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DIARY: Tuesday, May 16, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: organist Katherine Johnson at noon

•News: Oberlin’s Poiesis Quartet wins Fischoff, Ohio arts funding announced, CIPC tickets on sale

•Almanac: the danzas of Juan Morel Campos

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:00 pm on the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Noon Organ Plus series, organist Katherine Johnson will play a recital that includes Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Three Impromptus, Op. 78, César Franck’s Cantabilé (Trois Pièces pour grand orgue), Marcel Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in f, Op. 7, No. 2, and Rachel Laurin’s Étude Héroïque, Op. 38. A freewill offering will be taken up. The concert will also be livestreamed.

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society goes all-Stravinsky for season closer

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Clarinetist Daniel McKelway and trumpeter Amanda Bekeny are familiar collaborators in a sense. Both are on the board of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society and both are frequent performers on the series — although it has never actually brought them face-to-face, instrument-to-instrument, bell-to-bell, onstage together at the same time for the same piece. Something they decided they ought to change.

To be fair, there isn’t a whole lot of music that could bring them together. But there is a pair of beloved pieces with unusual, colorful instrumentations, both by the same composer. “I don’t know which of us thought of it first, but there was an immediate idea of, ‘Wait a minute — Stravinsky,’” McKelway said during a recent interview.

They were thinking in particular of the Octet, which combines woodwinds and brass, and L’Histoire du Soldat (“Soldier’s Tale”), which brings together woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion — plus narrator, telling the story of a soldier who strikes an ill-advised bargain with the devil.

Those two pieces and those two people — L’Histoire, the Octet, McKelway, and Bekeny — form the nucleus of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season-ending concert, which will take place on Monday, May 15 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Attendance is free, and the concert will also be livestreamed. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, May 9, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: Davis Badaszewski (pictured) at the Covenant

•Announcements: Pulitzer Prize in Music, CWRU choral composition competition & KSU percussion camp

•Almanac: the many talents of Anne Sofie von Otter

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today’s Tuesday Noon Organ Plus concert at Church of the Covenant will feature organist Davis Badaszewski. His program includes William Walton’s Three Pieces, Harold Darke’s In Green Pastures, and César Franck’s Choral No. 1 in E. The concert will also be livestreamed.

[Read more…]

Music of American history with the Parma Symphony: Lincoln Portrait & Gettysburg

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by Jarrett Hoffman

There are several stirring moments in Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, a piece that combines music with excerpts of oratory by Abraham Lincoln. One of those moments comes about two-thirds of the way through, when a rousing crescendo in the percussion follows a select few lines from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates:

It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, May 2, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: clarinet and strings at the Covenant, Jerusalem Quartet (pictured) at CCMS, and Oberlin Chamber Singers at Fairchild

•Announcement: tickets available for Re:Sound Festival

•Almanac: William Levi Dawson, the “Dean of African American Choral Composers”

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 pm, the Church of the Covenant presents a chamber music concert featuring clarinet and strings (clarinetist Dominic Giardino, violinists Guillermo Salas Suárez and Phaik Tzhi Chua, violist Jonathan Goya, and cellist Jane Leggiero). The program is titled “Drama and Delight at the Dawn of Romanticism,” and it includes Bernhard Crusell’s Op. 4 Clarinet Quartet in c and Anton Reicha’s String Quartet in G, Op. 90, No. 2. A freewill offering will be taken up. You can also stream it here.

Strings take center stage at at Disciples Christian Church at 7:30 pm, when the Jerusalem Quartet — violinists Alexander Pavlovksy and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov — will visit the Cleveland Chamber Music Society, bringing with them Prokofiev’s Quartet No. 2 in F, Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 10 in A-flat, and Bartók’s Quartet No. 6. Brian MacGilvray will give a pre-concert lecture at 6:30. Tickets are available here.

Also at 7:30, at Fairchild Chapel, Ben Johns will lead the Oberlin Chamber Singers in works by Robert Schumann, Gustav Holst, Erika Lloyd, Charles Stanford, Irving Berlin, Ward Swingle, Mozart, and Billy Joel — program details and livestream link here. It’s free.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, April 27, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: Cleveland Orchestra premieres Marsalis Trumpet Concerto, Tuesday Musical presents “An Evening with Itzhak Perlman,” and Oberlin College Choir & Musical Union come together in concert

•Interesting reads: news about arts entrepreneurship in the area, and new Donizetti songs discovered

•Almanac: remembering cellist Lynn Harrell

HAPPENING TODAY:

Three options, all at 7:30.

At Severance Music Center, Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in the world premiere of Marsalis’ Trumpet Concerto, featuring Michael Sachs as soloist. The program also includes Eastman’s Symphony No. 2 and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). Tickets are available here.

At E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical presents “An Evening with Itzhak Perlman,” in which that musical luminary will share “intimate anecdotes and multi-media images from his life and career” in addition to performing with longtime collaborator and friend Rohan De Silva. Get tickets here.

And at Oberlin’s Finney Chapel, Ben Johns will lead the Oberlin College Choir and Musical Union in works by Parry, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Zemlinsky, Janáček, and Ives. It’s free and will be livestreamed here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, April 25, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: Organist Oziah Wales at the Covenant at noon

•Announcements: JJ Hudson (pictured) appointed interim artistic director at CIM Opera Theater

•Almanac: one of the lesser-known woman in composition from the Romantic era, Luise Adolpha Le Beau

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 pm, for the price of a freewill offering, check out a recital by organist Oziah Wales, who will play music by Dudley Buck, John Ireland, and Sigfrid Karg-Elert on the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Noon Organ Plus series. Click here for the livestream.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, April 20, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: Oblivion Project plays Piazzolla, Pantheon Ensemble (pictured) honors WWII-era Jewish composers, and Cleveland Orchestra goes all-Mozart 

•Interesting read: Cleveland’s high score in the “Arts Vibrancy Index”

•R.I.P. Blair Tindall, 63

•Almanac: the ill-fated Crosby Opera House, from its opening all the way to its demise at the hands of the Great Chicago Fire

HAPPENING TODAY:

This evening presents you with three listening options.

At 7:00, you can hear The Oblivion Project — dedicated to the tango nuevo works of Astor Piazzolla — at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights. The free concert is presented by the Local 4 Music Fund.

Also at 7:00, the Pantheon Ensemble pays tribute to WWII-era Jewish composers. That concert takes place at Temple-Tifereth Israel in Beachwood, and it’s also free.

And at 7:30 at Severance Music Center, Bernard Labadie leads The Cleveland Orchestra in an all-Mozart program featuring soprano Lucy Crowe. Tickets are available online.

Details in our Concert Listings.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, April 18, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: organ at the Covenant (Steven Plank) and with the CIM Orchestra (Daniel Colanger), Cleveland Orchestra tells a story of immigration, and an advance screening of CHEVALIER

•Announcements: Contemporary Youth Orchestra auditions and Oberlin Trumpet Workshop application deadline

•Almanac: the late Harrison Birtwistle and The Minotaur

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:00 pm as part of the Tuesday Noon Organ Plus series at Church of the Covenant, Steven Plank will take to the Newberry Organ to play music by Heinrich Scheidemann, William Byrd, Thomas Tomkins, Henry Purcell, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Jan Pieterzoon Sweelinck. Program details and the livestream link can be found here. A freewill offering will be taken up.

Organ will also be featured when conductor Carlos Kalmar and the CIM Orchestra take the stage at Kulas Hall at 7:30 pm. That program includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, Bizet’s Carmen Suites Nos. 1 & 2, and Joseph Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante featuring organist Daniel Colanger as soloist. It’s free but reservations are required.

Also at 7:30, assistant conductor Daniel Reith and The Cleveland Orchestra will present Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America. Combining music, narration, and historic images, the multimedia work also features seven actors portraying seven immigrants from seven countries. The concert takes place at Severance Music Center and lasts one hour with no intermission. Reserve your free tickets here, and read a preview article by Mike Telin here.

And at 7:00 pm at Cinemark At Valley View and XD, you can catch an advance screening of CHEVALIER, the upcoming film about violinist-composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges that releases in theaters on April 21. Download a free Admit Two pass here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, April 13, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: MTT leads The Cleveland Orchestra in a program featuring pianist Leif Ove Andsnes

•Announcements: YSU summer programs, CSU piano and strings sale, and a pair of CIM students (pictured) heading to the Louisville Orchestra

•Almanac: through the ages on April 13, from Machaut to Van Cliburn

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Michael Tilson Thomas leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”) and two works by Debussy: Jeux (“Games”) and Fantasie for Piano and Orchestra, the latter featuring Leif Ove Andsnes as soloist. Tickets are available online. Read Mike Telin’s interview with Andsnes here.

[Read more…]

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