by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The Northeast Ohio classical music calendar is blank for this Thursday, but while Cleveland audiences are busy keeping snow, ice, and subzero wind chills at bay, The Cleveland Orchestra is in Miami preparing for the first concert of their 2025 residency on Friday.

Click here to find out more about the Orchestra’s activities during the three weeks they’ll spend this season in the Sunshine State.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Cleveland Jazz Orchestra is offering its patrons a sneak peek at the program for its concert with the Musical Theater Project on Friday at the Maltz. Click here to save a tree and download a pdf of the program for “The Gershwins are ‘Girl Crazy.’”

The Cleveland Institute of Music has announced that faculty pianist Geraldo Tessionniér will again lead its Young Artist Piano Seminar this summer from July 6-12. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday, CityMusic Cleveland presents its January chamber music concert at 2 pm at Hudson Library, Minnesota’s Zeitgeist (“Spirit of the Times”), joins Cleveland’s No Exit at 7 at Heights Arts for the last of three joint concerts, Christopher Wilkins, pianist Theron Brown and the Akron Symphony celebrate the centennial of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at 7:30, and at the same hour, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes violinist Augustin Hadelich and conductor Elim Chan to Severance Music Center for the third performance of a program featuring Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra.

On Sunday, Erik Ochsner leads the Youngstown Symphony at Stambaugh Auditorium at 2:30, and at 7:30, The Cleveland Orchestra and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, Daniel Reith & William Henry Caldwell, conductors, take the audience on a journey through the life of civil rights leader and author Coretta Scott King, the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured: the first MLK celebration concert, photo by Roger Mastroianni).

And on Monday, Severance Music Center welcomes the community to an open house with activities and performances for the MLK holiday. Click here for the schedule. At Noon, classical guitarist Damian Goggans plays works by African diasporic composers, arrangers, and musicians in the Cleveland Museum or Art’s contemporary art galleries.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Minnesota’s Zeitgeist (“Spirit of the Times”), will join Cleveland’s No Exit for the second of three appearances tonight at 7 at the Bop Stop. On the agenda are world premieres by Christopher Goddard, Luis Daniel Jiménez, James Praznik & Timothy Beyer as well as works by John Cage and Jin Hi Kim.

And at 7:30, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes violinist Augustin Hadelich (pictured) and conductor Elim Chan to Severance Music Center for the second of three performances of a program featuring Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

In London’s Daily Advertiser on January 17, 1745, George Frideric Handel advertised the return of three-fourths of the costs to subscribers of his concert series, indicating that he can’t please them. They responded with renewed support, and concerts resumed a week later. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Minnesota’s Zeitgeist (“Spirit of the Times”), will join Cleveland’s No Exit tonight at 7 in Drinko Recital Hall at Cleveland State University for world premieres by Christopher Goddard, Luis Daniel Jiménez, James Praznik & Timothy Beyer as well as works by John Cage and Jin Hi Kim (repeated at the same hour on January 17 at the Bop Stop, and January 18 at Heights Arts)).

The Baltic nations are renowned for their choral music, the latest of which the Latvian Youth Choir BALSIS will bring to these shores in a seven-concert tour led by conductor Ints Teteroviskis that stops in for a performance at the Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights tonight at 7. The performance is hosted by one of this country’s oldest male voice choirs, the Singers Club of Cleveland. A freewill offering will be received. Click here to view the tour program.

Also on Thursday, The Cleveland Orchestra will welcome violinist Augustin Hadelich and conductor Elim Chan to Severance Music Center for a 7:30 program featuring Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra (repeated on Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 8).

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Violin Channel reports that “More than 100,000 scores and parts of music by the groundbreaking twentieth-century composer Arnold Schoenberg have been lost during the recent wildfires in Southern California. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at Noon, organist Jonathan Moyer plays a free recital using both organs in University Circle’s Church of the Covenant: works by Nico Muhly and Samuel Scheidt on the 17th-century North German-style gallery organ, and 20th-century French pieces on the chancel instrument. You can hear the performance online.

And at 7:00 pm, The Singers’ Club of Cleveland, one of the longest continuing men’s choirs in the country, welcomes interested singers to a two-hour open rehearsal led by artistic director Don Verkuijlen at the Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Several sources claim that the clarinet was invented by German woodwind builder Johann Christoph Denner on this date in 1690 in Nürnberg. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Saxophonist Steven Banks, guest conductor Stéphane Denève, and The Cleveland Orchestra reprise their stunning performance of Guillaume Connesson’s A Kind of Trane at Severance Music Center on Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 — read our review of Thursday’s concert in the Plain Dealer on cleveland.com (photo by Roger Mastroianni). Other French delights fill out the program.

On Sunday at 2 pm, the Cleveland Cello Society hosts a lecture by Dr. Damir Janigro, son of virtuoso 20th-century cellist Antonio Janigro, who will share historic recordings, film clips, and his own personal anecdotes in a one-of-a-kind program at Judson Park Auditorium.

And Sunday at 3, Cleveland Chamber Collective continues its Music of America series with episode VII, featuring music by Reena Esmail, Ellen Ruth Harrison, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ty Alan Emerson, Missy Mazzoli, Lou Harrison, and Astor Piazzolla at Disciples Christian Church.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, in the final event of the Cooper International Violin Competition, Julia Xiaozhuo Wang, Edna Unseld, and Tiantian Lu perform complete concertos with the Columbus ProMusica Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Norman Huynh in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel. Free and streamed live at oberlin.edu and via The Violin Channel.

For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READ:

The Controversial Hams That Helped a French Cathedral Save Its Organ

Read Emily Monaco’s article in Atlas Obscura about a bell tower in the Saint-Pierre cathedral that hides a meaty secret.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

The great American baritone Sherrill Milnes, a native of Downer’s Grove, Illinois, turns 90 today. [Read more…]