NEWS BRIEFS:

In an email, Piano Cleveland has announced that its piano donation program “hit an important milestone — placing its 88th piano into the home of a Cleveland Metropolitan School District student, 12-year-old Jayce Furmin.

“The number 88 is to a pianist what 13 is to a baker,” says Piano Cleveland executive director, Marissa Moore. “The piano has 88 keys and International Piano Day falls on the 88th day of the year. It’s really fitting that the 88th instrument we’ve placed through our donation program is going into the home of a student like Jayce.”

Although Piano Cleveland has previously rehomed 87 other pianos and keyboards, Furmin is the first student from the organization’s hallmark educational program, PianoLab, to receive an instrument.

The Violin Channel reports that “Chamber Music America, the national network for small ensemble music professionals, announced the recipients of its highest awards: the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award to the Takács Quartet; the Michael Jaffee Visionary Award to Imani Winds; and its biennial Cleveland Quartet Award to the Poiesis Quartet. Read more here.

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 at Severance Music Center, guest conductor Dalia Stasevska leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Silvestre Revueltas’s La Noche de los Mayas and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, repeated through Sunday afternoon.

At the same hour, Abrepaso Flamenco presents Ni más / ni menos, with all-new original music by Adam Ben Ezra, blending classical, jazz, Mediterranean, and flamenco sounds at Disciples Christian Church. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 in Wooster, Wayne Center for the Arts Concert Series presents violinist Chad Hoopes and harpist Bridget Kibbey. Wayne Center for the Arts, 237 S. Walnut St., Wooster. Tickets available online.

And tonight at 7:30 in Cleveland, CIM Insiders Charles Paul, double bass, Genevieve Smelser, violin, Gareth Zehngut, viola, Dane Johansen, cello, and Jacob Bernhardt, piano play works by J.S. Bach, Lili Boulanger, Jacob Druckman, and Fred Lerdahl in Kulas Hall.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Guardian reports that ‘Two long-lost organ pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach have been performed in Germany, roughly 320 years after the composer wrote them as a teenage music teacher.

“Entitled Chaconne in D minor BWV 1178 and Chaconne in G minor BWV 1179, the pieces were added to the official catalogue of Bach’s works on Monday and played in public for the first time in three centuries inside Leipzig’s St Thomas Church, where Bach is buried.” Photo: Bach statue outside the Thomaskirche.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two eminent composers left this life on November 19, due in both cases to microbes: German Johann Hermann Schein (of the plague) in 1630 in Leipzig, and Franz Peter Schubert (of typhus) in 1828 in Vienna. [Read more…]

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon, organist Kingsley Price Wood plays works by Anonymous, J.S. Bach, César Franck and Maurice Durufle at the Church of the Covenant.

And tonight at 7:30 in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical presents the renowned French ensemble Les Arts Florissants in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at 300, featuring violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte (pictured).

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Here are two musicians with local connections who entered the world on November 18.

Lillian Fuchs’ two brothers, Joseph and Harry, both played in The Cleveland Orchestra, Joseph as concertmaster and Harry as a cellist. But the violist of the family, born on this date in 1901, didn’t mind being left out of the spotlight, even by her own parents. She told The Strad 1986, “I was delighted to be left alone.” Lillian was a celebrated soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue who taught for 29 years at the Manhattan School of Music, 26 at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and 22 at the Juilliard School. Her playing inspired works by Bohuslav Martinů, among others. [Read more…]

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Only one birth and one death to memorialize on the seventeenth day of November.

American composer and arranger Hershey Kay was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1919. He studied at the Curtis Institute, where he was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein, who entrusted the scores of On the Town, Peter Pan, and Candide to Kay for orchestration (only rarely do composers take that task on themselves).

Among Kay’s other products was the reconstruction and orchestration of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Grande Tarantelle, choreographed by George Balanchine and famously performed by New York City Ballet’s Patricia McBride and Edward Villela. Watch them dance the score here.

And on November 17, 1959, Brazilian composer, pianist, and conductor Heitor Villa-Lobos died in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 72. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

On Friday at 7:30, Robert Walters steps out in front of The Cleveland Orchestra to play the U.S. premiere of Geoffrey Gordon’s Mad Song for English horn and orchestra. (Read our preview interview here.) Also on the program: Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Tugan Sokhiev conducts at Severance Music Center. Repeated Saturday at 7:30. Tickets available online.

Also on Friday, Cleveland State University presents Boulez 100: Celebrating the Pierre Boulez Centenary, with Andrew Rindfleisch, director, Shuai Wang, piano, and the Boulez 100 Ensemble. Pierre Boulez’s Incises for solo piano, Dérive 1 for six players, and Dérive 2 for eleven players. 7:30 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets available online.

On Saturday, Cleveland Classical Guitar Society hosts Duo Noire, Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett, guitars, in world premieres of works by Bryan Senti, Casimir Liberski, and Layale Chaker, plus arrangements of music by J.S. Bach, Nathaniel Dett, and more. 7:30 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. Tickets available online.

And on Sunday, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series presents Elliot Wuu (pictured), performing Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 31 No. 3, “The Hunt,” and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s  Daisies, Op. 38 No. 3, Preludes Op. 23 No. 4 & 8, and Sonata No. 2. 2:30 at the Tri-C Metropolitan Campus Auditorium. Free, but tickets required — register online.

For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

Paul Hindemith — that celebrated composer of the first half of the 20th century who was also a violist, conductor, and important music theorist and compositional pedagogue — was born on this November 14, 1895 in Hanau, Germany. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, Robert Walters steps out in front of The Cleveland Orchestra to play the U.S. premiere of Geoffrey Gordon’s Mad Song for English horn and orchestra. (Read our preview interview here.) Also on the program: Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Tugan Sokhiev conducts at Severance Music Center.

NEWS BRIEFS:

In a November 12 news release, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture reports that “The Board of Trustees … has approved grants totaling $12.9 million to support more than 300 Cuyahoga County nonprofit organizations of all sizes in 2026. To date, CAC has invested more than $270 million in more than 500 organizations. The Board approved grants for general operating support and project support during a public meeting on Thursday, November 12, 2025.

The Violin Channel reports that “the Verona Quartet [the ensemble-in-residence at the Oberlin Conservatory] has recently begun its Arts-in-Education Residency with the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association, which will see them undertake a wide variety of outreach programming across Indiana’s St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

Baldwin-Wallace Establishes Kiteley Memorial Scholarship Fund

In an email, BW writes: “The Strongsville Community Band and the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of the Performing Arts celebrated the life and career of musician George Kiteley at a Sunday, November 9 concert that featured the announcement of a new Baldwin Wallace University scholarship in his name. Created by an anonymous donor, The George L. Kiteley Memorial Scholarship will assist percussion students at BW with demonstrated financial need in perpetuity.

“Kiteley, who passed away on September 10, became the first full-time professor of percussion at Baldwin-Wallace College in 1971 and remained in this position until his retirement in 2000. He also directed the Jazz Band for 20 years and founded Battu, a BW ensemble-in-residence focusing on world music.” Read an obituary here.

Oberlin Alums Among 2025 Grammy Nominees

Oberlin’s Campus Digest reports today that “The 2026 Grammy nominations have been announced, and Oberlin is well represented across multiple genres and categories. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at Noon, harpist Juan Riveros and violist Danny Jordan play works by Franz Schubert and Arnold Bax on the Tuesday series at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle.

This afternoon at 5, Senegalese master drummer Papa Assane M’baye plays a Rush Hour concert at Fairmount Presbyterian in Cleveland Heights.

Tonight at 7:30, Cleveland Chamber Music Society hosts one of its perennial favorites, the Takács Quartet (pictured, Edward Dusinberre & Harumi Rhodes, violins, Richard O’Neill, viola, and András Fejér, cello) in a program of works by Joseph Haydn, Béla Bartók, and Antonín Dvořák at Disciples Christian Church.

And marking Veterans’ Day, tonight at 7:30 at Severance Music Center, the Cinematic Symphony Orchestra and Choir will play selections from iconic and heroic film scores featuring members of the 101st Airborne Division US Army Band.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Never to be forgotten, “The Great War” (to end all wars) ended rather messily with the signing of an armistice at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, having “claimed the lives of 116,000 Americans, through combat, disease and other causes, and killed millions more people around the world.” [Read more…]