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Review: Akron Baroque “Goes Rococo” at First Congregational Church (May 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AkronBaroque2013-1Short symphonies by Michael Haydn, his older brother Joseph Haydn, and J.S. Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian Bach, were the Rococo entries on the final concert of Akron Baroque Chamber Orchestra’s season on Thursday, May 16 under the direction of Guy Victor Bordo, but the 17-member professional ensemble, founded by Amy Barlowe, also recalled its central mission with a Vivaldi concerto starring the violin-bass duo of Amber and Maximilian Dimoff. (Amber is a member of Akron Baroque; her husband is principal bass of The Cleveland Orchestra).

Presented in the fine acoustical ambiance of the sanctuary of First Congregational Church with its elegant, wrap-around balcony, the 90-minute concert followed solidly in the tradition the ensemble has established: attractive and accessible music masterfully played on modern instruments with a nod to historical performance practice but without any self-conscious fussiness. [Read more…]

Review: Michael Lynn and Friends in “Baroque Conversations” benefit at Cleveland Museum of Art (May 11)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Lynn-Benefit

Only six months after receiving a liver transplant at Cleveland Clinic, Michael Lynn gathered a group of friends to present a benefit concert for the program that gave him a new life and restored his career as a performer on the recorder and baroque flute. “A Baroque Musical Conversation” drew a good-sized audience to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday evening, May 11 for masterful performances of concerted music by Telemann and Handel as well as cameo solo performances of works by Louis Couperin, Handel and Marais.

Lynn, who is professor of baroque flute and recorder and curator of musical instruments at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, was forced to give up performing four years ago due to his illness. His near-miraculous recovery was immediately evident in the opening selection, the Vivace from Telemann’s Concerto in D for two flutes, violin and cello, where he was joined by flutist Kathie Stewart, violinist Julie Andrijeski and cellist René Schiffer, with Jeannette Sorrell at the harpsichord and a backup orchestra of Miho Hashizumi and Rachel Iba, violins, Cynthia Black, viola, and Sue Yelanjian, contrabass. All the performers, who donated their services, have been longtime colleagues in professional period instrument ensembles in the region. [Read more…]

Preview: Akron Baroque: ten minutes with Amber and Maximilian Dimoff

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by Daniel Hathaway

DimoffsOn Thursday, May 16 at 7:30 pm, Akron Baroque plays its final concert of the season at First Congregational Church, extending its reach into the classical area with works by Joseph and Michael Haydn and Johann Christian Bach, but honoring its Prime Directive with a concerto for violin and double bass by Antonio Vivaldi with Amber and Maximilian Dimoff as soloists. Amber is in her third year with Akron Baroque and plays regularly in the first violin section of the Akron Symphony as well as with Cleveland Pops and Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Max is principal bass with The Cleveland Orchestra, but has appeared more than once as an electric bassist in contemporary works with his orchestra colleagues.

The Dimoffs are a musical family. Their daughter, Isabel, plays cello in the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Contemporary Youth Orchestra and just won the senior division in the Cleveland Cello Society’s Scholarship Auditions. Their son, Xavier, plays saxophone in CYO and is studying jazz. Though father and daughter premiered a new concerto together with CYO earlier this season, Max and Amber haven’t often had the opportunity to perform together as a duo. [Read more…]

Recording review: Ensemble HD — Live at The Happy Dog

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by Mike Telin

Ensemble-HD-GroupToday, May 15, 2013 is here and so marks the official release of the highly anticipated recording Ensemble HD – Live at The Happy Dog. So much has happened since June 23, 2010 when Cleveland Orchestra principal flutist Joshua Smith and Happy Dog proprietor Sean Watterson decided to take the plunge by bringing live “classical” music to a venue more known for presenting local rock and polka bands. But what this album celebrates most is the shared vision and philosophy of creating something that would put a new face on classical music which Smith and Watterson brought to a reality.

In the album’s informative liner notes, Charles Michener insightfully writes

“Yet, perhaps what ails classical music has less to do with the audience, the nature of the music or the people who play it, then it does with the places and the manner in which it is usually played.” Michener suggests, “What if one could experience Beethoven and Bartok in a setting other then a shrine-like auditorium…? What if the players arrived not in formal evening dress but as people who look and act just like the rest of us? What if you could enjoy Beethoven and Bartok in a casual public watering hole on an ordinary urban street while chatting with your companion, ordering food and drink, and even glancing occasionally at a TV monitor where an NBA or NFL game is in progress.” [Read more…]

Preview: Ars Futura to perform at Survival Kit Gallery on Friday, May 17

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by Mike Telin

Ars-Futura-Wang-HallmanThe recently-formed new music ensemble Ars Futura describe themselves as a forward-thinking, mixed-chamber, new music ensemble dedicated to commissioning, performing and popularizing new works. The group’s mission is to insure the continuation of their art form by steadily adding to the repertoire and exposing audiences to the great artists who are composing today. “Our first season is dedicated to the Cleveland connection,” says pianist Shuai Wang who co-founded the group with flutist Madeline Lucas. “I have a great respect for musicians in Cleveland,” Wang adds, “and this season all of the compositions we performed were by Ohio composers.”

On Friday, May 17 beginning at 7:00 pm at Survival Kit Gallery, located on the 3rd floor of 78th Street Studios in the Gordon Square Arts District, Ars Futura — Shuai Wang and Hyunsoo Kim, piano, Madeline Lucas, flute, Jinjoo Cho, violin and Carlos Javier, cello — present the final performance of the group’s inaugural season. The concert features the music of Keith Fitch, Marshall Griffith, Eric Charnofsky, Tim Mauthe and Joseph Hallman. (Pictured above: Wang and Hallman). [Read more…]

Review: WCLV’s Jubilation! Elizabeth Stuart Church Choir Festival inspires friendly competition at St. John’s Cathedral (May 9 & 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Fed-Church-ChoirThough The Ensemble from Federated Church in Chagrin Falls was the ultimate winner of the 2013 Jubilation! Elizabeth Stuart Church Choir Festival jointly sponsored by WCLV, 104.9 FM and the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, all six choirs took home a cash prize and a plaque as well as the invaluable experience of appearing with each other in a warmly supportive festival. The well-attended finals were held at St. John’s Cathedral on May 9 and 10 and judged by Robert Page, Frank Bianchi and Peter Jarjisian.

On Thursday evening, the Festival Choir of Gesu Parish in University Heights (27 singers) drew the opening slot. Directed by Joseph Metzinger with instrumental assistance from pianist Julia Russ and violinist James Thompson, the ensemble sang a range of music from repurposed Handel choruses to African Chants, a famous Sistine Chapel motet and a Mozart mass movement. [Read more…]

Preview: Contemporary Youth Orchestra: Rock the Orchestra — a conversation with guest artist Bootsy Collins

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by Mike Telin

COLLINS-BootsyAlthough the word “Funk” may not be used on a daily basis during orchestra rehearsals and concerts, this week is all about “Funk” as the Contemporary Youth Orchestra under the direction of Liza Grossman joins forces with legendary bassist Bootsy Collins.

On Friday, May 17 beginning at 7:30 pm in Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium, CYO under the direction of Liza Grossman and Bootsy Collins perform 14 songs from his own discography in Psychotic Bump School. The performance is the 2013 edition of CYO’s annual Rock the Orchestra concert.

Beginning tonight (Tuesday, May 14) at 6:00 pm, also in Waetjen Auditorium, CYO in co-operation with the Bootsy Collins Foundation presents WIND ME UP!(an exclusive, behind the scenes view of our collaboration), a benefit for the Bootsy Collins Foundation and Cleveland Metropolitan School District International School. (Check our concert listings for details).

“Tonight and Friday’s concert are all about supporting the kids” says Patti Collins, the Foundation’s president who, along with her husband, created the foundation. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Ton Koopman and Paul Yancich at Severance Hall (May 4)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Yancich-PaulThe first weekend of the third year of Dutch conductor Ton Koopman’s productive residency with The Cleveland Orchestra gave Severance Hall audiences a new perspective on three Viennese classical works by Mozart and Haydn, introduced a French baroque descriptive piece by a composer the orchestra has never tackled before, and brought a true novelty to light: a late eighteenth century showpiece starring timpanist Paul Yancich.

To be precise, only half of The Cleveland Orchestra was playing on the East side of East Boulevard on Saturday evening, May 4 — the rest of the musicians had been involved all week with the two-concert series “California Masterworks” at the Cleveland Museum of Art. For Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, the Severance stage was set up for a period-sized ensemble of fifteen violins, six violas, four cellos and four basses, and pairs of oboes and horns. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Chamber Music Society Young Artists Showcase features the Omer Quartet at First Unitarian (May 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Omer QuartetFor the second year in a row, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society has honored the Omer Quartet with a Young Artists Showcase concert at First Unitarian Church in Shaker Heights. Violinists Mason Yu and Erica Tursi, violist Joe LoCicero and cellist Alex Cox, all graduating seniors at the Cleveland Institute of Music (pictured here in Mixon Hall), where they have participated in CIM’s Intensive String Quartet Seminar, have spent the season playing outreach concerts in elementary schools with coaching from Annie Fullard of the Cavani Quartet and Peter Salaff of CIM. The Omer Quartet entertained a mid-sized and slightly older audience on Sunday evening, May 5, with two unconventional works by Leoš Janáček and Felix Mendelssohn.

A year ago, the Omer played Mendelssohn’s last-composed chamber work for the occasion; this time they went back to the beginning and offered the 18-year-old composer’s first work for string quartet, op. 13 in a minor. [Read more…]

Review: Church of the Covenant unveils splendid new organ in a day of celebration (May 12)

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by Timothy Robson

Covenant-Gallery-OrganIn a day of music and celebration on Sunday, May 12, the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland’s University Circle formally unveiled and dedicated its brilliant new organ, the Newberry Organ, built by Richards, Fowkes & Company of Ooltewah, Tennessee. The new organ was tested to its limits in a festival service in the morning featuring multi-choir works with Baroque-style instruments, and three other organs (two small Dutch portative organs as well as the church’s large mid-20th-century American Classic organ), followed by a concert in the afternoon by Oberlin Conservatory organ faculty head James David Christie, with a repeat of the multi-choral works from the morning. In between the two major events, the church’s director of music, Jonathan Moyer, gave a lecture on the new organ.

The new two-manual and pedal organ, which sits in a renovated rear organ gallery, is modeled on organs of 17th-century Holland and northern Germany. Its pitch and tuning enable the organist to simulate the sounds that would have been heard by the composers of the time, the late Renaissance and Baroque periods. [Read more…]

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