by Daniel Hathaway
Quire Cleveland began its eleventh season on November 2 with new artistic leadership. Under the direction of Jay White, the professional chorus marked the dual celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day with a cleverly devised, masterfully sung program at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On October 19, almost a year after its debut, Margaret Brouwer’s ambitious oratorio Voice of the Lake, chronicling the most recent environmental assaults on Lake Erie, was revived in an updated version in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The affecting and nearly flawless performance conducted by Domenico Boyagian, involved soloists (Angela Mortellaro, soprano, Sarah Beaty, mezzo-soprano, Brian Skoog, tenor, and Bryant Bush, bass), the 15-member Blue Streak Ensemble and 12 voices of the Blue Streak Ensemble Chamber Singers, and the 21-voice Cleveland Institute of Music Children’s Choir. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Before the holiday Americans observe on November 11 was renamed Veterans Day in 1954, Armistice Day marked the cessation of hostilities in World War I, when the peace agreement with Germany went into effect at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
This year, that date also marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the “Great War,” and the worldwide events planned to celebrate that milestone will importantly include the bells of the McGaffin Carillon at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle on Friday evening, November 9, and Sunday morning and afternoon, November 11.
On Friday at 8:00 pm, The Church of the Covenant and the CWRU Music Department will present Consolation, a collaborative program featuring the premiere of a new commissioned work by David N. Childs for mixed chorus, strings, timpani, harp, carillon, and handbells, to be performed by the Case Concert Choir, Church of the Covenant Chancel Choir, and the Consolation Chamber Orchestra. Solas incorporates poetry by Robert Graves and Charles Hamilton Sorley. “The McGaffin carillon has a small part as a prelude,” carillonneur George Leggiero said in a telephone conversation, “playing verses of a hymn written by a soldier.” The evening will also include music by Pearsall, Brahms, Reger, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Rheinberger. Tickets can be reserved online. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Singers on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series never seem to attract the kind of audiences who turn out for string quartets, but anyone who stayed away from the remarkable recital presented by German baritone Holger Falk and British pianist Julius Drake at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church on October 23 missed out on a special evening. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Only two works made up the program for Matthias Pintscher’s guest appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall on Thursday, November 1, but they were big ones. Pianist Kirill Gerstein — always worth a few surprises — brought a breezy, fresh interpretation to Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, and Pintscher and the Orchestra labored mightily to make the music of Bartók’s infrequently performed ballet The Wooden Prince work as a symphonic poem without dancers. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
It doesn’t require close proximity to Halloween to make the combination of Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg sound a bit scary for some potential concertgoers. That might account for the slim Thursday audience at Severance Hall on October 25, when Ingo Metzmacher and Christian Tetzlaff visited music of the Second Viennese School with The Cleveland Orchestra. Those who came got an earful of ravishing music fully as expressive as Brahms, just in a different way. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
In his bio, Bombay-born Sorab Wadia writes of himself, “He relishes resisting the clutches of typecasting.” No kidding. His musical repertoire ranges from Medieval to pop and rock, with oratorio and opera along the way.
As a singing actor, he has appeared in Mira Nair’s new musical, Monsoon Wedding. As an actor, he’s played Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, been featured in a one-man play based on Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, and appeared on Law & Order, merely to skim the surface of his extensive brag sheet. His classical credentials include piano study at Peabody, where he earned the first of his two masters’ degrees.
Wadia, who will join Apollo’s Fire this weekend as a vocalist for its “O Jerusalem” shows, winds up his narrative noting that he’s now based back in Bombay, “but will jump on a plane for a gig at the drop of a hat.” I reached the hyper-versatile performer on his cell phone to ask how Jeannette Sorrell found him in order to drop that hat. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Following the Singers’ Club of Cleveland’s 29th Annual S. Livingston Mather Scholarship Competition for Male Voice Students on November 3, veteran Metropolitan Opera baritone Sherrill Milnes will give a free, public master class for the five winners on Sunday, November 4 at 1:00 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
With over 650 Met performances to his credit — he and the late Montserrat Caballé both made their house debuts in Gounod’s Faust on December 22, 1965 — Milnes continues to be a popular mentor for young singers. Together with his wife, Maria Zouves, he co-founded and runs the Sherrill Milnes VOICE Programs: VOICExperience Foundation and the Savannah VOICE Festival, which “provide training for aspiring young artists while fostering new audiences for the arts.”
I reached Sherrill Milnes by telephone only a day or so after he returned from a trip to China. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Walter Henry “Chick” Holtkamp, Jr. joined the Holtkamp Organ Company in 1956 after serving in the Navy, becoming president of Cleveland’s oldest continuously operating manufacturing company in 1962 when his father died unexpectedly. In 1996, thirty-four years later, he retired from what was also the oldest continuously operating pipe organ firm in the U.S. — founded in 1855. Holtkamp died on August 27 at the age of 89. His life and career will be celebrated in a memorial event in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday, November 10 at 11:00 am.
That event will include musical tributes by organists John Ferguson (emeritus professor at St. Olaf College) and David Higgs (professor at the Eastman School of Music), and eulogies by Chris Holtkamp, Eric Kisch, and Sarah McFarlane Polly, as well as by Ferguson and Higgs. Gartner Auditorium houses one of Holtkamp’s flagship instruments, the McMyler Memorial Organ, built in 1971. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Conductor Jay White is leading Quire Cleveland into its second decade this season following the retirement of the professional choir’s founders, Ross W. Duffin and Beverly Simmons. His debut program at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, November 2 at 7:30 pm is a complex web of music celebrating All Saints and All Souls Days.
White, who toured as a countertenor for eight seasons with Chanticleer, and now serves as professor of voice at Kent State, has put together a program that interleaves Gregorian chants of the Requiem Mass with mass movements by several different Renaissance composers, and memorial motets written in honor of Machaut, Ockeghem, Josquin, and Tallis. The concert will be repeated on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at St. Sebastian Church in Akron.
In a telephone conversation from his office at the University, White noted that his long experience as a professional vocalist gave him a lot of repertory to choose from. [Read more…]