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DIARY: Tuesday, August 16, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Several free events today from the Cooper Violin Competition, the saxophone/woodwind quartet Iron Toys, and West Shore Chorale in a Summer Sing

•A job opening at Firelands, an invitation from Western Reserve Chorale, and auditions for Canton Youth Symphonies

•A profile of Cleveland’s experimental jazz presenting organization New Ghosts

•Almanac: organist and conductor Paul Callaway, Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, and a Richard Strauss premiere at the 1936 Olympics

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, August 11, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Michelle Cann visits PianoDays tonight

•Cleveland Orchestra guest artist update

•R.I.P. conductor Larry Rachleff

•Brass bands at the Proms — tradition and adventurousness

•Almanac: J. Rosamond Johnson and Rafael Kubelík

HAPPENING TODAY:

Piano Cleveland’s PianoDays @CLE festival continues tonight at CIM at 7:30 pm when Michelle Cann plays music by Price, Bonds, Chopin, Brahms, and Clara Schumann. Tickets are available here. Read Mike Telin’s recent interview with Cann, and plan a stop at L’Albatros for a glass of Lady Incarnate, the “special edition Michelle Cann cocktail” that’s billed as a twist on a pink lady, and available through the weekend. Bottoms up.

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DIARY: Tuesday, August 9, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Two free concerts tonight: BlueWater Brass Quintet at Cain Park, and keyboard donation recipients in a Piano Cleveland Community Showcase

•Almanac: the salon songs of Reynaldo Hahn, the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich, and Giacinto Scelsi’s “autobiography in sound”

HAPPENING TODAY:

We knew that trumpeter Larry Herman was bringing friends to his performance tonight at Cain Park. We didn’t know he was bringing BBQ — in other words, his colleagues in the BlueWater Brass Quintet: trumpeter Neil Mueller, hornist Ken Wadenfuhl, trombonist David Mitchell, and tubist Ken Heinleinwill. The 7:00 pm concert is presented by the Local 4 Music Fund as part of Cain Park’s free Tuesday Evening Chamber Music Series.

Piano Cleveland’s ongoing PianoDays @CLE festival has included a recital series, social gatherings such as a trivia night, and community events. In the latter category, tonight’s free Community Showcase will feature people of all ages and skill levels who have received instruments as part of the organization’s Piano and Keyboard Donation Program. The concert will be held at 7:30 pm at Glick Recital Hall at The Music Settlement on Magnolia Drive.

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PianoDays: music & comedy
with Igudesman & Joo

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by Jarrett Hoffman

My recent conversation with pianist Hyung-ki Joo began with some pushback — beginning when I said that it was exciting to talk to him. “Well, you don’t know that,” he joked. “You haven’t talked to me yet.”

A sound argument. So I explained that I was excited about the opportunity to speak to someone like him: a musician who is also a comedian.

He replied that although he was flattered, he and violinist Aleksey Igudesman — who together are Igudesman & Joo, a musical-comedic duo that will perform in Hanna Theatre at Playhouse Square on Thursday, July 28 at 7:30 pm as part of Piano Cleveland’s PianoDays festival — don’t really think of themselves as comedians.

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DIARY: Tuesday, July 19, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today’s schedule: Ohio Light Opera goes outdoors with The Fantasticks (pictured), Local 4 Music Fund presents the Athena Quartet, and pianist Spencer Myer joins the Miami String Quartet at Kent Blossom

•Job postings: openings for string players, oboists, and clarinetists at Heights Chamber Orchestra and the Lima Symphony

•Interesting reads: a withdrawal due to the use of blackface, a grappling with the character of Carmen, and financial privilege in classical music

•Almanac: two American composer/performers in Peggy Stuart Coolidge and Will Marion Cook

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, July 14, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Carillon, Twitter, football, and math collide today at noon at the McGaffin Carillon, and Ohio Light Opera takes up The Mock Marriage at 2:00

•R.I.P. Bramwell Tovey, British conductor and composer

•Almanac: George Lewis, Unsuk Chin, and Gerald Finzi

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, George Leggiero will take up the McGaffin Carillon in Cory Arcangel’s Hail Mary, a project in which a Twitter bot uses an algorithm to generate a new score for carillon every day.

“The dynamics, harmonic content, and even placement on manual of the piece is loosely based on a ‘hail mary’ maneuver in American football,” Arcangel writes. Emoji also make up an important element of the score. (Click here and scroll down on that page for details about the process.) The performance will also be live streamed here.

And at 2:00 pm at Freedlander Theatre, Ohio Light Opera gives the opening performance of Franz Lehár’s The Mock Marriage. Get tickets here.

[Read more…]

Myer + Miami return to Kent Blossom Music Festival

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Over the years, performances by pianist Spencer Myer with the Miami String Quartet at the Kent Blossom Music Festival have happened so regularly that you could almost set your watch to them. But 2020 derailed that, and in 2021 schedules didn’t line up to make it happen either.

Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in g will be the focus when Myer and the Miami get this tradition going again on Tuesday, July 19 at 7:30 pm at Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall. Of course, the Quartet will be minus one fiddle for that piece, but not to worry: violinists Benny Kim and Cathy Meng Robinson, violist Scott Lee, and cellist Keith Robinson will all come together in string quartets by Joseph Haydn (Op. 77, No. 1) and Samuel Barber (Op. 11). Tickets are available here.

Myer has played Fauré’s First Piano Quartet before, but the g-minor — which he described as grittier and with more gravitas — is new to him. And what a warm welcome it gives to any pianist: a series of quick 32nd-note gestures right at the top, repeated again and again, and again.

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Second Kent Blossom concert to feature the McGill/McHale Trio

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Two Chicagoans and an Irishman walk into a bar — or rather, a university. That’s the origin story of the McGill/McHale Trio.

The university is none other than Bowling Green, where flutist Demarre McGill and clarinetist Anthony McGill were artists in residency in 2014. There they performed alongside a pianist hailing from Belfast — Michael McHale — and a long-term partnership began to brew.

The Trio will return not quite to the scene of the crime, but close, when they perform on the Kent Blossom Music Festival’s Faculty Concert Series as Kulas Visiting Artists on Wednesday, July 13 at 7:30 pm at Kent State’s Ludwig Recital Hall. Tickets are available here.

Their program will draw on Portraits, the album they recorded in 2017 on the Cedille Records label, which featured a slew of world-premiere recordings of works by living composers: Valerie Coleman (Portraits of Langston), Chris Rogerson (A Fish Will Rise), Paul Schoenfield (Sonatina for Flute, Clarinet and Piano), and Philip Hammond (the trio version of his Lamentation of Owen O’Neil).

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DIARY: Tuesday, July 12, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•OLO’s Hello, Dolly! at 2:00

•Opera news: a profile of Detroit Opera’s Yuval Sharon (pictured), recent adjustments to Madama Butterfly, and a politician spotted at Glyndebourne

•Almanac: “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over,” the breeding season of sheep, and other topics in the letters of Oscar Hammerstein II

[Read more…]

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