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Preview: Concert at St. Paul, Cleveland Heights to feature music by Margi Griebling-Haigh played by family & friends

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by Mike Telin

Nostalgic-TalesSummer is a time when people take time to reunite with families and friends, doing whatever it is they enjoy doing together. On Tuesday, July 23 beginning at 12:00 noon in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, a 70-minute free chamber music concert will be presented featuring the music of composer Margi Griebling-Haigh.

The idea to put the concert together came when Griebling-Haigh and her husband, Cleveland Orchestra first assistant principal bassist Scott Haigh learned that their daughter Gabrielle would be home on break from Clare College, Cambridge where she has been studying Classics as well as singing in the renowned Clare College Choir. “Gabrielle has been having a fair amount of success in Cambridge, getting to perform solo parts in concert on tour and in recordings, so I thought since she was home it would be very nice to do recital as a family.” [Read more…]

Review: Blue Streak Ensemble at Nighttown (July 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Blue-Streak-Ensemble-1Composer Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble visited Nighttown in Cleveland Heights on Monday, July 15 to preview the concert it would give the next evening in Hoover Auditorium at Lakeside. Two more disparate venues would be hard to imagine — an intimate room in a restaurant/jazz club and an auditorium you could park a Boeing 777 in — but the delightful playlist would work well under any circumstances, and was perfect for a summer evening, whether on Cedar Road or on the shores of Lake Erie.

Brouwer designed Blue Streak as an ensemble that would play summer concerts on the Lake (it gets its name from the famous roller coaster at Cedar Point) as well as a vehicle for performing her own compositions and arrangements of works by other classical composers (above: the 2012 ensemble). The personnel changes a bit from season to season. Monday’s group included Jinjoo Cho, violin, Irwin Shung, piano, Maaike Harding, cello, Sarah Beaty, mezzo-soprano and Robert Davis, clarinet, who played three contrasting pieces by Brouwer, plus movements from a suite by Milhaud, Brouwer’s arrangement of a well-known Rossini aria, Dvořák’s own arrangement for cello and piano of his Silent Woods, a duo for clarinet and bassoon attributed to Beethoven repurposed for clarinet and cello, a virtuosic cello piece by Turtle Island Quartet cellist Mark Summer, and three arias from Porgy and Bess, two of them in virtuosic violin and piano arrangements by Jascha Heifetz written for recital encores. [Read more…]

Feature: A conversation with Cleveland Arts Prize Emerging Artist winner, violinist Chad Hoopes

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by Mike Telin

Hoopes3As the oldest award of its kind in the United States, the Cleveland Arts Prize was established to “support and encourage artists, and to promote public awareness of artistic creativity in Northeast Ohio through the work of Arts Prize recipients.” Each year prizes are awarded to “creative artists whose original work has made Northeast Ohio a more exciting place to live…” On June 27 the 2013 Cleveland Arts Prize winners were honored at a ceremony held at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This year’s winner of the Emerging Artist Award (music and dance) was 19-year old violinist Chad Hoopes.

Hoopes first burst onto the international music scene after winning the Young Artists Division of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition. Since that time he has gone on to perform with many of the world’s distinguished orchestras. During the 2011-12 season, Hoopes served as Artist-in-Residence for Classical Minnesota Public Radio during which he played concerts throughout the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area as well as participating in and leading educational activities at local schools. This past spring Hoopes graduated from University School as well as completing his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Artist Program.

A truly engaging and thoughtful conversationalist, Chad Hoopes recently spoke to us by telephone from Staunton, Virginia where he was serving as Artist-in-Residence at the Heifetz International Music Institute. During the conversation he spoke about the important role his family plays in keeping him grounded, how winning the Cleveland Arts Prize will help to further his career and how he feels obliged and honored to be an ambassador for the city of Cleveland as well as for classical music. We began by asking him what his duties are as Artist-in-Residence. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — Gypsy Baron (July 2)

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by J.D. Goddard

OLOOn Tuesday afternoon, July 2, at Friedlander Hall on the campus of The College of Wooster, the Ohio Light Opera presented their opening summer performance of Johann Strauss Jr.’s The Gypsy Baron. The scoring and the nature of the piece led many critics to consider it neither a comic opera nor a lyric opera, and thus an operetta. Whatever you call it, during the composer’s lifetime The Gypsy Baron enjoyed great success, second only to the popularity of Die Fledermaus. This was a time when Vienna was awash in the beloved waltzes of Strauss Jr. and audiences turned out in droves to hear his always engaging melodic waltz themes while dancing the evenings away.

For today’s audiences, however, staging an operetta such as The Gypsy Baron, with its predictable story line, romantic happy ending, concealed identities and syrupy dose of social satire can prove to be a daunting task. Ignaz Schnitzer’s libretto (English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin) utilized the usual stock operetta types: feuding Hungarians and gypsies, a buried treasure and a notable absence of genuine mirth. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom — All-Wagner with Christine Brewer and Alan Held (July 13)

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by Robert Rollin

BREWER-&-HELDThough not something one would expect for a summer festival blast off, Franz Welser-Möst turned the all-Wagner evening at Blossom on Saturday, July 13 into a great success. Having two remarkably talented soloists didn’t hurt the concert, a powerful mélange of instrumental music and justly renowned vocal chestnuts, but above all, Welser-Möst’s approach to Wagner made the evening a truly special event. Among connoisseurs, the three operatic excerpts, each preceded by large instrumental segments, are considered the very best of Wagner.

Welser-Möst’s plan was to avoid over-sentimentalizing the music by keeping the tempo moving well, and by not over-fixating on the music’s wealth of details. Music theoreticians can spend hours arguing about harmonic analysis and non-chord tones in Wagner, but for the listener, the large scale lines and buildup to climaxes are of far greater import. Welser-Möst kept these elements limpidly apparent and guided orchestra and soloists into exemplary performances.

The evening’s highlight was the Prelude and Love-Death from Tristan and Isolde. [Read more…]

Preview: Kent/Blossom Festival — a conversation with Cleveland Orchestra keyboardist Joela Jones

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by Mike Telin

JONES-JoelaWe continue our coverage of the Kent/Blossom Music Festival with an extended conversation with pianist Joela Jones. On Wednesday, July 17 beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Ludwig Recital Hall, Jones will be joined by violinists Ying Fu and Jeffrey Zehngut, violist Stanley Konopka, cellist Richard Weiss, oboist Danna Sundet and bassoonist Barrick Stees in a program that features de Falla’s Suite Popular Española for Cello and Piano, Poulenc’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano and Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A minor.

On Wednesday, July 24 beginning at 7:30 p.m. Jones will return to the Ludwig Recital Hall stage along with Cleveland Orchestra First Associate Concertmaster Peter Otto in performances of Lutoslawski’s Partita for Violin and Piano, Nielsen’s Praeludium and Theme with Variations, Kapustin’s Omaggio a Giovanni Paisiello, Two fantasies on thematic fragments from the string quartets for violin solo and Grieg’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in C minor.

As her biography states, Joela Jones is an artist of exceptional versatility. As principal keyboardist of The Cleveland Orchestra, Jones can be heard playing piano, organ, harpsichord, celesta, synthesizer, and accordion. She has performed over fifty different concertos in more than 200 performances at Severance Hall and Blossom Music Center as well as on tour in Europe and Asia. [Read more…]

Review: ChamberFest Cleveland — Movie Night (June 27)

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by Guytano Parks

Keaton-The-GeneralChamberFest Cleveland again presented Movie Night — back by popular demand — for their second season as part of this year’s 10-day schedule of creative programs on Thursday, June 27 at The Cedar Lee Theatre, followed by a cabaret-style concert by ChamberFest artists at The Wine Spot.

Israeli-born pianist and composer Matan Porat, a ChamberFest artist, improvised on piano during the 1926 silent film, The General, written and directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman and based on Daring & Suffering: A History of the Great Train Adventure by William Pittenger. ChamberFest’s Artistic Director Franklin Cohen said in his brief welcoming remarks that Porat “had no idea what he was going to play” during the screening. But Porat obviously had an arsenal of material up his sleeves, improvising non-stop for the entire 75-minute duration of the film. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with Jean-Yves Thibaudet (July 6)

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by Guytano Parks

THIBAUDETMother Nature let loose her fury this past Saturday evening at Blossom Music Center just as The Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of conductor Franz Welser-Möst was about to begin Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. The music is brusque enough without the rumblings of thunder which accompanied it, and a bit more than halfway through the piece a torrential downpour all but drowned out anything played under a mezzo forte level. However it was quite discernible that this was a probing and driven performance of serious intent in which the distraction failed to foil conductor and orchestra. Patrons may recall a recent performance in November 2012 in the more favorable acoustic conditions of Severance Hall where the sections of repose, resplendent in their many subtle shades of softness, were more audible.

As the piano was moved into place before the second piece on the program — Liszt’s Totentanz — the downpour strengthened, causing members of the orchestra to leave their seats to wait it out in the sidelines as an announcement over the sound system invited audience members on the lawn to take shelter in the pavilion. [Read more…]

Preview: CVNP Conservancy offers second round of adult band camps in Peninsula

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by Mike Telin

BERKNER-JaneNow that we are in the middle of our continued coverage of the Kent/Blossom Music School and the important role that it and other summer festivals play in the education of young professional musicians, we find it equally fitting to highlight a summer music camp designed for adults.

“Many people have gone through rigorous musical training at some of the most prestigious conservatories and schools of music, but for one reason or another have chosen not to pursue performing as a career path,” says Jane Berkner, who teaches flute at the University of Akron and heads the Music by Nature programs in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Beginning this Sunday, July 14, and running through Wednesday, July 17 (there is still time to register!) The Conservancy for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park will host the second annual Music Camp by Nature Adult Band Camp at the Happy Days Lodge and Hines Hill Center in Peninsula.

Who attends adult music camps? According to Berkner, last summer’s participants came from all walks of life including a mechanic for Delta Airlines, school teachers, retirees, church music directors and several people who volunteer regularly for the Conservancy. [Read more…]

Preview: “Play Me, I’m Yours” piano installations add to the fun at this summer’s Cleveland International Piano Competition

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by Mike Telin

CIPC-CMA-PianoIn addition to its move to The Cleveland Museum of Art, the 2013 edition of the Cleveland International Piano Competition will also include the first-ever CIPC Festival that runs concurrently with the Competition and adds a variety of activities to the excitement. The Festival willalso reach out to the community through “Play Me, I’m Yours,” an installation of more than 20 decorated “street pianos” located in the area surrounding CIPC’s two performance venues and beyond. The project is designed to engage the community, encourage the interaction of passersby, and create lasting friendships through the international language of music and creativity.

“Play Me, I’m Yours” is the brain child of British artist Luke Jerram and was first commissioned by Fierce Earth in Birmingham, UK in 2008. With 15 pianos located across the city for three weeks, it was estimated that over 140,000 people played or listened to music from the pianos. Since then “Play Me, I’m Yours” has reached an estimated five million people worldwide. Each new city that commissions the artwork becomes part of this growing international legacy.

On his website, Jerram says “The idea for ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ came from visiting my local launderette. I saw the same people there each weekend and yet no one talked to one another. [Read more…]

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