by Jarrett Hoffman

SAVE THE DATE:

Pianist Evgeny Kissin will visit Cleveland for a solo recital on April 24, 2022 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center. The program of music by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Mozart will mark his first performance at Severance since soloing in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy in March 1997.

Tickets go on sale October 25, with a limited number of on-stage seats available, and pre-sale for Cleveland Orchestra subscribers and donors is already underway as of yesterday.

INTERESTING READS:

The New York Times shared an important pair of profiles yesterday and today: conductor Eun Sun Kim (music director of San Francisco Opera, and both the first woman and first Asian to hold that post in one of the country’s largest opera companies), and composer Sofia Gubaidulina (before her 90th birthday this Sunday).

And writing for The New Yorker, Paul McCartney himself shares the history of how The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby came to be — and how the band did as well. “All these small coincidences had to happen to make the Beatles happen, and it does feel like some kind of magic.” Read here.

IN MEMORIAM:

Producer, recording editor, and oboist Thom Moore passed away of cancer on October 16. Moore was a founding member and the president of Five/Four Productions, and was previously the producer and senior recording editor for Telarc International, during which time he won four Grammy Awards.

He studied oboe at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and over the years was principal oboe in such ensembles as Red {an orchestra}, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, Trinity Chamber Orchestra, Cleveland Ballet, Cleveland Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera Orchestra, in addition to performances with The Cleveland Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

Donations in his memory can be made to the Kaboom Collective, aimed at immersing musicians ages 15-25 into many different sides of the arts and entertainment industry.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

We start with the name of Charles Ives — born on October 20, 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut — but linger there only briefly. (Read our almanac from last year for a deep Ives dive.) Instead we’ll focus on another American composer born on this same date three years later in Louisville, Kentucky who was also an authority on folk music, in her case of the Southern Appalachians.

That would be Josephine McGill, whose book Folk-Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, originally published in 1917, contains ballads and other English folk songs “notated from the singing of the Kentucky Mountain People” after her visits to Knott and Letcher Counties, and arranged with piano accompaniment by McGill herself.

Thanks to the digital offerings of the library of the University of Kentucky, the entire book is accessible for free. Warm up your vocal cords and dig in for some sight-singing — but please, first lock yourself in a sound-proof room. (And that’s not a commentary about the quality of the music.)

After thumbing through the book, focusing in particular on the ballads, which McGill notes are particularly valuable from a literary perspective, I discovered at least one gem: The Greenwood Side, also known as The Cruel Mother, on page 83. It jumped off the page with its dark lyrics (a mother kills her illegitimate children before meeting their ghosts) and its tune, both mournful and slightly bouncy in 6/8 time. 

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by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY at 7:30 pm, the latest episode of Les Délices’ SalonEra brings together bassoonist Catalina Guevara Víquez Klein, violinist Karin Cuellar Rendon, and soprano Raquel Winnica Young to explore the legacy of “The Phoenix of Mexico,” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), as well as their own personal connections to that poet, composer, and protofeminist.

The program includes music by de la Cruz, Rafael Castellanos, Antonio Durán de la Mota, and Andrés Flores. Read a preview article by Mike Telin here, and register here to view online.

If you didn’t get a chance to celebrate HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH, which lasted from September 15 to October 15, that program from Les Délices is an excellent way to do so, with its mix of works by composers from Mexico, Guatemala, and Bolivia.

Another recommendation on that front: the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Creative Fusion series, presented this past summer in partnership with the Mexican Committee of Cleveland.

Among the three artists-in-residence, guitarist and composer Hermelindo Ruiz used his platform to shine a spotlight on fellow Puerto Rican composer Juan Felix Acosta De Arce (Ojos de Ensueño), to highlight the Puerto Rican genre of Danza (To Soar Beyond), and to musically address the feeling of being part of, yet separate from, mainstream American culture (Music for Interaction).

The latter piece, which Ruiz wrote for CCGS Education Program students, involves not only performance and improvisation, but also spoken word as students and parents share memories and emotions around their Puerto Rican heritage (screenshots above).

And guitarist, composer, and singer Anastasia Sonaranda portrayed the diversity of cultural and musical styles from her native Mexico. Her four videos represent the styles of “son jalisciense” (Son de la Negra), “son huasteco” (Cuyahoga Weeping) “son istmeño” (La Llorona) and “son jarocho” (El Cascabel). She also brought in other art forms — choreography and poetry — to approach those styles in different ways.

Read more about the Creative Fusion videos here, and watch them all here.

Along the lines of both Sonaranda and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, check out these graphics from the Boulanger Initiative to learn more about other women composers of Hispanic heritage: Narcisa Freixas, María Grever, Rocío Sanz Quirós, Maria Teresa Prieto, Pauline Viardot, and Teresa Carreño (thanks to the Akron Symphony for sharing).

Finally, an article from NPR addresses the name of this month-long celebration. “What’s the harm in lumping together roughly 62 million people with complex identities under a single umbrella?” Vanessa Romo writes. “Is a blanket pan-ethnic term necessary to unite and reflect a shared culture that is still largely (infuriatingly) excluded from mainstream popular culture? Or the more basic question: ¿Por que Hispanic?”

Moving from international to LOCAL NEWS items, nominations are being accepted here until January 6 for the sixth annual Music Educator of the Year Award, sponsored by the Canton Symphony.

A new podcast from the Bop Stop and Gilazar Media, Jazz and Conversation, is now available. Click here to sit down virtually with saxophonist Bobby Selvaggio and guitarist Dan Wilson as they discuss musical influences, touring with a family, and Wilson’s new album Vessels of Wood and Earth, with live music interspersed throughout the episode.

And for anyone interested in classical musicians branching out into other genres, Cleveland Chamber Choir alto Moriah Sprit (below) recently collaborated with Ravenna-based electronic pop-rock band Circadia in their cover of Run Wild, originally by For King & Country. Watch the music video here.

In TODAY’S ALMANAC, wish a happy birthday to New Orleans-born trumpeter, composer, educator, and Jazz at Lincoln center artistic director Wynton Marsalis, who turns 60, and whose oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz work to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Turning 75 is Canadian composer Howard Shore, a three-time Academy Award winner for his scores to the film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.

We also honor the passing of French composer Charles Gounod, who passed away on October 18, 1893, and who is most famous for his twelve operas, including the popular Faust.

And of American songwriter Gussie Lord Davis, who died on this date in 1899. Born in Dayton, Davis went on to become the first Black songwriter to reach fame in New York’s Tin Pan Alley scene.

by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TONIGHT:

8:00 brings two options: one in person and outdoors, the other over the web and airwaves. BW Opera continues its run of George Frideric Handel’s Alcina outdoors on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center, while WCLV’s Ovations will feature CityMusic Cleveland in music by Jungyoon Wie, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Ellen Taffe Zwilich. Read our preview about the Wie and Coleridge-Taylor works, which were programmed together this past April.

Details about both events in our Concert Listings.

VIDEOS & PODCASTS:

To help welcome families back to Severance this season, The Cleveland Orchestra has prepared a digital family concert featuring the Factory Seconds Brass Trio (above, right), and hosted by Meaghan Heinrich. From the looks of it, there’s something for everyone, whether you’re drawn in by the performances, the music (Poulenc’s Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone), the story (a tale of Parisian love “brought to life by the antics of a mischievous cat!”), the artwork by Kate Atherton (one example pictured above, left), or the opportunity to create your own art. Watch here.

And the ASO’s Unorchestrated podcast finishes up its series on the Akron Symphony Chorus with a discussion about There’s a Stirrin’ in the Water, written by Chuck Myricks Jr. and Jesse Ayers in 2016. Joining host Tom Moore are the two co-composers, as well as Chorus Director Chris Albanese. Musical excerpts, of course, are included along the way, both from a November 2016 performance and from May 2021. Listen here.

IN THE NEWS:

Ahead of his recent speech at the Conservative Party conference, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson walked onstage accompanied by the music of indie band Friendly Fires. The group had not given advance permission, and in any case they were not pleased with the association. But the matter isn’t always that simple. Writing for the BBC, Mark Savage investigates the rules around politicians’ choices of music, both in the U.S. and the U.K.

And the Teatro Comunale di Bologna has named Oksana Lyniv as its next music director, making her the first woman to assume that position for an Italian opera company. Read the article from Opera Wire here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Previous Diary entries (here and here) have highlighted English-born violist and composer Rebecca Clarke, who died on this date in 1979 in New York City. Today we’ll shine a spotlight on another, lesser-known, and living Clarke, of no relation. That figure would be Australian musician Zana Clarke, born on October 13, 1965.

A composer, recorder player, and violinist, Zana Clarke has also taught Medieval improvisation and early instrumental music at the University of New England — an interest that intertwines with those other musical pursuits. Her compositions, mainly for the recorder, often bear Medieval influences, but combine them with contemporary techniques such as “vocalized recorder,” or singing while playing to create two individual melodic lines.

A great example is her Swamp — listen here, ignoring the shaky video, to enjoy a fascinating blend of the Medieval and the modern, as performed by Jo Arnott at the premiere in 2005.

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by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 3:00 at the Maltz, the Case/University Circle Symphony Orchestra, led by Kathleen Horvath, plays an all-Czech program of music by Dvořák and Smetana. And at 8, BW Opera and director Scott Skiba present Handel’s Alcina in an outdoor production on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center. Details and links in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

This Indigenous Peoples’ Day is the first one to be recognized by proclamation of a sitting U.S. president.

“For generations, Federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures,” President Biden wrote on Friday. “Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society.”

Let’s reflect on two recent and local musical events to honor Indigenous culture of the Americas.

We begin this past summer with Mexican guitarist, composer, and singer Anastasia Sonaranda (above, middle), who was one of three guest artists involved in the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Creative Fusion virtual series.

Through her residency, Sonaranda sought to illustrate the diversity of styles in Mexican music. The waltzlike “son istmeño” style, developed in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (which mostly lies in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Oaxaca), was aptly represented by La Llorona, a popular folk song that originated in that same region.

A key element of the arrangement by Sonaranda and Rodrigo Lara Alonso (educator and Latinx Community Liaison for the Guitar Society) is a text that was written for the occasion by Irma Pineda Santiago (above, left), a Oaxacan-born poet who is also a 2020-22 United Nations representative to Indigenous peoples of Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The poem, Gunaa runna, is written in the Indigenous language of Isthmus Zapotec or Diidxazá. The Zapotec group of around 50 languages is spoken by 490,000 people, according to the 2020 census, the majority of them in Oaxaca, with the Isthmus area being among the most proud in maintaining that tongue.

Given that the poem reflects on the figure of La Llorona (literally “the weeping woman”), it’s helpful to know the basics of the folklore in advance: a woman has drowned her children, then herself — for various reasons depending on the particular variation of the story — and now roams as a ghost mourning them.

Now, watch the video, which begins with Santiago in recitation — songlike in itself given the tonal aspect of the Zapotec languages — before introducing the musical soloists: on guitar Sonaranda, and on voice Martha Toledo Mar (above, right), herself a Zapotec singer-songwriter from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

You’ll also hear over 100 guest musicians: students from CCGS Education and from the Orquesta Juvenil de Guitarras de la Ciudad de México, as well as amateur and professional guitarists from Cleveland and Mexico.

Moving north, let’s end by revisiting Les Délices’ September 2020 SalonEra episode “Recovering Roots.” The program shone a spotlight on baritone Jonathon Adams, whose ancestry can be traced back to two groups of Indigenous people primarily from what is now Canada: the Métis (themselves a mix of Indigenous and European — mostly French — descent) and the Cree.

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by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY:

The afternoon opens with a Trinity Brownbag “Organ Spectacular” at 12 pm, with Todd Wilson and Nicole Keller (above) unveiling Trinity Cathedral’s new Muller Pipe organ through music by Sowerby, Hampton, Widor, Lemare, Shearing, and Soler (attend in person or via stream). And at 12:15, there’s a Dana School of Music Voice Area Recital at YSU’s Butler Institute of American Art.

The evening pairs string quartets and visual art when four CIM ensembles play works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Haydn in “Music in the Galleries” at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Details in our Concert Listings.

IN THE NEWS:

Last Thursday, Mike Telin rounded up several reviews of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first opera by a Black composer ever to be staged by the company.

Following up on the review by chief classical critic Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times has since sent two more critics to see the production — one specializing in classical music, the other in jazz (Blanchard is a jazz trumpeter as well as a composer). Read the post-opera discussion between Seth Colter Walls and Giovanni Russonello here.

Elsewhere in NYC, the New York Philharmonic is managing the challenge of being without a home venue this season during the renovation of David Geffen Hall. “This 2021-2022 season is shaping up as a militarylike exercise of logistics, dexterity and scheduling,” writes Adam Nagourney in the Times.

Here are the numbers: “For each move, over the course of 86 concerts in four main locations, six crew members will have to pack up to 30 cases of instruments and equipment and load them into a 24-foot-long truck for hauls that will range from five blocks (from Tully to the Rose) to three miles (Riverside Church) and later in the season to its old home, Carnegie Hall.”

And you thought you were having a hard day.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1882 in the village of Tymoszówka, now in Ukraine, one of the great Polish composers was born: Karol Szymanowski. Beloved in his home country, he has received a slew of state honors, both during his life and after it.

Among the more fun facts in that arena, a whole year was given to his name thanks to a resolution by the Polish Parliament: 2007 was decreed “The Year of Karol Szymanowski” — it was the 125th anniversary of his birth. And later that year he reached truly rarefied air among composers: he appeared on commemorative currency, pictured above.

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by Jarrett Hoffman

ON TONIGHT:

At 5:00, the Imani Winds will give a free guest presentation and Q&A at Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, a precursor to their performance tomorrow on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series.

And at 7:30, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society presents the Auryn String Quartet  in works by Haydn, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn as the German ensemble winds down after 40 years. It’s free in person at Lakewood Congregational Church or via live stream.  Read a preview article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

As Vinay Parameswaran, now the associate conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra, told me a couple of years ago, his favorite moments with the Orchestra have been seeing music director Franz Welser-Möst conduct opera: Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in 2017, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in 2018, and Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in 2019 (photo by Roger Mastroianni below).

“He’s one of the greatest opera conductors in the world,” Parameswaran said. “Tristan was revelatory. The way he was able to shape it, capture the drama, and give the singers exactly what they needed, he just made it look so effortless. And then of course this season with Ariadne — it’s some of the most beautiful music Strauss wrote, and we had an A+ cast. I think I’ll remember that long past my time here in Cleveland.”

On that note, let’s revisit the strange history of that Strauss work, which had its revised version — the more popular one, and the one that The Cleveland Orchestra performed — premiere on this date in 1916 at the Vienna Opera.

Before that, in its original form, Ariadne auf Naxos was part of a six-hour package deal. The majority of that duration was taken up by librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of the Molière play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, including incidental music by Strauss. Only at the end came the opera, replacing the Turkish ceremony that concludes the play: here, the foolish Monsieur Jourdain calls for an after-dinner performance of Ariadne auf Naxos, and the opera thus begins. 

A complicated, even clever idea, especially given that Le Bourgeois gentilhomme was from the start a hybrid of multiple art forms: a comédie-ballet, or a play containing interludes of music and dance.

But at the premiere in 1912 in Stuttgart, the audience was not thrilled. “It was a fiasco, as could easily have been predicted,” critic and Strauss scholar Michael Kennedy writes, going on to quote the composer:

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by Jarrett Hoffman

ON TONIGHT:

7:00 brings a free CIM Faculty Recital at Mixon Hall, both in-person and online. In “Carolyn Warner & Friends XVIII” the pianist will be joined by Stephen Rose & Philip Setzer, violins, Stanley Konopka, viola, and Dane Johansen and Si-Yan Darren Li, cellos, in music by Haydn, Mahler, Schubert, and Dvořák. It’s free, but reservations are required to attend in person, though seats appear to be sold-out, or at least very limited. Fortunately, it will also be streamed.

And 8:00 brings ChamberFest Cleveland on WCLV’s Ovations, including Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 and Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1. Listen on WCLV, 104.9 FM or online. Free.

IN THE NEWS:

Single tickets for the Akron Symphony’s 2021-22 season will go on sale Friday, October 1 on the Orchestra’s website. Programming ranges from classics such as Beethoven’s Fifth to Handel’s Water Music to jazz-influenced works by Duke Ellington and Aldemaro Romero, works involving Korean dance, a collaboration with Akron-based EarthQuaker Devices, and a spotlight on composers who deserve greater recognition, like Florence Price, Julia Perry, and William Dawson.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Let’s revisit Daniel Hathaway’s entry from last year devoted to the Christian festival of Michaelmas, or the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, which falls on this date each year and marks the beginning of autumn. Now, take it away, Dan:

It lends its name to the fall term in British universities, and gives rise to a number of folk customs, including making Michaelmas Bannock on the eve of the Feast of Saint Michael from equal parts of barley, oats, and rye without employing any metal implements. And Michaelmas draws the line after which you should stop picking blackberries. That last piece of advice derives from the legend that when the Archangel Michael expelled the rebellious Lucifer from heaven, he landed in a blackberry bush (ouch!), which he cursed and defiled in a special way. Don’t eat the berries.

Angels — divine messengers charged with delivering news good and bad to humans — are part of the rich mythology of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam alike. The archangels Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel join a trio in “The Heavens are telling” in Haydn’s The Creation (sung here by the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw). Later, Gabriel returns to the story to bring surprising news to Mary of Nazareth (listen to Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria sung by Chanticleer). He’s also likely to have been part of the heavenly host that sends the shepherds to the stable in Bethlehem (as re-enacted by Kiera Duffy and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chorale). And Gabriel may even have taken up a viol to entertain the bystanders as in Matthias Grünewald’s altarpiece that Hindemith turned into “The Angel Concert” in Mathis der Maler (here played by the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt).

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