by Daniel Hathaway

THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:

On Saturday, Ohio Light Opera presents a cabaret of songs from musicals the company has produced since 1979 (outdoors in Wooster’s Public Square), Cleveland International Piano Competition releases the Round 1, Session 3 videos of performances by Vitaly Starikov (25, Russia), Anastasiya Magamedova (23, United States/Tajikistan), Ziyu Liu (22, China), Daria Parkhomenko (29, Russia), and Rafael Skorka (32, Israel), and Apollo’s Fire features violinists Olivier Brault, Alan Choo, and Emi Tanabe in showpieces by Telemann and J.S. Bach in Avon Lake.

On Sunday, Cleveland International Piano Competition contestants Bowen Li (24, China), Roman Lopatynskyi (27, Ukraine), Martín García García (24, Spain), Svetlana Andreeva (32, Russia), and Byeol Kim (31, South Korea) perform via video in Round 1, Session 4, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute wraps up its concert series in Gates Mills with a program sparked by young environmental activist Greta Thunberg, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes guests — conductor Dame Jane Glover and pianist Conrad Tao (pictured) — in its second Blossom weekend, and two orchestras perform al fresco: the Suburban Symphony in Shaker Heights, and the Akron Symphony at Hale Farm.

Details in our Concert Listings.

Just a reminder that we’ll be posting mini-reviews of the piano competition rounds soon after each session in the special CIPC section of our front page, and that once the individual round videos have debuted, they’ll remain available for viewing on the PianoCleveland website.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

On this weekend’s list of commemorations: conductor Herbert Blomstedt (born on July 11, 1927), who will conduct Beethoven at Blossom on August 1, Jerry Herman (born on July 10, 1933), composer of such Broadway hits as Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage aux Folles, pianist Ferdinand Joseph Morton (a.k.a. Jelly Roll), who claimed to have invented jazz, a boast about which Gunther Schuller wrote there is “no proof to the contrary,” and Arthur Fiedler, longtime Boston Pops conductor (who died at the age of 84 on June 10, 1979). Here is some rare footage of the Boston Pops July 4, 1976 concert at the Esplanade that drew more than 600,000 people. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS AND UPDATES:

We’ve just received news of the death of Kathleen Shamp (pictured, right) on June 10 at the age of 93. The Wooster native served as music librarian at the Cleveland Public Library for 50 years (1950-2000), sang with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under George Szell and Robert Shaw (1954-1974), and served on the music staffs of Epworth-Euclid (now University Circle) United Methodist and Plymouth churches. A Memorial Service will be held at 11:00 am on Saturday, July 24 at the University Circle United Methodist Church, 1919 E. 107th Street. Read an obituary here.

Pianist Conrad Tao will replace Benjamin Grosvenor with Dame Jane Glover and The Cleveland Orchestra on Sunday evening, July 11 at Blossom, and the Mozart concerto has been changed to No. 23 in A, K. 488.

The Cleveland Philharmonic announces auditions for the new season under music director Victor Liva. Openings are available in all string sections as well as percussion and oboe. Details here.

The Cleveland Institute of Music has named Alison King as its first-ever Director of Digital Media. She comes to CIM from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she served as director of marketing and business development.

HAPPENING TODAY:

Round One, Session Two of the Cleveland International Piano Competition will be conducted via pre-recorded videos made from around the world. Tune in at 7:00 pm to hear Lucas Thomazinho (25, Brazil), Zhi Chao Juli Jia (29, China), Jiarui Cheng (22, China), and Yedam Kim (32, South Korea). It’s free.

The next-to-last ENCORE Chamber Music Institute Concert of the season features guitarist JIJI, with Jinjoo Cho, Sibbi Bernhardsson and Minhye Choi, violins, Stephen Wyrczynski, viola, and Max Geissler, cello in “Sparked by Frida [Kahlo].” Music by Albeniz,  Ponce, Isabella Leonarda, Villa-Lobos, Piazzolla, Frantz Casseus, Boccherini, and Roland Dyens. The in-person event begins at 7 pm in the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

VOTE FOR YOUR LOCAL ORCHESTRA

For the fourth year in a row, Gramophone magazine will be naming an Orchestra of the Year by public vote. The Cleveland Orchestra is among the ten worldwide ensembles to be nominated for 2021, based on the quality of their recordings. The other nine are the Academy of Ancient Music (UK), Accademia Bizantina (Italy), Bamberger Symphoniker (Germany), Berliner Philharmoniker (Germany), Philharmonia Orchestra (UK), Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Canada), Minnesota Orchestra (USA), Singapore Symphony Orchestra (Singapore), and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (Switzerland).

Gramophone has created Apple Music playlists in lossless audio for each ensemble, as well as a dynamic playlist that will be updated throughout the summer. Listen HERE.

Voting opened at noon on July 1 and remains live until 8 am (BST) on Monday, September 13. Votes can be cast on Gramophone’s website ,. The Orchestra of the Year will be revealed on October 5 at the 2021 Gramophone Classical Music Awards.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Considering the withering heat and humidity of the past few days, doesn’t an afternoon in a cool, dark movie theater sound enticing? Or perhaps just a couple of hours on the couch in the A/C enjoying the music of one of the world’s premier film composers — Ennio Morricone, who died on July 6, 2020 at the age of 91.

Although Morricone never left Rome and never learned to speak English, he created some 400 film scores and a hundred classical compositions. Click here to listen to 39 excerpts from his oeuvre.

Among the other aspects of his intriguing life, Morricone was a skillful chess player who once held grand master Boris Spassky to a draw in a simultaneous competition involving 27 players, of which he was the last man standing.

Morricone’s instrument was the trumpet, and we can honor him as well as the memory of Ryan Anthony, who studied at CIM, taught at Oberlin, played with the Canadian Brass, and who performed “Gabriel’s Oboe” from The Mission with members of the Dallas Symphony at a Cancer Blows benefit on March 4, 2015, before Anthony’s untimely death just a year ago. Listen here.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

The Cleveland Orchestra returns to the stage this weekend at Blossom for identical Independence Day concerts on Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 pm. Led by Brett Mitchell, the all-American program features Michelle Cann in Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement, Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, Mary D. Watkins’ Soul of Remembrance, Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Fanfare, and Aaron Copland’s Suite from Appalachian Spring.

As one member of the wind section posted on Facebook yesterday, “After 477 days apart, it is an incredible honor to be making music with The Cleveland Orchestra again!” Read a preview article here, and an interview with Michelle Cann here.

Americana is also on the agenda for Sunday’s 4:30 pm Encore Chamber Music Institute concert in Gates Mills. Copland’s Appalachian Spring will be featured, along with a bluegrass set by Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper. Read a preview article here.

Also, check out special online events from the Oregon Bach Festival (“Phenomenal Women Part 1”), London’s Voces8 (“A wide-ranging recital connecting natural and spiritual regeneration, recognizing loss, beauty, love and joy”), and pianist Min Kwon (“who has commissioned more than 70 composers including Terry Riley, Tania León, Nico Muhly, George Lewis, and more to each write a variation on America the Beautiful”). Details in our Concert Listings.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

On July 3, 1854, Czech/Moravian composer Leoš Janáček was born in Hukvaldy. Now seems a good time to recall one of his most remarkable works, the Sinfonietta, which was performed by Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on January 10 of 2020. That was just weeks before the pandemic closed live Severance Hall concerts down and effectively banished wind players from the world’s concert halls.

I wrote about that evening in a review, and Roger Mastroianni captured the moment in a photo. Look at all those extra brass players!

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Live events today include a noontime Independence Day weekend carillon concert in University Circle by George Leggiero, and an Encore Chamber Music Institute Friday Classics concert, “Sparked by Albert” (Einstein) featuring violinist Jinjoo Cho and cellist Clive Greensmith.

Online, flutist and composer Hong-Da Chin (pictured)  plays original works on Chinese instruments in a concert sponsored by No Exit, and Nicole Keller makes an appearance on the American Guild of Organists’ Organfest 2021, playing the new Muller/Aeolian-Skinner/Skinner instrument in Trinity Cathedral and the new Paul Fritts organ in First Lutheran, Lorain.

Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

On the latest Crain’s Cleveland’s Business Landscape podcast, Cleveland Orchestra CEO André Gremillet talks with Dan Poletta about the return of The Cleveland Orchestra.

Dutch composer Louis Andriessen died in a care home in North Holland on Thursday, July 1 at the age of 82. In an NPR story, Tom Huizenga wrote, “Celebrated for his eclecticism, Andriessen devised his own bold brand of minimalist-influenced music. He embraced the pulsating repetitions of his contemporaries Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but also wove elements derived from Igor Stravinsky’s music, big band jazz, popular styles and the rigid tenets of serialism into his compositions.” [Read more…]