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DIARY: Wednesday, November 1, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: organist and Bach specialist James Kibbie at Trinity, “grande dame of classic Cuban song” Omara Portuondo at CMA, a Baroque opera pastiche from CWRU Baroque ensembles, and a double concerto for two flutes receiving its premiere at Oberlin

•Announcements and job listings: live album from Night Ranger and CYO debuts at No. 1 among classical crossovers on Billboard, Cleveland Orchestra seeks nominations for MLK Service in the Arts Awards, OAC executive director Donna S. Collins adds national position, and Oberlin invites invitations for piano faculty position

•Almanac: Kent Kennan, Maria Callas, Roger Quilter, and Hugo Distler

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today’s noontime Trinity Brownbag Concert features University of Michigan faculty organist James Kibbie (above, left) performing on both of Trinity’s pipe organs. His program, “Bach and More,” includes works by that composer — a specialty of Kibbie’s — as well as Fela Sowande, Jehan Alain, and John Weaver. A freewill offering will be taken up. Find more details here, and stream it here.

At 7:30, the CMA Performing Arts Series presents Omara Portuondo (above, right), “grande dame of classic Cuban song.” A nonagenarian in her seventh decade of performing, currently traveling as part of her Farewell World Tour Vida 2023, Portuondo will be joined at CMA by Jose Portillo (piano), Ramses Rodriguez (drums), Lino Piquero (bass), and Degnis Bofill (percussion). Tickets are available here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 30, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Interesting reads and announcements: a New York Times review of Jeannette Sorrell (pictured) leading Apollo’s Singers and the New York Philharmonic, the Knight Foundation’s Art + Tech Expansion Fund for Akron-based artists, and CWRU’s Think[box] innovation center

•Almanac: Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Peter Warlock, Franz Bruggen, and Emmerich Kálmán

INTERESTING READS & ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Following up on their Messiah collaboration in 2021, Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Singers reunited with the New York Philharmonic last week at David Geffen Hall, this time for Handel’s Israel in Egypt.

In a review for The New York Times, Oussama Zahr praises the performances of Sorrell, the chorus, and the four soloists — soprano Amanda Forsythe, countertenor Cody Bowers, tenor Jacob Perry, and baritone Edward Vogel — while also pointing out the difficult and unexpected context of the performance, coming amid the Israeli-Hamas war:

Written almost entirely for choral forces, with few showpieces for the soloists, [the oratorio] narrates the Jewish exodus that Moses led from Egypt. To modern ears, the text painting of the 10 plagues is so lightweight that it verges on silliness: The orchestra leaps to depict frogs, buzzes for flies and thumps for hailstones.

Still, the melancholy-saturated lamentation that opens the piece, and the triumphant choruses that close it, adds substance. And on Wednesday, the conductor and Baroque specialist Jeannette Sorrell led a sonorous performance, drawing captivating singing from the choristers of Apollo’s Fire and intermittently inspiring the Philharmonic’s players to embrace fleeter, Handelian style on their modern instruments.

Read the review here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 25, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: Cleveland Chamber Symphony highlights emerging composers, CMA presents Le Poème Harmonique in music that would have been heard by a young Louis XIV, and pianist Gerardo Teissonnière is featured in a CIM faculty recital

•Announcements: a musicological article by BW graduate Chase Castle, young people’s concerts from the Canton Symphony, and a survey from the Ohio Arts Council

•Interesting reads: a new documentary about Fanny Mendelssohn and how her talents were kept quiet

•Almanac: Strauss Jr.’s Blue Danube, Bizet’s Carmen, and the many sides of Midori

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:00 at Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium, Steven Smith leads the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in a free concert of music by seven of the area’s young and emerging composers: Benjamin Brody (University of Akron), Julia Grady (Baldwin Wallace), Adam Har-zvi (Bowling Green), Gabriel Stossel (CIM), Alexandra Vaduva (Cleveland State), Haider Riaz (Kent State), and Jake Berran (Oberlin). You can also watch a free livestream here.

At 7:30 at Gartner Auditorium, the CMA Performing Arts Series presents Le Poème Harmonique (pictured) in “Music for a Young King,” which explores music that would have been heard in the court of young Louis XIV, including traditional French chansons, works by Moulinié, de Lalande, and Charpentier, and excerpts from the first operas performed in France by Lully and Cavalli. Tickets are available online.

Also at 7:30, at Mixon Hall, a CIM Faculty Recital will feature pianist Gerardo Teissonnière in Schubert’s Four Impromptus and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in c. It’s free but reservations are required.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 23, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Announcements: Ohio Arts Council announces approval of $600K in grants

•Job listings & opportunities: bookkeeper at Firelands Symphony, after-school coordinator for Piano Cleveland, Saxophone & Jazz Day at Dana School of Music, U of A All-Star Band and Honor Band, and OMEA Solo Prep Day

•In the news: two Israeli Philharmonic musicians on the outbreak of war

•Almanac: Alexander Andreyevich Archangelsky & Ned Rorem

[Read more…]

Returning to Cleveland, pianist Mahani Teave talks about building her island’s first music school and fighting the climate crisis

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you had to pick one thing that symbolizes Mahani Teave — pianist, cultural ambassador, and environmental activist — an easy choice would be the Rapa Nui School of Music and the Arts, the first music school on that remote island 2,000 miles off the coast of mainland Chile, with a population of 8,000.

Co-founded by Teave, the school brings together the studies of classical music and of the traditional music of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. It’s also a symbol of conservationism, built out of recycled tires, bottles, and cans, and made self-sustainable thanks to rainwater collectors and solar panels.

It says a lot that when Teave received the attention of just about the entire classical music world in 2021 with her debut album, Rapa Nui Odyssey, she found herself not so much overwhelmed by the attention, or basking in the glow of fame, but rather grateful for the opportunity to spread the word about her school and help keep it going — not an easy endeavor.

Now she is in the midst of a North American tour in which she is largely playing selections from that album — and the tour is bringing her back to Northeast Ohio, where she studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 18, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: a pair of free concerts from pianist Nathan Carterette and the Choir of Notre-Dame Cathedral

•Announcements: CIM, BW & Cleveland Opera Theater recognized for Digital Excellence in Opera, and two upcoming events at BW — “Queer Arts in Northeast Ohio” and a conversation with Eric Whitacre

•Interesting reads: findings from studies on gender imbalance at opera companies and arts & economic prosperity

•Almanac: Wynton Marsalis, Howard Shore, Charles Gounod, and Gussie Lord Davis — the first Black songwriter to reach Tin Pan Alley fame

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, pianist Nathan Carterette will play music by Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff in a Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert.

And at 7:30, the Choir of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, France (pictured), directed by Henri Chalet and featuring organist Yves Castagnet, will play works by Jehan Alain, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, Louis Vierne, César Franck, Francis Poulenc, and Castagnet himself at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. The performance is part of the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series.

A freewill offering will be taken up at both events.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 16, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Stephen Rubin, 81

•Announcements: BW named a top school for music business, Oberlin grad Tyreek McDole named a finalist in the Sarah Vaughan competition

•Almanac: Marin Alsop, Joan Tower, and Fanfares for the Uncommon Women

STEPHEN RUBIN, 81:

Stephen Rubin (above), the longtime publishing executive who released bestsellers such as The Da Vinci Code and Fire and Fury, and who co-founded the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism with his late wife Cynthia, passed away on Friday at the age of 81 after “a brief and sudden illness,” according to his nephew, David Rotter.

Read an obituary by Hillel Italie for the Associated Press here, and read a 2018 profile of him by Sridhar Pappu for The New York Times here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 11, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today’s concerts: Bombino (“the Sultan of Shred”) visits CMA, and the CIM Orchestra plays music by Coleridge-Taylor, Still & Stravinsky

•Other events today: “Drumming with Dylan” and “Listen @ the Library”

•News briefs: Michael Sachs resigns from CIM

•Almanac: choral works by Dett & Bruckner

CONCERTS HAPPENING TODAY:

Bombino (above), who has been described as “the Sultan of Shred” (New York Times) and the “World’s Greatest Guitarist” (Noisey), will visit Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art at 7:30 pm. Read Max Newman’s interview with him here. Tickets are available online. 

And at that same hour, Jake Taniguchi will lead the CIM Orchestra in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Four Novelletten, William Grant Still’s Mother and Child, and Igor Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète (rev. 1947) at Kulas Hall. It’s free, but reservations are required.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 9, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: Les Délices premieres Season 4 of SalonEra with “Celestial Soundtrack”

•R.I.P. Donald Byo

•Virtual events from Assembly for the Arts: Guaranteed Basic Income for artists, and a new economic impact study of the nation’s nonprofit arts and culture organizations

•Announcements: honors for CIM student pianist Soo Ji Lee, and an upcoming instrument drive from Center for Arts-Inspired Learning

•Almanac: two composers with Cleveland connections — Henry Lawrence Freeman and Raymond Wilding-White

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today brings the Season 4 premiere of Les Délices’ SalonEra series. The first episode, “Celestial Soundtrack,” explores mathematics and music through the musical worlds of Galileo Galilei and his father, composer Vincenzo Galilei, as well as the life and music of 18th-century astronomer and composer William Herschel. The episode is curated by violinist Shelby Yamin, with three special guests: astronomer Juan Lora, lutenist Charles Weaver, and cellist Léonie Adams of the Dionysus Ensemble. Watch here.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series
presents Seraph Brass

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Sometimes you find an old scrap of paper with ideas that may or may not have been worth writing down. (“Make friends through multilevel marketing” did not turn out to be a winner.) But if the idea holds real weight, then putting it in ink can have the effect of setting something valuable in motion.

“I found an old journal where I had written down the thought that I wanted to form a touring brass quintet composed of all women musicians,” trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden said during a recent interview. The idea marinated, and eventually, after her solo career had begun, the timing was right. “I felt like I had the tools, and also the time and energy, to really start this group.”

Now, Seraph Brass — with its mission to highlight female brass players and musicians from marginalized groups — is celebrating its tenth-anniversary season, which will take the group to Oberlin Conservatory next week for a three-day residency.

Bowden will be joined by fellow trumpeter Raquel Samayoa, hornist Rachel Velvikis, trombonist Elisabeth Shafer, and tubist Robyn Black for an itinerary that includes master classes, a lunch conversation, and finally a performance at Finney Chapel on Friday, October 13 at 7:30 pm as part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series. Tickets are available here.

[Read more…]

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