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Oberlin Artist Recital Series welcomes genre-mixing Russian Renaissance

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by Jarrett Hoffman

More and more, today’s musicians are shrugging off divisions of genre. Another trend in programming? Folk instruments from places far and wide are being welcomed into the world of mainstream classical music. Give those unfamiliar instruments a listen and be rewarded.

A perfect example of all that is the 2017 M-Prize-winning ensemble Russian Renaissance, which visits Finney Chapel as part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series on Friday, February 28 at 7:30 pm. The quartet of Ivan Kuznetsov (balalaika), Anastasia Zakharova (domra and domra alto), Alexander Tarasov (button accordion), and Ivan Vinogradov (balalaika contrabasso), aims to “marry tradition and modernity, creating a fusion of styles and eras.”

That’s echoed in Friday’s program, which ranges from the Baroque and Romantic eras to folk, jazz, and tango, including music by J.S. Bach, Tchaikovsky, Richard Galliano, Piazzolla, Egberto Gismonti, Zequinha de Abreu, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Béla Fleck, Django Reinhardt, and the members of Russian Renaissance themselves. A full program and ticket information are available online. [Read more…]

fp Creative: Melanie Emig’s surround-sound gallery of music

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Imagine the thrill of sampling ice cream without being a burden on the person scooping it, and without the sighs of people in line behind you. Now switch out the flavors for different types of music performed by area vocalists, and you have a good idea of the next concert from fp Creative.

“Samples” is in fact the name of the show at Snap House Studios on Thursday, February 20. Designed by guest producer Melanie Emig, the program ranges from Medieval music to hip hop, R&B, folk, global music, blues, soul, contemporary classical, and guided listening — each short performance coming from a different spot around the edges of the room, as the audience sits in the center and takes it all in.

The evening’s vocalists include Elena Mullins, Case Bargé, Amanda Powell, Liz Bullock, Rayna, Seyu, Naomi Columna, and Emig herself. Also featured is theorbist Jeremy Bass. Doors open at 7:00 pm, music begins at 7:45, and tickets between $0-15 are available onsite.

[Read more…]

Coming to BW: musical theater songs of Daniel Ruffing, inspired by the Internet

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Internet memes as musical inspiration? Composer Daniel Ruffing has written musical theater songs based on viral videos like Kylie Jenner’s singsong greeting to her young daughter (“Rise and Shine”), a driver’s surprising reaction to a construction sign (“Road Work Ahead”), and one woman’s first impression of a new drink (“Kombucha Girl”).

Ruffing has also written songs inspired by the TV show The Good Place, and he’s working on a musical about YouTube celebrity Jenna Marbles — whose name graces an upcoming show of Ruffing’s music. “He’s Lost His Marbles” takes place on Sunday, February 23 at 7:00 pm at Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium, presented by the University’s Arts Management Association. Tickets are available online.

Among the selections on that program will be one of Ruffing’s biggest hits: the hilarious, wacky, and adult-language-heavy I Want To Be Tall. One verse goes like this: 

[Read more…]

Conductor Philippe Herreweghe to debut with The Cleveland Orchestra

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Philippe Herreweghe’s musical career began with a focus on Renaissance music and Bach. Later he explored the French Baroque. Still musically curious, he began to examine the Classical and Romantic eras through the lens of period instruments.

More recently, Herreweghe has been brought in regularly by modern orchestras, like the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, to conduct Romantic music in a “new” way — one informed by his experience in early music and historical performance.

One of the latest such invitations has come from The Cleveland Orchestra, with whom the Belgian conductor will make his debut this week. His program at Severance Hall includes Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and two works by Beethoven: the Overture to Egmont and the Violin Concerto, featuring Isabelle Faust as soloist.

[Read more…]

Gospel Meets Symphony in Akron: talking to new choirmaster Jonathon Turner

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you heard about someone sneaking into a rehearsal, you might be forgiven for asking, “Don’t you mean out?” But twelve years ago, a program called Gospel Meets Symphony came across the radar of 16-year-old Jonathon Turner, and he was curious. He asked his uncle to drive him and a friend, Dinareo Hill, to a church on the west side of Akron.

“We kind of snuck in the back, sat in the last row of the sanctuary, and just listened,” Turner, 28, said during a recent phone call. “It was like, oh my God. We had never heard a sound like that, with both gospel music and classical music.”

[Read more…]

Urban Troubadour: Akros Percussion and the peculiar mind of Stockhausen

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Akros Percussion Collective will bring what must be one of the most bizarre works in classical music to Weathervane Playhouse in Akron on Sunday, February 9.

The piece is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 1975 sextet Musik im Bauch (“Music in the Belly”), which requires the performers to move about the stage like automatons, strike a seven-foot doll — his name is Miron, and he has a bird’s head and a human body — and eventually open up the doll’s belly with giant scissors. No guts inside: instead, music boxes, whose melodies have been informing the complex music all along.

It’s part of a presentation by Urban Troubadour, an organization that fittingly aims to put on non-traditional concert experiences.

[Read more…]

BlueWater: chatting with violin soloists Ken Johnston and Emily Cornelius

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Two founding members of BlueWater Chamber Orchestra will partner as soloists this weekend, when conductor Daniel Meyer and the ensemble perform “A Classical Feast” at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday, February 1 at 7:30 pm.

Concertmaster Ken Johnston and principal second violin Emily Cornelius will play the Op. 13 Symphonie Concertante in G by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who is remembered as the first known classical composer of African origin. One of his contemporaries was Mozart, whose Symphony No. 40 in g closes Saturday’s program. And in between those two works, soprano Laura Pedersen will be featured in Beethoven’s concert aria Ah, Perfido! Tickets are available online.

Johnston and Cornelius have known each other for at least ten years — BlueWater celebrates its own decade in 2020 — but this will be their first time appearing together as soloists. “At this point, she and I are old friends,” Johnston said by telephone last week. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for her musicianship. I think we share the same sense of humor in a lot of ways, and that comes across.”

[Read more…]

CMA: “Journey to the Heart of the Iraqi Maqam”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Amir ElSaffar has had the type of musical career that you can imagine laid out as a board game: a winding path with important points along the way where he’s taken on new instruments, absorbed new genres, and crossed the globe to research musical practices more deeply.

He began as a classical trumpeter growing up in Chicago, the son of an Iraqi immigrant father and an American mother. And he has since found his way to jazz, Arabic music, composition, and Iraqi maqam, a centuries-old tradition of highly structured, semi-improvised compositions sung to Classical Arabic and colloquial Iraqi poetry.

The foremost purveyor of that tradition is Hamid Al-Saadi, who will join ElSaffar and the group Safaafir for “Journey to the Heart of the Iraqi Maqam” in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Wednesday, January 29 at 7:30 pm as part of the Museum’s Performing Arts Series. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

fp Creative: a conversation with trumpeter Theresa May

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Brass chamber music and world premieres make up the latest program from fp Creative. “Classic, New, Borrowed & Blue” takes place at Snap House Studios on Thursday, January 23 beginning at 7:45 pm (doors open at 7). Admission is $0-$15 upon entrance.

The mind behind the curation of the concert is trumpeter Theresa May, a native of Shaker Heights who performs with such groups as Mourning [A] BLKstar, Gabriel’s Horns, the Cleveland Brassworks, and the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra.

The program she’s produced for fp Creative includes new works by Ahmed Alabaca and Buck McDaniel, as well as music by Regina Harris Baiocchi and Richard Peaslee.

[Read more…]

Akron Symphony: Christopher Wilkins talks Mahler 5

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Programming a concert is like working out a puzzle. And if one of the pieces is Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, a better comparison might be a Rubik’s Cube.

“It’s challenging to program the Fifth Symphony because it’s 70 minutes, so that could be a full evening,” Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins said during a phone call. “But I think most conductors are reluctant to just open the doors, let people get settled in their seats, and boom — have 70 minutes of music. It’s of course tough for latecomers. And the first and second movements are meant to be played without pause, so you don’t even get to relax until you’re a good twenty-plus minutes into the piece.”

How about starting with a short piece? That’s worse. Either the audience gets an oddly early intermission, or they have to sit still for maybe an hour and a half.

For the Akron Symphony’s concert this Saturday, January 18 at 8:00 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Wilkins has opted to precede Mahler’s Fifth with a pair of short pieces: Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan and Isolde. In a way, all three works are about love — but more on that later.

[Read more…]

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