by Jarrett Hoffman
During the Civil War, writer Mary Chesnut — the wife of a senator and Confederate officer — kept a diary where she recorded significant moments in the conflict, wrote about the state of Southern society, and revealed secret feminist and abolitionist views.
She worked to revise the diary as a book, but died nineteen years before its eventual publication under the name A Diary from Dixie. Writers and historians continued to study the text as they discovered more of her papers, and the work’s staying power was affirmed when a 1981 annotated version won the Pulitzer Prize for History.
That woman’s perspective on the Civil War will now make its way to the opera stage. On Friday, June 15 at 7:00 pm at Cleveland Public Theatre’s James Levin Theatre, ContempOpera/ Cleveland will present the premiere of Mary Chesnut by Steven Mark Kohn, composition faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Soprano Andrea Anelli will take the title role in this production directed by Marla Berg and featuring Lorenzo Salvagni at the piano. [Read more…]
Whisking the listener away on a diverse journey of sounds, the AHA! Festival will present a piano trio from a fellow local summer series, ChamberFest Cleveland. Pianist Roman Rabinovich, cellist Oliver Herbert, and violinist David Bowlin will come together to play gems of the chamber music repertoire by Brahms, Kodály, and 
A year and a half ago, saxophonist Noa Even and cellist Sophie Benn got together to discuss ways to promote new music in Cleveland. They soon brought drummer Stephen Klunk and Bop Stop manager Gabe Pollack into the conversation, and the idea of starting a new music festival in the city was born. Beginning on June 7 and running through June 10, the inaugural 
Someday, somewhere, a genre will be coined that sums up the sound of the Sultans of String. The Toronto-based group frequently blends Spanish Flamenco, Arabic folk music, Cuban rhythms, and jazz. In the meantime, as bandleader and violinist Chris McKhool told us in a 2013 
Ask about something musically outside the box, and Malina Rauschenfels has probably done it. Yes, she’s played a work for cello with two bows. Yes, she’s performed as a dancing violinist. And yes, of course she’s premiered an upside-down flute duet — her own composition.
It’s a familiar feeling for musicians: to have mastered a difficult piece, then discover someone a quarter their age playing it twice as well. “It’s amazing from year one to now,” Marc Damoulakis said in a recent conversation about the Modern Snare Drum Competition. “Stuff that we used to think was hard, these kids are coming in younger and younger and playing with ease. And I honestly don’t think it would’ve happened without this competition.”
The musicians’ collective Urban Troubadour offers not mere concerts, but 
In a year when arts organizations across the globe have looked back on the life of Leonard Bernstein, it’s easy to lose sight of what his centennial might mean to one of his own children.