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Preview: Looking ahead to January events

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by Daniel Hathaway

Julia Fischer

Julia Fischer

January begins slowly in Northeast Ohio’s classical music scene, but builds momentum as the month rolls along. Here are some highlights in chronological order.

For those who enjoy prolonging the Christmas season (or who adhere to the old practice of starting that celebration on December 25 and caroling on through the ensuing twelve days — which also takes you up to the beginning of that season in the Orthodox calendar), there are two events this weekend that will keep the cheer flowing. The Met’s live broadcast on Saturday the 4th at 1:00 pm over WCLV, 104.9 FM features Oberlin graduate Julie Tamor’s hour and forty minute holiday version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute with Alec Shrader as Tamino (another Oberlin alum) and Jane Glover on the podium. Glover will guest conduct The Cleveland Orchestra later this season. On Sunday the 5th at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Youngstown, the Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival revives Elizabethan pageantry and music for performances at 1:30 and 4:30 pm. [Read more…]

Review: Quire Cleveland — Carols for Quire 5 at Trinity Cathedral (December 20)

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By Daniel Hathaway

QuireTrinityRoss W. Duffin led Quire Cleveland in the first of three concerts in its annual “Carols for Quire from The Old & New World” series at Trinity Cathedral on Friday evening — a performance that will surely be counted as one of the brightest choral highlights of the holiday season.

Taking a new tack for the series’ fifth edition, Duffin constructed an intriguing program pairing older and newer carols on the same or similar texts that brought freshness to what is becoming a cherished Cleveland holiday tradition — and setting some new challenges for his excellent, 20-voice chamber choir, founded to sing period music but which has recently been stretching its vocal wings in the direction of more modern repertoire. [Read more…]

Review: Stopping in at two Sunday afternoon concerts — Lara Nie with Cleveland Virtuosi in Chagrin Falls, Buck McDaniel at Trinity Cathedral

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by Daniel Hathaway

NIE-LaraArea concertgoers had their choice of at least seventeen concerts to attend on Sunday, December 15. I took the opportunity to stop in for two events which were of particular interest.

New York-based mezzo-soprano Lara Nie was featured with the Cleveland Virtuosi Orchestra in an afternoon holiday concert presented by Chagrin Valley Chamber Music Series at Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls. I caught the first half of the performance, which departed from holiday music in the direction of singer’s choice. Nie had always wanted to perform the aria, Erbarme dich from J.S. Bach’s Matthew-Passion — and a pair of Handel’s opera arias — with violinist and artistic director Hristo Popov, and this occasion was the perfect opportunity.

The Virtuosi, an eleven-member string ensemble with harpsichord conducted by Michael Gelfand, opened with a lush reading of Bach’s chorale from Cantata BWV 147, known in English as Jesu, joy of Man’s desiring. [Read more…]

Review: Choir of Clare College, Cambridge in concert at Fairmount Presbyterian Church (December 14)

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by Nicholas Jones

Clare-College-ChoirIt is one of the joys of the holiday season that choral music rings all about us. Clevelanders have a banquet of our own choral groups to enjoy, but it is an added pleasure to hear an accomplished choir from England, where the choral tradition is so deeply established.

A goodly crowd turned out at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights on a very snowy Saturday evening to hear the choir of Clare College, one of the 31 colleges of the University of Cambridge (indeed, the second oldest of those colleges, established in the early 14th century). The choir, some 25-strong, warmed the church and the audience with its accomplished and vigorous musicality.

[Read more…]

Review: Camille Norment at CMA’s Transformer Station (December 15)

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by Mike Telin

NORMENT-CamilleIn last week’s ClevelandClassical concert preview, multi-media artist Camille Norment said that her artistic goal is to push limits and to create something new. On Sunday, December 15 during her concert on the CMA at Transformer Station series, she and her trio colleagues did exactly that during their fifty minute set of four hauntingly beautiful sound installations that live in the blurred area between composition and improvisation.

Performing on the exotic glass armonic and singing bowls, Camille Norment’s trio includes Håvard Skaset, electric guitar, and Vegar Vårdal, hardanger (Norwegian fiddle). Individually they are fine musicians — Vegar Vårdal possesses a great bow arm. But it is in the collective that the group shines brightest. Founded in 2010 in Norway to “explore the instruments’ paradoxical relationships to notions of beauty, noise, tension and harmony as a musical experience.” The trio gave their debut performance at the Ultima New Music Festival in Oslo on September 11, 2011. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra Celebrity Series — Natalie Cole (December 11)

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by Guytano Parks

Cole-Natalie-Chris-PizzelloThe Cleveland Orchestra kicked off its Holiday Festival 2013 at Severance Hall on Wednesday, December 11 with a Celebrity Series, one night only performance by multiple Grammy-winning recording artist Natalie Cole. The hall was beautifully decked with festive holiday decorations and featured lovely mood-enhancing lighting effects during the performance.

The Orchestra, augmented with local jazz musicians, was conducted by Gail Deadrick, Cole’s conductor since 2000, and joined by Cole’s backup band: Mahesh Balasooriya, piano, Edwin Livingston, bass, Robert Miller, drums, Tony Pulizzi, guitar, Dave Trigg, trumpet, Alessandro Alessandroni, keyboards, and Robert Yancy, percussion, in addition to background vocalists Lynne Fiddmont and Traci Brown-Baily.

Looking elegant and statuesque in a cream-colored gown, Cole slinked onto the stage to sing a dreamy and lush arrangement of Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust, the first song in a diverse program of standards, R&B, Pop, jazz and Spanish songs. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire — Praetorius Christmas Vespers at Trinity Cathedral (December 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Michael Praetorius

Michael Praetorius

Well before the more pietistic style of Lutheran church music that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote at Leipzig in the second quarter of the eighteenth century came the Italian-influenced, Renaissance style of Michael Praetorius, the subject of Jeannette Sorrell’s well-crafted and expertly performed Christmas Vespers with Apollo’s Fire, which began a four-concert run at Trinity Cathedral on Friday evening before moving on to three different venues around town.

You could hear the difference in approach in Philip Nicolai’s Wachet auf! Everyone knows the glorious, equal-note setting that ends Bach’s cantata of the same name. Not so familiar is the early form of the chorale tune with its dancelike, uneven rhythms, nor its delightful and ornate elaboration by Praetorius from his 1619 collection Polyhymnia caduceatrix. The latter, already bursting at its seams with exuberance, was decorated even further by Apollo’s Fire’s violinists and cornetto players (Olivier Brault, Johanna Novom, Kiri Tollaksen and Nathaniel Cox), who could barely force themselves to arrive at the final chord at several cadences. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland POPS Orchestra to ring in the New Year with the Nunziata Brothers at Severance Hall

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by Mike Telin

Nunziatas“Whenever I talk about the Cleveland POPS season so many people tell me how much they love coming to the New Year’s Eve concert,” says Cleveland POPS Orchestra co-founder and conductor Carl Topilow. “So the event really has become a tradition for so many.” On Tuesday, December 31 beginning at 9:00 pm in Severance Hall, The Cleveland POPS Orchestra and Topilow will welcome 2014 with their 18th annual concert and dance party.

The evening’s special guest artists areup-and-coming musical theater headliners Will and Anthony Nunziata, performing their own “Broadway Nites Revue.” The show includes songs from the best of Broadway’s musicals, both past and recent, including The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd,Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, City of Angels, Company, The Secret Garden, West Side Story, and Anyone Can Whistle.

Following the star-studded concert, dancing begins at 11:00 pm. “There’s a band that I will lead in the Grand Foyer which includes some of the finest jazz players in the area,” says Topilow, “and again this year my brother, Dr. Arthur Topilow, will be coming in from New Jersey. He’s a very fine pianist but an even better oncologist-hematologist. There will also be another band in the Smith lobby.” [Read more…]

Review: Contemporary Youth Orchestra with El Sistema @ University Circle and The Oblivion Project at CSU (December 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GROSSMAN-LizaLiza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra always pack their concerts full of content, and the opening concert of the ensemble’s nineteenth season on December 7 in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University continued in that tradition. In addition to two solo orchestra works and a concerto, CYO invited Isabel Trautwein and the young string players of El Sistema @ University Circle for a side-by-side, and welcomed The Oblivion Project for half a dozen nuevo tango pieces by Astor Piazzolla.

CYO and its dynamic conductor raised the curtain with John Adams’s high-energy overture, Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Driven by the pervasive rhythm of a wood block and propelled by an excellent brass section, the piece raced along like the top-performance sports car it invokes and safely arrived at its destination (and with no white knuckles on the curves!) [Read more…]

Preview: Quire Cleveland to present three concerts pairing old carol settings with new

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by Mike Telin

QuireTrinitySince its founding, Quire Cleveland has presented concerts that connect audiences to the past through passionate performances of choral works from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras, and beyond. One highly anticipated concert is Quire’s annual performance of Carols for Quire. Beginning on Friday, December 20 with performances through Sunday, December 22 at Trinity Cathedral, Quire Cleveland under the direction of Ross W. Duffin, will present the 2013 edition of this popular annual event.

“This is the fifth year in a row that we’ve done this, said Quire’s founding Artistic Director Ross W. Duffin. “It’s become a tradition. I think audiences have come to expect it and I know we certainly look forward to it.” Although Quire’s programs generally focus on early choral repertoire, this year’s Carols for Quire will be a bit of a departure for the ensemble. [Read more…]

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