by Jarrett Hoffman

ONLINE TODAY:

Two live-streamed events air at 7:30 pm: Oberlin Conservatory’s Grand Piano Extravaganza, and a concert of music for woodwinds and piano from the Rocky River Chamber Music Society. Read our preview of the RRCMS program here, and find details about both events in our Concert Listings.

NEW VIDEOS:

Musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra launched a new digital series this month, MusiCLE Yours, devoted to solo and chamber music by familiar and lesser-known composers.

The first entry, filmed at Plymouth Church, explores William Grant Still through the lens of his Incantation and Dance for oboe and piano, and the first movement of his Danzas de Panama for string quartet. And the second entry, released yesterday, features the opening movement of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in a performance at the Cleveland History Center.

ADDITIONS TO THE CALENDAR:

The Bop Stop has announced its first outdoor concerts of the season, happening this coming weekend. Saturday brings Blue Lunch, and Sunday the Alba Trio.

INTERESTING READ:

Last month, via a pre-recorded recital, pianist Dan Tepfer shared a segment of his well-known project built around Bach’s Goldbergs, in which he improvises on each of the composer’s variations. Now he’s giving a similar treatment to Bach’s fifteen two-part inventions, but in this case, his aim is to use his own free improvisations to “fill in” the nine musical keys not included in that work. He touched on that in our April preview article:

In the Inventions project it’s very different: I’m not responding to any specific material of Bach’s, but instead, improvising my own inventions from scratch, coming up with ideas and structure in the moment. It’s vertiginously freeing. The connection with Bach is that I’m operating, in my own way, within the same system of tonal harmony and thematic continuity that Bach used, which it’s taken me many years to get comfortable with.

He digs more deeply into that project in conversation with Anthony Tommasini for The New York Times.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

As Peter Phillips wrote in a 2014 article for The Spectator, the reputation of performing musicians “can never be as secure as those of composers: the former are recreative artists, the latter creative, with posterity always remembering the creative ones, no matter how good the former may have been in their lifetimes.”

Sadly, Phillips seems to be correct in that assessment. Recently passed performers still linger in our memories. But long-gones ones seem to be only remembered here and there, and often only by the practitioners of their same instrument or voice type, in a way that ends up feeling nerdy.

Think of all the incredible performers around us today. What an insulting prospect for them.

And so, despite the fact that Erik Satie (born today in 1866) and Paul Dukas (died on this date in 1935) are the most recognized names to grace this date in classical music history, let’s set to work rectifying this imbalance, even just a little bit, with a celebration of four performers whose names shan’t be lost to history.

Marcel Moyse, born on this date in 1889 in St. Amour, France, is a legend of the flute. He played principal in several French orchestras, appeared widely as a soloist, and left behind a long list of recordings. Having taught at the Paris and Geneva Conservatories, written 37 flute etude books, and given a famous series of master classes on several continents, his teaching is just as renowned. He also co-founded the Marlboro School of Music in Vermont, where he moved in 1949.

Pay a visit to the Marcel Moyse Society here, and listen to his short and beautiful recording of Dvořák’s Humoresque (arranged by Kreisler), full of lyrical expression and subtlety.

Sticking with the woodwinds, we move to oboist John de Lancie, who passed away of leukemia on May 17, 2002 in Walnut Creek, California. (His son is the actor of the same name.) And though he was also born in California, it’s in the City of Brotherly Love where he became most famous, holding the principal chair in the Philadelphia Orchestra for 23 years and serving as director of the Curtis Institute of Music for 8 years — until his controversial forced resignation — in addition to teaching at the school.

Although he didn’t commission or premiere it, de Lancie is forever tied to one of the most important works for oboe. Having served in the U.S. Army in World War II, de Lancie met Strauss in Bavaria following the war, when his unit was securing the area around Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where Strauss was living. He asked the composer if he had thought about writing a concerto for oboe. The answer was no, but only several months later, lo and behold, Strauss had put the finishing touches on the Oboe Concerto. Listen to de Lancie play it in a recording here.

Quotes about hornist Dennis Brain — who was born on this date in 1921, and died 36 years later in a car crash — can come across as over-the-top, that is until you hear his superb playing. Among the many accomplishments he achieved in his short life are his recordings of Mozart’s four horn concertos with Herbert von Karajan and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Listen here, and be wowed.

And John William Boone (“Blind Boone”) was born on May 17, 1864 — during the Civil War — in a Union Army camp near Miami, Missouri, his mother an escaped “contraband” slave. Blind from infancy, his ear and talent for music became clear from an early age. In his teens, he began a nearly 50-year career as a pianist and composer, eventually finding great success playing classical music, popular music, folk tunes, and spirituals, appealing to a wide audience. As for his own compositions, many scholars now see them as an important precursor to ragtime.

Read more about his fascinating life from Historic Missourians. Then listen to Boone’s own Carrie’s Gone To Kansas City here, and the edited piano roll he recorded of When You and I Were Young, Maggie here.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

At noon, Trinity Cathedral continues its “Brahms-Fest” on the Virtual Brownbag series, this time with two of the composer’s violin sonatas (Op. 78, No. 1 and Op. 108, No. 2) in the hands of Andrew Sords and pianist Elizabeth DeMio. That will remain available on-demand here.

Also at noon, and also featuring Brahms, is “Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra” on WCLV. The Tragic Overture is paired with Respighi’s La boutique fantasque (“The Fantastic Toyshop”).

Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC / PERSONAL AD / BK PARTY:

A little bit about me: I enjoy long walks on the beach at sunset, and quiet days in classical music history — the kind when you can easily zero in on one or two musicians and give them their proper respect in the daily almanac.

Here’s one way to put May 12 in perspective: if all the important composers who were born on this date decided to celebrate their birthdays at the local Burger King — as we all were once inclined to do — the playpen would be so full of collisions and tears that at some point, each musician would need to be lifted into the air by mom or dad, receive a gentle pat on the back, and be taken home early.

Before arriving at that sad conclusion to the day, the chaotic party would include Czech composer Johann Baptist Wanhal (born 1739), Italian violinist and composer Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755), French composers Jules Massenet (1842) and Gabriel Fauré (1845), American composers Scott Johnson (1952) and Frank J. Oteri (1964), and Chinese American composer and guzheng player Wu Fei (1977).

Amidst plastic balls being thrown point-blank, crashes occurring halfway down the slide, and partly digested Kids Meals making their way onto the carpet, perhaps there would also be the potential for fascinating musical discussions to unfold.

Wu Fei and Viotti might get along as they go back and forth with their virtuosic playing and their own brands of improvisation — the Nashville-based musician showing off her distinct musical language (listen here) that combines Western classical and Chinese traditions with more idiosyncratic sounds of the present day, and the Italian demonstrating his tuneful, Classical-era style and reminiscing about his improv sessions with the pianist Hélène de Montgeroult. In fact, speaking of duos, why not play together? The guzheng, a Chinese plucked zither, can make an intriguing pairing with the violin, as evidenced by several videos on YouTube — here’s one.

Of course, it can be nice in a party setting when a few people already know each other, serving as a nucleus around which everyone else can begin making connections. One such pairing here would be Fauré and Massenet, who were both members of the Société Nationale de Musique, which promoted new French music.

Nevertheless, it’s unclear whether they would make for jovial company together. After all, Fauré replaced Massenet as professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire — Massenet had resigned from the position after being passed over for the school’s directorship, having apparently insisted on being given a lifetime appointment. I’m not suggesting any mean-spirited feelings between them, but maybe an ounce of awkwardness. Plus, their mutual respect is questionable: one biographer has written that Fauré considered Massenet’s more popular style of writing (one famous example here) to be “based on a generally cynical view of art.”

Finally, Wanhal might just be mystified by the contemporary trio of Fei (see above), Oteri (whose interests have included minimalism and microtonality, like here), and Johnson (known for sampling recorded speech and merging classical and popular music — one example here). But give them a few rounds of burgers and shakes, and some time together in the ball pit, and who knows?

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY IN THE NEWS:

Two announcements arrived this morning. In a livestream, the Cleveland Institute of Music named Carlos Kalmar (left) as Director of Orchestral and Conducting Programs and Principal Conductor. The Uruguayan-born maestro recently stepped down from his 18-year tenure as music director of the Oregon Symphony. He has also served as artistic director and principal conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival since 2000. Read more from CIM here.

Another piece of news that arrived was the creation of a new nonprofit arts alliance in Greater Cleveland, Assembly for the Arts. Set to launch in mid-June under the leadership of Jeremy V. Johnson (middle) — a Cleveland native who recently served as Executive Director of New Arts in New Jersey — the organization’s aim is to provide a unified voice, set regional goals, and represent shared priorities for the creative economy in Northeast Ohio. Read the press release here for details.

On a more somber note, last week brought news of the passing of Cleveland-based visual artist Michelangelo Lovelace (right), who died on April 26 at age 60 at his home in Cudell after battling pancreatic cancer.

It’s worth checking out his Q&A and video interview from MOCA Cleveland to get a sense of his personality, as well as obituaries from Cleveland.com and The New York Times to read about his life, struggles, and accomplishments — including a 2015 Mid-Career Prize from the Cleveland Arts Prize, and a 2018 showing of his work at the Fort Gansevoort gallery in Manhattan. Plus, both of those articles show a selection of his works, from his visually and emotionally complex depictions of low-income Black neighborhoods in Cleveland, to his intimate drawings of elderly patients he cared for as a nursing aide.

TODAY ON THE WEB:

CIM will share student performances of the Percussion Ensemble and three woodwind ensembles tonight at 7, 8, and 9:00. And at 7:30, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will present a “Composers in Focus” concert that centers around Joan Tower, featuring performances by violist Paul Neubauer, bassoonist Peter Kolkay, and the Calidore Quartet. Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

English tenor Richard Lewis was born on this date in 1914 in Manchester, followed exactly two years later by the birth of American composer Milton Babbitt in Philadelphia.

Though Lewis was particularly noted for his interpretations of the music of Handel — see Daniel Hathaway’s Diary entry last year — he also helped contemporary opera enter into the world through several premieres, including William Walton’s Troilus and Cressida, in which he sang the role of Troilus. Listen to a recording of Scenes from Troilus and Cressida here, where Lewis (who enters at the 4:30 mark) is joined by another very famous voice: that of soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Babbitt may have been a contemporary of Walton, but their styles of composition are quite contrasting — though perhaps both composers are painted with too broad a brush. By the middle of Walton’s career, his music was considered conservative and Romantic (though he would come into fashion again late in his life), while Babbitt is best known for writing with intense, complex logic and structure.

On the other hand, as Allan Kozinn wrote in The New York Times following Babbitt’s passing in 2011, listeners “who simply sat back and listened, rather than trying to understand his harmonies and structural processes…often discovered works of great expressive variety.”

One subtle but powerful work of Babbitt’s is the 1976 Solo Requiem for soprano and two pianists. As the critic John Rockwell wrote in a review of its premiere, its texts “express the incomprehensibility and protestations of the living faced with the bereavement of death,” and its music “is appropriately fragmented and chill.” Listen to a recording by the musicians who gave that premiere — soprano Bethany Beardslee and pianists Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs — divided into parts one, two, and three.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

Trinity Cathedral’s Virtual Brownbag Concert today at noon is a “Brahms-Fest,” and also an organ-fest. Working from the Flentrop and Aeolian-Skinner instruments, Todd Wilson and Nicole Keller will present that composer’s eleven Chorale Preludes, Op. 122, via stream.

Oberlin Conservatory faculty violinist Francesca dePasquale will be featured at 6:00 in a concert from the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The program begins with Mozart’s K. 360 Six Variations for violin and piano, then adds electronics to that combination with On the Blue Shore of Silence by Gity Razaz, Gloria Justen, and Sayo Kosugi. That piece, receiving its Philadelphia premiere, also includes visual art by Johanna Andruchovici.

Later this evening, at 7:30 pm, flutist Brandon Patrick George — a member of the Imani Winds and an Oberlin graduate — joins pianist Bryan Wagorn in a recital presented by 92nd St Y. The program includes music by Schubert, Carl Reinecke, Lili Boulanger, William Grant Still, and Valerie Coleman (who is also George’s predecessor in the flute seat of the Imani).

Also at 7:30, Piano Cleveland ramps up to this summer’s Cleveland International Piano Competition with a listening guide called Prelude to Piano, intended to “help enthusiasts of all levels not only understand classical music better, but learn what to listen for during the CIPC competition this summer.”

Finally, to help mark the festivities on the calendar today, the Celebrity Series of Boston presents the “Verónica Robles Cinco de Mayo Celebration” at 7:30 pm. Robles and her all-female mariachi band celebrate Mexico’s national holiday commemorating the country’s victory over the French at Puebla in 1862.

Watch that last one here, and find all the other links in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On May 5 of last year, we celebrated the anniversary of the opening of Carnegie Hall, which held a gala concert featuring a pretty decent musician as guest conductor: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

This time around the sun, we’ll focus on a couple of lesser-known but interesting figures born on this date in history.

First, when’s the last time you heard music for guitar ensemble? How about a 36-piece guitar ensemble? (That’s assuming I correctly counted all the little heads in a YouTube video to be unveiled in just a moment.) Well, that genre — as well as guitar solos, duos, and concertos — has inspired a great deal of productivity from Tokyo-born composer Reiko Arima, who turns 88 today.

And here’s the video I so tantalizingly hinted at earlier: a performance of Arima’s Rainy Blue by Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University Guitar Ensemble. Not only was the work written for them, but it served as a required piece for the Japan Guitar Association’s National Guitar Ensemble Competition in 2012.

If you haven’t heard much music before from a guitar ensemble of this size — I certainly haven’t — when the melody comes in, you’ll enjoy the surprise of how intense the timbre can be from a collective of what is generally a fairly gentle solo instrument.

Slightly more well-known on these shores but still underrecognized is composer and Madison, Wisconsin native Bunita Marcus, who turns 69 today. She was widely performed a few decades ago, writing commissions for such groups as the Bang On A Can All-Stars and the Kronos Quartet, and receiving awards from the National Endowment of the Arts and other organizations. She’s also famous for her close collaboration with Morton Feldman.

In an extensive interview with Frank J. Oteri for NewMusicBox, she opens up about being derailed from her career around 1989 or 1990, when she began to have flashbacks to sexual abuse, only to then struggle with an abusive psychiatrist when she sought treatment.

“In the course of trying to recover memories from my childhood, this man also tried to take over my life,” she told Oteri. “…And he refused to let me compose…I could not write music for 15 years. And I was at my prime. I was 40 years old.”

What saved her, she said, was John Cage. When she went to him and explained the flashbacks and her difficulty concentrating, he suggested writing short pieces:

He said, “What’s that they give horses to get them to do tricks?” I said, “Sugar cubes.” He said, “Yeah, give the composer in you some sugar cubes.” So I totally took this literally. I went out, bought a box of sugar cubes, and put them on a nice little plate on the piano. And I said, “O.K., simple: Cage. C-A-G-E. These are the only notes I’m going to use in this piece, and it’s all going to be quarter notes. It can’t be simpler.”

Naturally, the piece is full of counterpoint, something she loves. And though it took her years to finish — in part due to her emotions around Cage’s passing shortly after that meeting — one day during the Jewish High Holidays, she decided to finish it.

I started writing counterpoint that started breaking the rules…leaping to and from dissonance, leaping to perfect intervals, leaping to imperfect intervals, crossing voices, I mean everything you could do wrong, I was doing. It just got worse and worse and worse, until the piece ended. But for some reason, it ends beautifully. I guess I knew the rules well enough; I knew which ones to break. That’s all I can say.

Listen to the three-minute Sugar Cubes here in a performance by Marc Tritschler.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

Les Délices finishes off the spring series for SalonEra tonight at 7:30 pm with “La Folia.” That’s something to celebrate, so fittingly, this will be a “party episode” featuring soprano soprano Sherezade Panthaki, countertenor Reginald Mobley, and lutenist Arash Noori, as well as a host of guests and contributing artists in music by Monteverdi, Corelli, Purcell, Marais, Boismortier, and others. Click here at start time. It’s free but a $10 donation is suggested.

ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH:

The history around this month’s celebrations is complicated, thanks in part to Congress.

In the late 1970s, several joint resolutions were introduced calling for an official weeklong recognition of the contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans to American society. What was agreed upon was that two historic dates would anchor the celebration in the fifth month of the year: May 7, 1843 brought the arrival of the first known Japanese immigrant to America, and May 10, 1869 marked the completion of North America’s first transcontinental railroad, built largely by Chinese immigrants.

Here’s where things get complicated: a few of those resolutions had the Heritage Week celebration lasting for ten days. One simply called for it to happen in early May. Another directed President Jimmy Carter to proclaim the week beginning on May 4, 1979 as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week.

The last one passed, and beginning that year and continuing for the next decade, Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush (H.W.) continued the tradition. It wasn’t until 1990 that the observance was extended throughout the full month of May, thanks to a proclamation by Bush. Two years later, it was made permanent: going forward, May would be Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.

What still shifts is the name. That’s because of something quite remarkable and, in a way, challenging inherent to this celebration: the vast diversity of cultures and histories represented by the term Asian American, let alone Pacific American. In 2009, President Obama named May as Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. And just a few days ago, President Biden proclaimed this month as Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month.

Still, many have stuck with the original name from the ‘90s, including the official government website. There you can find virtual exhibits — one honors veterans’ history, while another reflects on a Japanese-American internment camp through the lens of Ansel Adams’ photography — as well as classroom materials, and resources relevant to the fight against the rising tide of anti-Asian hate and violence.

Local events include a virtual edition of the Cleveland Asian Festival, which will go live on Saturday, May 22 at 10:30 am on YouTube, highlighting a diversity of foods, performances, and other elements of culture and tradition.

And Case Western Reserve University will celebrate Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi, and Asian American heritage with a series of events in the cultural realm (film, literature, poetry), as well as discussions on issues related to community, human rights, and bystander intervention in harassment.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

Turn the light on in both sides of your brain with an intriguing mix of concerts and discussions happening from noon to night. Topics and focuses include Shakespeare’s lesser-known collaborative side (Kronberg Academy), the possibilities of two harps in the hands of two principal players (Salzedo Duo / Trinity Cathedral), peace in the Middle East through music (West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Carnegie Hall), the array of ensembles that make up a school of music (University of Akron), and finally, the dual concept of home as both a source of comfort and the “call home” of death (multi-instrumentalists Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi / Carnegie Hall). See our Concert Listings for details.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

In honor of Iowa-born, Grammy-winning, University of Michigan faculty composer Michael Daugherty’s 67th birthday, let’s look back on some memorable performances of his music in the area. We can begin in December of 2015, when Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra gave the Cleveland premiere — as well as the first performance by a youth orchestra — of all five movements of the Superman-inspired Metropolis Symphony.

Mike Telin gave a sense of the work’s stylistic variety, as well as its excellent performance, in a review:

Throughout the 40-minute piece, Daugherty brilliantly interweaves scatterings of jazz, rock, funk, and avant-garde with the symphonic.…Grossman led the young musicians in a first-rate performance of the demanding work.

(As a side note, musical variety and pop-culture influence were present in the composer’s life from the beginning: his dad was a jazz and country-music drummer, his mom was an amateur singer, and his grandma played piano for silent films.)

In the review, Telin walks us through the landscape of “Lex,” “Krypton,” “MXYZPTLK,” “Oh Lois!” and “Red Cape Tango” before noting the audience’s clear appreciation, including that of the composer himself, who was present. Too bad we can’t go back in time to revisit that performance, but here’s a worthy substitute on YouTube from the Toledo Symphony under the direction of Alain Trudel.

Grossman, the founder of CYO and its music director for a quarter century up until her departure last year, has a clear affinity for Daugherty’s music. As she told Telin in a 2018 conversation,

I love Michael’s work — it’s Americana, understandable, and well-written for orchestra. I think that whether an audience member has heard his music before or not, they will walk out feeling as if they understood what he was saying. I think that it brings happy memories to people.

On that occasion, she and the orchestra were gearing up to present Daugherty’s Route 66, which she said conjures up the idea of driving down the highway, wind in your hair. There aren’t any local recordings, but you can’t go wrong with Marin Alsop, who leads the Bournemouth Symphony in that musical road trip here.

Daugherty’s list of compositions is long and full of highlights, but one that can’t be overlooked is Dead Elvis for bassoon and ensemble. Here’s a Rice University student performance (parts one and two) from 2010 by TK DeWitt (who three years later joined the Kansas City Symphony). The music doesn’t start until a minute in, but don’t miss his entrance — in costume, of course — or the delivery of his bassoon from offstage.

Another musical luminary to celebrate today is János Starker, the famed Hungarian-American cellist, who died on this date in 2013. For 57 of his 88 years on earth, he taught at Indiana University, which brings up one Ohio connection: it’s there that he mentored now-Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower (during which time Kosower got his first taste of the music of Ginastera, as he told Daniel Hathaway in 2016).

Enjoy Starker’s 1988 recital performance (location not specified) of two unaccompanied cello suites — one by Bach, one by Gaspar Cassadó — plus Kodály’s solo sonata. Then listen to his 1980 appearance at Blossom Music Festival, where he joined Eduardo Mata and The Cleveland Orchestra in Bloch’s Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

The Bop Stop presents a showcase of the Cleveland State University jazz program at 6:30 tonight. Venturing further afield, at 3:00 Carnegie Hall shares a rare performance by Frederic Rzewski of his own most famous work, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! And at 8, the Philadelphia Orchestra presents organist Paul Jacobs in a recital of his own arrangements of works by Handel and Bach. Details in our Concert Listings.

IN THE NEWS:

Mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig passed away on Saturday at age 93 at home in Klosterneuburg, Austria. In an obituary in The New York Times, Daniel J. Wakin pays tribute to “one of the premier mezzo-sopranos of the second half of the 20th century,” an equal master of opera and art song.

Joshua Barone investigates the classical music world’s embrace of podcasting during the pandemic. That’s something Northeast Ohio audiences have also surely noticed, thanks to new and recent podcasts from The Cleveland Orchestra (On A Personal Note), Akron Symphony (Unorchestrated), Canton Symphony (Orchestrating Change), and Les Délices (LD Music Meditations, which just released a new episode today). The Cleveland Orchestra gets a shout-out in the article, but Barone focuses his attention on the Miller Theater’s Mission: Commission, Garrett McQueen’s and Scott Blankenship’s Trilloquy, and Yo-Yo Ma’s Beginner’s Mind.

Also in The Times, Bryan Pietsch explores the origins of the song Strange Fruit, the controversy it faced early on in its history, and its enduring relevance in the fight against racism — it remains “a mirror on a barbaric present.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Let’s start with American composer, pianist, and arranger Margaret Bonds, who died on this date in 1972 in Los Angeles. We featured her in our Diary on March 3, the 108th anniversary of her birth, delving into a historic performance she gave with the Chicago Symphony, and her close musical relationships with Florence Price and Langston Hughes.

She’s also well-known for her arrangements of spirituals, so it’s no surprise that that area of her music-making was featured in the latest episode of the Akron Symphony’s podcast series “Deep River: The Legacy of the Spirituals” (under the umbrella of Unorchestrated). Scroll over to the 18:41 mark to listen to Bonds’ arrangement and orchestration of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand, as heard in a performance featuring sopranos Brenda Justice and Angeleina Valentine in a Gospel Meets Symphony program from 2014.

And in closing, three birthday anniversaries to celebrate: violinist and 14-year Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Joseph Fuchs (born in New York City in 1899, or maybe 1900), composer Conrad Susa (born in 1935 in Springdale, Pennsylvania), and musician and songwriter Juan Chabaya Lampe a.k.a. Padú del Caribe (born in Oranjestad, Aruba in 1920).

Listening suggestions: hear Fuchs solo in the first movement of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G with the London Symphony. And because Susa was known primarily for his five operas, check out his 1994 The Dangerous Liaisons in a filmed performance by San Francisco Opera.

Finally, considering that Lampe co-wrote what became the national anthem of his home country, a waltz by the name of Aruba Dushi Tera, head over to that island’s tourism website to listen and follow along with the words (in Papiamento, with English translation), which give off a mix of both the humble and the proud (“though small and simple you may be, you are indeed esteemed”).