by Jarrett Hoffman
Myth & Tradition unfolds like a series of trials that our protagonist, cellist Darrett Adkins, must overcome. Alongside the impressive Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, directed by Timothy Weiss, Adkins conjures a mythical bird in the world premiere recording of Su Lian Tan’s five-movement Legends of Kintamani (2016). Next he navigates the brainy twists and turns of Philip Cashian’s Concerto for Cello and Strings (2012), another work written for Adkins.
by Jarrett Hoffman
“It is truly striking that there are so many people interested and highly proficient in both music and medicine,” conductor and physician Stefan Willich said in a recent conversation. Speaking from his home in Berlin, the artistic director of the World Doctors Orchestra first pointed out the precise structures of the two fields.
“Medicine is based on natural scientific laws and formulas, and music is based on mathematical composition. But then of course you add subjectivity and emotion. The musical interpreter will load a composition with his personality, and as a patient, you wish for a doctor that has empathy for you and makes you truly feel good caring for you. And both fields include quite extreme emotions — in medicine dealing with disease or even death, and in good art covering lots of different emotional states.”
Beginning on Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30 pm at St. Jerome Church in Collinwood, principal guest conductor Stefan Willich will lead CityMusic Cleveland in five free concerts of music by Mozart, Wagner, and Schubert, featuring concertmaster Miho Hashizume, principal violist Jonathan Bagg, and soprano Chabrelle Williams. See our Concert Listings for additional times and locations. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Building on their recent summer programs exploring the Celtic immigrant experience in Appalachia, Apollo’s Fire will celebrate “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” with five area performances running from Saturday, December 2 to Sunday, December 10 (see our Concert Listings for times and locations).
Featuring vocalists Amanda Powell and Ross Hauck, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will also greatly expand their band from the eight-musician summer troupe, adding to the mix the voices of Apollo’s Singers and the children’s choir Apollo’s Musettes, as well as bagpipes, additional fiddles, and dancers. Guitarist-singer Brian Kay will give a pre-concert talk an hour before each performance.
As artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said in a season preview in October, the program will begin with medieval music from Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral and folk carols. “Then we’ll cross the water for ‘Wanderers Under The Sky,’ which combines the flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt with immigrants wandering in Appalachia. The second half of the program takes place entirely in a little wooden church during a Christmas service, with Shape-Note hymns and spirituals.” [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
With Medieval roots and impressive singers age ten to fourteen, the Vienna Boys Choir didn’t begin giving concerts outside Vienna’s Imperial Chapel (Hofmusikkapelle) until 1926, but these days they’re globetrotters. The choir of boys from all over the world spends up to eleven weeks of every school year traveling.
The Choir’s latest tour, a 48-concert canvassing of the U.S., will bring them to E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron next Wednesday, November 29 at 7:30 pm. Led by conductor Manolo Cagnin, they’ll perform holiday tunes, classical selections, and Austrian folk songs for “Christmas in Vienna,” part of Tuesday Musical’s Fuze Series.
“What can I say? Christmas for me is good feelings, peace and quiet,” Cagnin said from the Choir’s stop in Ames, Iowa. “The program starts with ‘Walking in the Air’ from the the 1982 film The Snowman, then we try to ‘walk and fly’ all over and see the Christmases in different parts of the world. Ukraine, France, England, America, Sweden — in every country there’s a different color. The last song is Feliz Navidad, and that’s Christmas in South America.”
by Mike Telin
“This marks a major change in the evolution of his piano concertos,” Marc-André Hamelin said during a telephone conversation from St. Louis. He was referring to Mozart’s Concerto No. 9 (“Jeunehomme”), which he will perform with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Nicholas McGegan on Friday, November 17 at 7:00 pm and Saturday, November 18 at 8:00 pm.
“The concerto is such an incredible departure from what he did before. There’s an explosion of activity from the very beginning, and the way that he inserts a second slow movement in the middle of the rondo — that’s really quite exceptional.”
Hamelin said that he looks forward to working with Nicholas McGegan for the first time. “Nic is amazing, I was with him at the Van Cliburn back in May and June. He conducted all of the Mozart concerti during the competition, and just to see him at work told me a lot about what our rapport will be this weekend. I anticipate nothing but a delightful experience.”
by Jarrett Hoffman
After playing John Corigliano’s ‘The Red Violin’ Concerto last month with CityMusic Cleveland, violinist Tessa Lark returns to the area to make her Oberlin Artist Recital Series debut, replacing violist Lawrence Power.
On Sunday, November 19 at 4:00 pm at Finney Chapel, she’ll join pianist Andrew Armstrong in Igor Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, Manuel Ponce’s Estrellita, Martín Rojas’ En la Orilla del Mundo, Maurice Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G, Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, Sz. 56, and Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata in E-flat. Previously purchased tickets for Lawrence Power will be honored at the door.
During our October conversation, Tessa Lark said that she and Armstrong met and collaborated only a few weeks before the call from Oberlin. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
On Sunday, November 19 at 2:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series presents Awadagin Pratt in a free concert of works by Brahms, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Lera Auerbach, and Franck.
Winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1992 and an Avery Fisher Career Grant two years later, Awadagin Pratt has given recitals at Lincoln Center, performed with the New York Philharmonic, and has taught piano at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati since 2004.
He’s also familiar with both Pennsylvania Avenue and Sesame Street: he played at the White House three times across the Clinton and Obama years and appeared on that PBS favorite in 1998 to share a piano with an eight-foot, two-inch yellow canary. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
On Tuesday, November 21 at 7:30 pm at Cirigliano Studio Theatre, the Lorain County Community College Signature Series presents Transient Canvas (Amy Advocat, bass clarinet, and Matt Sharrock, marimba). Titled “Looking Forward, Looking Back,” the free program is made up of works written for the duo by David Coll, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Clifton Ingram, Beau Kenyon, Emily Koh, and Adam Roberts, their inspirations running the gamut from a Reddit thread on Singlish (colloquial Singaporean English) to the Yellowstone Caldera and Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
“When I put together a program, I look for interesting threads that connect the pieces, but I also look at how the pieces resonate with me,” Daniel Meyer, music director of the Asheville Symphony and Erie Philharmonic, said in a recent conversation. “I’m going to be interpreting them, putting my stamp on them, and standing in front of incredibly trained musicians who will want to know my opinion, so it’s important that I have a personal connection to the works.”
On Saturday, November 11 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra’s “Lush Autumn Musings” brings together guest conductor Daniel Meyer and soprano Laura Pedersen in Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, bookended by Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 2 in B-flat.
by Jarrett Hoffman
Eight core musicians from three continents gather around the music of Billy Drewes in the latest release on the Oberlin Music label, Under One Sun. The album’s wide array of instruments, moods, and vocal styles makes for a fun and exploratory 70 minutes of jazz.