by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Featured artists performing in three June Festivals today include Randall Hawes, bass trombone of the Detroit Symphony, with pianist Kathryn Goodson (Cleveland Trombone Seminar at 5:30 in CSU’s Drinko Hall), the Olli Soikkeli Band — Olli Soikkeli, guitar, Brad Brose, rhythm guitar, Paul Sikivie, bass, and Evan Arntzen, clarinet & saxophone, in “Roma Jazz on a Starry Night” (ENCORE Chamber Music at 7:30 at Kendall Lake in Peninsula, Cuyahoga Valley National Park) and Nicolò Spera (pictured), 10-string guitar (Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival at 7:30 in Mixon Hall at CIM).

Also on tap for this evening: The Cleveland Opera presents Dorota Sobieska, soprano and Daniel Doty, tenor, with string orchestra conducted by Grzegorz Nowak in “Music for Orchestra… with a touch of voice” (7:30 at St. Ann Church in Cleveland Hts.)

NEWS BRIEFS:

Lakewood native David Conte, who is professor of composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, will be honored as 2024 Distinguished Composer by the American Guild of Organists at its convention this summer in San Francisco (June 30-July 4) . [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The 24th edition of  the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival begins today with the Semi-Final Rounds of the James Stroud Youth Competition at 10 am and 1:30 pm in Mixon Hall of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Fifteen competitors, ages 13 to 18 will vie for a place in the Final Round on Sunday evening.

And tonight at 7:30 in Mixon Hall, the first CICGF faculty concert will feature guitarist Jason Vieaux and violinist Mari Sato. Read a preview of the Festival here.

NEWS BRIEFS:

And then there were seven (summer music festivals) scheduled for June, not just the six we previewed last week. We just learned about the Cleveland Lutefest, which will run from June 23-29 at CWRU and feature 7:30 pm Harkness Chapel performances by Paul O’Dette (Sunday), Nigel North (Monday), Robert Barto & flutist Mara Winter (Tuesday), Xavier Díaz-Latorre (Wednesday), Bor Zuljan & Mara Winter (Thursday), and Catherine Liddell (Friday at 1 pm). A participant recital is scheduled for Friday at 7:30). More festival details and ticket information here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, organist Jonathan W. Moyer will play the final Tuesday noon concert of the season at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle. His program begins with Arnold Schoenberg’s thorny Variations on a Recitative, continues with J.S. Bach’s hyper-contrapuntal Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her” & ends with Czech composer Petr Eben’s A Festive Voluntary (Variations on “Good King Wenceslas”), a witty take on a popular carol about the Czech monarch. Click here for the live stream.

CONCERTGEBOUW VIDEO:

The Amsterdam Concertgebouw has made a video available of the May 18 concert by the Jerusalem Quartet, an event that was reinstated after the ensemble’s first performance last month was canceled for security reasons. The program includes Paul Ben-Haim’s First String Quartet and Claude Debussy’s String Quartet in g. Watch it here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Russian-born double bassist and conductor Serge Koussevitzky died on this date in 1951 in Boston, where he had led the Boston Symphony for 25 eventful years.
[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS  WEEKEND:

SATURDAY: At 1 pm, Cleveland Orchestra trombonist Shachar Israel revives his week-long Cleveland Trombone Seminar with a solo recital in CSU’s Drinko Recital Hall (pictured: participants in 2016), and at 4 pm, CelloBello presents Astrid Schween & the Verona Quartet at Cleveland Violins. Saturday evening at 7, the third of four SheScores concerts featuring female and non-binary composers takes place in Mixon Hall at CIM, and at 8 pm, Cleveland POPS orchestra salutes the US Armed Forces at Severance Music Center.

SUNDAY: Afternoon performances at 3 pm include Heights Arts Close Encounters with oboist Frank Rosenwein and the Omni Quartet at Barrie Carriage House & the Euclid Symphony at Shore Cultural Center. At 3:30, Western Reserve Chorale sings songs of America at Church of the Saviour. 4 pm performances bring guitarist Nacho González Nappa & flutist Shea del Bosque to Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church for original arrangements of tango, Brazilian and Cuban music, and Local 4 Music Fund concludes its four-concert SheScores run at CIM’s Mixon Hall.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Beginning in June, the Cleveland Museum of Art will collaborate with Ideastream Public Media to present a new series, Third Thursdays, at Transformer Station. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Local 4 Music Fund  presents the second of four free She Scores concerts featuring music by underrepresented composers. Tonight’s program includes works by Chloe Arnold, Erin Busch, Gala Flagello, Karen Griebling, Alexis Lamb, Annick Odom, Rachelle Ryan, and Elizabeth Start. Emily Laurance will give a pre-concert lecture at 6 pm.

And tonight at 7:30, Mourning [A] BLKstar and Kaboom Studio Orchestra will present a joint concert at Baldwin Wallace University’s Kleist Center in Berea.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Associated Press notes that the late Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence will receive its US premiere by San Francisco Opera on June 1. Its characters “are living ghosts, traumatized survivors of a school shooting that occurred 10 years earlier, but the memory of which intrudes like an unwelcome guest on a wedding celebration taking place in the present. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The first of four SheScores concerts of music by underrepresented composers hosted by Local 4 of the Cleveland Federation of Musicians begins at 7 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Read our preview article here. Rehearsal photo by Derek Snyder.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

American composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros was born on this date in 1932 in Houston. Oliveros is best known for her philosophy of “deep listening” — a term she coined after making a recording in an underground cistern in Port Townsend, WA. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon today, organist Steven Kuerbitz will play music by Joseph Jongen, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and J.S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant. Click here for the live stream.

IN MEMORIAM: 

Friends and colleagues of Cleveland composer H. Leslie Adams (pictured) have reported his passing on May 24 at the age of 96. Read his bio on the American Composers Alliance website here, and on the Cleveland Arts Prize website here (on the occasion of his Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015).

JAZZFEST OUTDOOR SCHEDULE:

On Friday, Tri-C JazzFest announced the schedule for its outdoor concerts in Playhouse Square on June 21 & 22. Download the press release here.

INTERESTING READ:

“Memo to Orchestras: Do More Opera.” New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe saw a Cleveland Orchestra performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” last week and wrote that the production was “a reminder that ensembles can help fill the gap as opera grows harder to find.” Read his review here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti was born on this date in 1923 in Dicsöszentmartin, Transylvania. [Read more…]