and was revised a bit later by Max Reger. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire Fireside Concert at Rocky River Presbyterian (January 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

McFarlane-HallDuring the first of her amusing asides to an audience who had just slogged through snowdrifts on Sunday afternoon, soprano Meredith Hall noted that the subtitle of this year’s Apollo’s Fire’s Fireside Concerts was “Drive the Cold Winter Away.” “We have failed!” she added, ruefully.

Well, maybe the Polar Vortex and its aftermath had chilled patrons to the bone on the way to Rocky River Presbyterian Church, but the English music from the 16th and 17th centuries that awaited them inside warmed the cockles of the soul, even with no fireplace in sight.

Hall was joined by lutenists Ronn McFarlane and William Sims (who doubled on theorbo) and flutist Kathie Stewart (who also played recorder) in an engaging, two-hour journey through the ballad repertory which supplied house music for the well-to-do and lyrics for Everyman to sing to familiar tunes during the flowering of poetry and music in Renaissance England. [Read more…]

Preview: Tuesday Musical — a conversation with pianist Jeremy Denk

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by Daniel Hautzinger

DENK-JeremyJeremy Denk disproves the theory that all men are created equal. He is a classical pianist who was named Musical America’s 2014 Instrumentalist of the Year, received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2013, writes an engaging blog as well as having been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times Review of Books, wrote a libretto for a new opera, has a contract to pen a memoir for Random House, and received two degrees upon graduating from Oberlin (young, no less), in chemistry and music. Is there anything he can’t do? “I’m not good at washing the dishes,” he said in a phone conversation. “Or many other real life things.”

That self-deprecating humor underlies much of his work, and how he thinks about music. “It really is an important part of my worldview,” he said. Take for example the program he will perform on Feb. 4 at EJ Thomas Hall in Akron, as part of the Tuesday Musical Concert Series. “In this program there is a strong obsession with humor.” It features Mozart’s Piano Sonata K. 533/494, three Ligeti etudes, and Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze and Carnaval. “These are dances but also satires of dances, with an incredible sense of wit and mockery of the Philistines,” he said of Carnaval. [Read more…]

Review: Mary Oliver & Han Bennink at Transformer Station (January 22)

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by Mike Telin

Oliver-BennickIn an interview with this publication prior to her performance with legendary drummer Han Bennink, violinist Mary Oliver said that she was certain about one thing: “[the audience] will have a good time, I’m fairly confident about that.” And on Wednesday, January 22 as part of CMA Concerts at Transformer Station, Oliver and Bennink, delivered on that promise.

Oliver and Bennink, who performed under the name duo ICP (Instant Composers Project) are two of the leading performers in the worlds of new music, free improvisation and avant-garde jazz. Born in Zaandam, Netherlands in 1942, Han Bennink is universally admired for his musical abilities that span the entire spectrum of jazz. In 1967 Bennink co-founded ICP along with Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg. La Jolla, California native Mary Oliver has received acclaim for her premieres of works by composers such as John Cage, Richard Barrett, Brian Ferneyhough, and Iannis Xenakis. [Read more…]

CD Review: Winter Morning Walks

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Winter-Morning-Walks-CDMaria Schneider should write a musical. Her song cycle, Winter Morning Walks, features idiomatic vocal writing that wouldn’t be out of place in the Great American Songbook, the canny theatrical sense of Sondheim, and illustrative text settings that would be perfect for a Broadway stage.

Yet Schneider is one of today’s foremost jazz composers, with two Grammys to her credit; multiple albums as the leader of her big band, the Maria Schneider Orchestra; and an association with legendary pianist and composer Gil Evans. She also has ties to the classical world: her newest recording, Winter Morning Walks from 2013, fan-funded through ArtistShare, features the Australian and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras, and coalesced around soprano Dawn Upshaw, for whom both the title work and the Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories were written.

Upshaw is an incredibly versatile singer, having performed everything from Handel to Crumb to Rodgers and Hammerstein. [Read more…]

Review: CIM Mixon Masters Series — pianist and improviser Gabriela Montero (Jan. 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

MONTERO-GabrielaProfessional organists carry the skill of improvisation around as an essential item in their tool belts because, like tailors, they routinely have to customize the musical fabric of church services. French organists especially have honed their abilities to the point where they can craft whole symphonies on demand, often on amusingly inappropriate tunes submitted by presenters or audience members — like college fight songs.

Pianists don’t often do this kind of thing in public, which made Venezuelan-born pianist Gabriela Montero’s appearance on the Mixon Masters Series at the Cleveland Institute of Music on January 23 such a remarkable event. On a series devoted this year to the composer / performer, Montero dedicated the second half of her program to six masterful and stylistically varied improvisations on themes or concepts suggested by audience members (she ended up playing seven). [Read more…]

Preview: Oberlin Symposium for Voice Performance and Pedagogy — Jeanette LoVetri advocates vocal health for singers

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by Mike Telin

LoVetri-JeannetteNo matter what your musical genre of choice, whether it’s opera, Broadway, pop, country & western or jazz— you name it — if there’s singing involved, chances are that at some point a singer has either withdrawn, cancelled, or chosen to lip-sync because of voice problems.

Beginning on Friday, January 31 and running through Sunday, February 2, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music will host the 2014 Symposium for Voice Performance and Pedagogy. “The weekend is all about getting together and having conversation about vocal health,” says Lorraine Manz, Associate Professor of Singing and Director of Oberlin’s Otto B. Schoepfle Vocal Arts Center. “We’re very excited to be the host because the region and the state is home to so many outstanding vocal programs that train singers not only in opera but in jazz, musical theatre and Contemporary Commercial Music.”

In addition to Oberlin voice faculty, the Symposium will feature members of the Cleveland Clinic Voice Center and guest clinician Jeanette LoVetri (above). [Read more…]

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