by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

With no live performances scheduled for March 17, here are some classical music playlists to mark St. Patrick’s Day, honoring the patron saint of Ireland, who departed this life in c. 461.

Click here for WFMT Chicago’s “Irish Composers You Should Know”

Click here for Discover Music’s “Best Classical Music for St. Patrick’s Day”

and here for Your Classical’s “Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day With an Irish Flavored Classical Playlist.”

Three Irish composers conspicuously missing from those playlists should be mentioned: Sir Hamilton Harty (for his sumptuous arrangements of Handel’s orchestral suites), Victor Herbert (pictured, for his 43 operettas and his cello concertos, though he was born on the island of Guernsey and believed he was Irish by birth all his life), and Charles Wood (who taught Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells and wrote some 250 sacred works while teaching at Cambridge University).

Enjoy!

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

March 17 marks the 360th birthday of French Baroque composer, harpsichordist, and vocalist Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, who began her career as a child prodigy, and ended it as one of the most respected musicians of her time in all of France. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Ten events of all shapes and sizes appear in our Concert Listings this weekend.

Saturday: Cleveland Silent Film Festival screens a classic with live music by David Blazer at CPL, No Exit presents a retrospective of music by Greg D’Alessio at Praxis, The Resonance Project hosts pianist Irwin Shung at Forest Hills Church, North Coast Men’s Chorus sings Beatlemania at the Maltz, and Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Janáček & Beethoven at Severance.

Sunday: Suburban Symphony celebrates its 70th  Anniversary at Severance with Beethoven’ Ninth (pictured above: Domenico Boyagian rehearsing the orchestra and two community choirs), the Poesis Quartet plays works by Cleveland Composers Guild members at CSU, North Coast Men’s Chorus repeats Beatlemania, Arts at Holy Trinity, Akron, presents the Gold Tones Jazz Orchestra, Music at Bath hosts slide guitarist Austin Walkin’ Cane, and Oberlin Conservatory welcomes organist David Higgs for the annual David Boe Memorial Concert. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in a matinee concert featuring Igor Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka (11 am at Severance Music Center), CityMusic Cleveland plays chamber music (7 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop), No Exit presents a retrospective of works by composer Greg D’Alessio, plus first performances of two new pieces (7 pm at SPACES), Cleveland Pops Orchestra honors Oscar nominees and winners (7:30 at Severance Music Center), and the International Contemporary Ensemble presents “Composing While Black, Volume I” (7:30 in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel).

IN MEMORIAM: Sofia Gubaidulina, 93

The New York Times reports that “Sofia Gubaidulina (pictured above), a Tatar-Russian composer who defied Soviet dogma with her openly religious music and after decades of suppression moved to the West, where she was feted by major orchestras, died on Thursday at her home in Appen, Germany.”

Read an obituary by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

No Exit presents a retrospective of works by composer Greg D’Alessio (pictured), plus first performances of two new pieces (7 pm at Trinity Cathedral).

The Cleveland Orchestra plays Beethoven (the Fifth Symphony & Leonore Overture No. 3) and Leoš Janáček’s Suite From the House of the Dead arranged by Brno conductor František Jílek (7:30 at Severance Music Center, Franz Welser-Möst conducting).

And the Canton Symphony’s Divergent Sounds Series presents the Jen Maurer Project (7:30 at The Auricle).

NEWS BRIEFS:

Three Cleveland Institute of Music alumni are among the 17 composers to win 2025 Awards in Music from the New York-based Academy of Arts and Letters. Arseniy Gusev won a Charles Ives Fellowship worth $15,000, Gabriel Novak is one of several composers to win a $7,500 Ives Fellowship, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate won the Wise-Hinrichsen Award, a $5,000 prize supporting publication of a work by the C.F. Peters Corporation and Wise Music. Read the CIM press release here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

If you’re still working in an office, you can break up your evening commute with a 5:30 pm Rush Hour Concert at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights. Today’s performance features percussionist Ethan Strickland (pictured) in When Your Name Is Called,  “a program of invigorating new works.” Read about the artist here.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Cleveland Orchestra has announced the addition of seven new events to the third edition of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival, which will take place at Severance Music Center and partner locations throughout Cleveland from May 16-25. View the schedule here.

In more news from Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra has released its first recordings of the season: a new spatial audio recording of Julius Eastman’s Symphony No. 2 and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, led by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst.  [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Violin Channel reports that “Cellist Melissa Kraut has recently joined the faculty at DePaul University as a Professional Lecturer in the cello department … For the last nineteen years, Kraut served as co-head of the cello department at the Cleveland Institute of Music.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

With no performances on the agenda today in Northeast Ohio, we’ll jump backwards in classical music history to mark some important arrivals.

by Mike Telin

March 11 is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to celebrating birthdays. There’s composer Henry Cowell (Menlo Park, California) in 1897, accordionist and orchestra leader Lawrence Welk (Strasburg, North Dakota) in 1903, composer Xavier Montsalvatge (Girona, Spain) in 1912, composer and bandleader Mercer Ellington (Washington D.C.) in 1919, and vocalist and conductor Bobby McFerrin (New York, N.Y.) in 1950. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

Piano Cleveland will present Arts Alive: A Space Odyssey, featuring students from the Paul L. Dunbar Elementary School’s PianoLab on Wednesday, March 19, from 7-8 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

“The students will guide audiences on an exhilarating journey, featuring musical works, dynamic choreography, captivating visual art, and evocative written word. As the stars align, you’ll travel to distant planets, get up close with a black hole, and witness the cosmos unfold in a breathtaking display of young talent.” The event is free, but tickets are required. More information here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Five years ago, The Cleveland Orchestra began the week by announcing that “due to ongoing developments related to coronavirus (COVID-19), the Orchestra will not travel to Europe (Linz, Vienna and Paris) and Abu Dhabi for the ensemble’s previously announced tour scheduled to take place during the next several weeks.”

That began a cascade of postponements and cancellations that effectively brought a halt to live music in Northeast Ohio, causing institutions, presenters and touring artists to come up with clever ways to cope with an uncertain future. (Photo above: Roger Mastroianni) [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

THIS WEEKEND:

Over these three days, Les Délices, The Cleveland Orchestra, Oberlin Opera Theater, Cleveland State University’s Keyboard Area and The Lakewood Project, Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s Young and Emerging Composers, the Stow Symphony, classical guitarist Marko Topchii, Canton Symphony with the Steel Wheels, pianist Jeffrey Siegel, and the Parma Symphony, will all contribute performances — some repeated — to Northeast Ohio’s busy schedule of classical concerts. Please visit our Concert Listings for details.

Reminder: Daylight Savings Time starts at 2 am on Sunday (clocks advance by one hour).

NEWS BRIEFS:

Msn.com reports that “the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music have ‘paused’ the Emerging Black Composers Project, citing a memo from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that called diversity efforts ‘repugnant’ and ‘shameful’ and directed schools to eliminate them or risk losing federal funding.”

The article adds that “representatives from the Conservatory and the Symphony said in a joint statement to the Chronicle that they’re trying to save the project. Among the workarounds, the organizations are floating the possibility that the Symphony, which is not subject to Department of Education orders, fully adopt the program.

And the Oberlin Conservatory reports that “Associate Professor of Jazz Studies Billy Hart was named a Mellon Foundation Jazz Legacies Fellow and recognized as a ‘hero of jazz rhythm and esteemed mentor.’ [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

This evening at 6 at Market Garden Brewery, Les Délices takes a break from its usual French Baroque fare to play a pirate-themed event including a costume contest and sea shanty singalongs, and at 7 at Heights Arts, violinist Emily Cornelius and percussionist Ross Karre join in a pay-what-you-can concert.

More this evening: at 7:30 in Mandel Hall at Severance, Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and Concerto in G with pianist Seong-Jin Cho (pictured), and at at 8 in Hall Auditorium, Oberlin Opera Theater opens a four-performance, double-cast run of Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, directed by Stephanie Havey and conducted by Christian Capocaccia.

INTERESTING CLIP:

Film concerts: Performing movie music live

“An increasingly popular symphony orchestra concert is a movie screening accompanied by a live performance of the film’s music—reeling in new audiences to the concert hall. CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue attends a New York Philharmonic screening of Jaws, featuring John Williams’ iconic score, and finds out how the technically complicated concert is managed.” Watch here (Tattled from The Cleveland Orchestra’s newsletter entry about the forthcoming screenings of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther with score led by expert film conductor Anthony Parnther.) [Read more…]