by Jarrett Hoffman
Before heading out of town on their summer tour, on June 7 Vinay Parameswaran and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra gave locals at Severance Hall a send-off performance that included all the music they would carry with them to four European cities.
by Jarrett Hoffman
A rare sensitivity emanated from the stage of CIM’s Mixon Hall on June 8. The source was Jason Vieaux, playing a carefully crafted program of music mostly from the 1700s during the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival.
by Jarrett Hoffman
Cellist Mark Kosower and pianist Jee-Won Oh will find themselves in a familiar place on Wednesday, July 3 at 7:30 pm: in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State University, where they’ll once again open the faculty concert series at this year’s Kent Blossom Music Festival. There’s a reason for that — whether at Kent or elsewhere, they always come up with a program that’s worth talking about.
And that’s exactly what Kosower and I did for about twenty minutes over the phone earlier this week. We discussed his and Oh’s choices of works by Beethoven, Fauré, Bach, Chausson, and Schubert, with conversational side trips both poignant and silly.
Jarrett Hoffman: I’m excited to talk to you about this program.
Mark Kosower: There are a number of themes running through it. There’s the French contingent and impressionism, with Chausson being a bridge composer between Romanticism and impressionism. Then you have the Germanic theme with Bach, Schubert, and of course Beethoven, who had a picture of Bach on his wall in at least 1 of his 39 Viennese apartments. He was always being evicted.
by Jarrett Hoffman
When it comes to classical music, there’s not much better party material than a rondo. It’s easy to follow, the refrain lodges itself into your memory like any great pop-song chorus, and most importantly, the music tends to be fast and fun.
The folks over at ENCORE Chamber Music decided that rondos would be just the thing to keep the festivities going with this season’s focus on Bohemian music and the Romani people. “There is such a danceable spirit to our theme, ‘La Bohème,’ and we felt that rondo movements celebrated that in a really lovely way,” artistic director Jinjoo Cho said during a recent interview.
A concert titled “Round Round Rondo” — the refrains, of course, come round and round — takes place this Friday, June 28 at 7:00 pm in the Tudor House at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills. The program includes two pieces that conclude with that musical form — Mozart’s Viola Quintet in g and Brahms’ Piano Quartet in g — as well as Kodály’s Serenade, Op. 12.
by Jarrett Hoffman
June 8 was the busiest day for the Re:Sound Festival, with three concerts around the city. I heard the first two, beginning in the afternoon at Praxis Fiber Workshop, where the duo Dykes & Young set a high bar for the acts that would follow over the course of the day. Bassist Laura Dykes and violinist Jeffrey Young performed three original works that had their genesis in joint improvisation, but which have solidified over the years into fixed structures. In particular, the second of the three was riveting. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
One of the enduring images from last Sunday, June 9 at the Gilmour Academy’s Tudor House is of hugs being exchanged in the hallway. The Jupiter String Quartet and the young artists of the Lafontaine Quartet had just blown us away with Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E-flat, concluding the second concert in this season of ENCORE Chamber Music, and the mix of good feelings in the air was something special.
by Jarrett Hoffman
This weekend a collection of carefully placed screws, bolts, and pieces of wood, cloth, and rubber will make the Steinway in CIM’s Mixon Hall sound less like a piano and more like an ensemble of percussion instruments.
For that we can thank two men: John Cage for inventing the prepared piano (in which objects placed among the strings alter the sound of the instrument), and Roman Rabinovich for playing Cage’s The Perilous Night on Saturday, June 22 during a 7:30 pm concert titled “Sei Solo (You Are Alone),” the sixth of the season for ChamberFest Cleveland.
The sounds that emerge from the instrument will surprise even the man looking down at the keys. “When you get to the prepared piano, it kind of blows your mind because nothing comes out the way you expect,” Rabinovich, winner of the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, said during a recent interview. “It’s a beautiful effect and a very interesting way to approach the instrument.”
by Jarrett Hoffman
Even for Alexi Kenney — who has loved Bach since age six and considers the Chaconne from the Second Violin Partita to be one of the greatest pieces of all time — digesting the work is not easy.
That’s partly because it’s often performed as a standalone. “It’s so hard for me to get into the right headspace to hear something that intricate, monumental, and emotionally deep,” the violinist said during a recent phone call on a hot day in New York City.
That thought set the 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient on a quest to put the work in context, and to help audiences feel receptive to what it has to offer. What he devised might surprise you: a solo program that interweaves movements from Bach’s Sonatas No. 1 in g and No. 3 in C with short pieces from the 20th and 21st centuries, some involving electronics, and all leading up to what else but the famous Chaconne. Kenney will present that program, titled “Bach to the Future,” on Tuesday, June 18 at 9:00 pm at The Wine Spot in Cleveland Heights as part of ChamberFest Cleveland.
by Jarrett Hoffman
It’s one thing to push yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s quite another to deliberately put yourself in risky situations over and over again — part of the artistic strategy of electroacoustic composer and improviser Joo Won Park. “I like to solve a puzzle in front of the audience,” he said during a telephone conversation from Detroit.
That might include choosing an electronic instrument or gadget that he doesn’t totally understand, and bringing that onstage without knowing what will happen. “That’s the exciting moment,” he said. Likewise performing with another improviser. “I go onto the stage expecting that my partner will do something unexpected. That’s the approach that I love.”
Park and fellow composer/improviser Molly Jones will bring their Detroit-based duo ParkJones to the Bop Stop on Sunday, June 9 during a 4:00 pm concert as part of the Re:Sound Festival. The program opens with the new music ensemble No Exit presenting works by Yoon-Ji Lee and premieres by area high school students Emma Eddy and Mya Vandegrift as part of the CoLab project. Following ParkJones, pianist Ju-Ping Song will perform works by Amy Beth Kirsten and Nicole Lizée based on trauma and fallibility. Tickets are available here.
by Jarrett Hoffman
Two main ideas make up the improvisational language of drummer Leo Suarez on his solo album Marbles On Tile. Slowly-decaying or “soft” sounds form his base, and quickly-decaying or “hard” sounds are layered overtop.
But describing what that actually sounds like is more difficult. During a telephone conversation last week, Suarez brought up a helpful comparison: the Bauhaus paintings of Kandinsky. Clouds of color make up the background, “but on top there’s this highly complex construction of very defined shapes and lines,” Suarez said. “Even though that wasn’t exactly my inspiration, I was reading about his work at about the same time, and it all kind of made sense to me.”
Suarez will bring that musical language to CODA on Saturday, June 8 during a 9:00 pm concert as part of the Re:Sound Festival. Joining Suarez on the double-bill will be a fellow Philadelphian: madam data (Ada Adhiyatma), whose main tools of music-making are alto clarinet, handmade computer programs, field recordings, and old samplers. madam data’s set includes their Biological Time 1, described as “a structured improvisation that engages with the body’s sense of ‘waiting’ by framing durations of silence.”