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No Exit: Works by Greg D’Alessio at Trinity Cathedral (Mar. 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program that was partly retrospective and partly world premiere, works by Greg D’Alessio compelled rapt attention at Trinity Cathedral on Thursday, March 13. And the performances by No Exit sparkled.

D’Alessio, who teaches at Cleveland State University, makes frequent use of electronic sounds, either in isolation, or in combination with traditional instruments — echoes of Mario Davidovsky, perhaps, his teacher at Columbia. Film is also a favorite medium, affording flights of imagination both visual and auditory.

The opening work was the video, A Brief Word from the Present Moment (2025). Moving images and a hyperactive soundtrack combined for what the composer called, “a kind of hallucinatory newscast,” commenting with wide-angled perspective on recent and historical events. An AI-manipulated  projection of No Exit Artistic Director Tim Beyer’s talking head narrated, as ancient scenery, medieval paintings, and the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, paraded past. Combined with frantic music, the effect was unnerving, but partly nostalgic, too — like watching 1980s MTV.

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Tuesday Musical: the show must go on (Mar. 4)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This will be one of the stories the Isidore Quartet will tell in their dotage. At about 10 pm, the night before their Tuesday Musical performance in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall on March 4, the quartet’s violist Devin Moore came down with a case of strep throat.

As might only happen in a region brimming with musical talent, Eva Kennedy — violist of the Callisto Quartet and a former classmate of Isidore violinist Phoenix Avalon — happened to be in Columbus and was available. The next morning, Kennedy drove up to Akron to rehearse with Isidore and pianist Jeremy Denk. As they say, the show must go on.

Despite the disappointment of half of the program needing to be changed, the substituted works — four Bach fugues (from The Art of Fugue) and Mozart’s great String Quartet No. 19 in C, “Dissonance,” K.465 — made for a surprisingly agreeable switcharoo. The scheduled Brahms Piano Quintet in f remained in place. (If and when the Isidore returns to Northeast Ohio, I hope they’ll re-program Gabriella Smith’s amazing Carrot Revolution.)

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Apollo’s Fire: “Classical Sparks” at St. Raphael, Bay Village (Feb. 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Three composers whose lives intertwined and whose music inspired one another — Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Joseph Bologne, and Joseph Haydn — were the subject of Apollo’s Fire’s latest series of concerts, “Classical Sparks.” I attended the performance on Friday, February 28 at St. Raphael Catholic Church in Bay Village, for which artistic director Jeannette Sorrell had assembled a full classical orchestra of period instruments.

Mozart was represented with a delightful overture from his three-act opera La Finta semplice (“The Fake Innocent”), plus an aria from Don Giovanni, and the supreme Violin Concerto no. 3 in G, K.216. [Read more…]

Welser-Möst leads lyrical, hyper-charged Beethoven “Eroica” in Cleveland (Feb. 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Franz Welser-Möst was greeted with a hero’s welcome at Severance Music Center on Thursday, February 27, by the large and appreciative audience — even before a note of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony had been played. He acknowledged the genuine warmth in the room, and the occasion of his return to the podium after a medical leave.

Opening the program was Shostakovich’s wintery Violin Concerto No. 2, with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist. It’s a mostly gloomy work not easily shaken from its brooding until the Finale — and even then, the raucous dancing is more crazed than jubilant.

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From “Jaws” to “Harry Potter,” Cleveland Orchestra performs John Williams’ iconic film scores (Feb. 14)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On Valentine’s Day evening, Keith Lockhart ignited the Cleveland Orchestra and wooed the packed house at Severance Music Center in a retrospective, The Music of John Williams.

Friday evening was an indulgence — a trip down movie lane and performances by an orchestra at its most vivid, thanks to Williams’ ingenious scoring and Lockhart’s energized conducting.

Lockhart’s close link to Williams through the Boston Pops Orchestra, having succeeded him there as music director 30 years ago, showed in his innate understanding of the music and sure-handedness on the podium. Excerpts from “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” “E.T.” and “Harry Potter,” along with lesser-known Williams scores, made for an impressive showcase. Lockhart also engaged the audience with several amusing stories he had in his back pocket about Williams’ early days as a film composer.

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St. Olaf Choir shines at Severance (Feb. 10)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Guided by tradition, a palpable joy of singing, and their venerable conductor, Anton Armstrong, the St. Olaf Choir showed on Monday, February 10 at Severance what a choral concert can accomplish.

Concerts by this young choir from Northfield, Minnesota — approaching the end of this year’s fifteen-stop tour — have a cumulative and moving effect. It is the nostalgia of collegiate choral singing in general, but also the awareness of St. Olaf’s storied tradition, the procession of purple robes, swaying bodies, and held hands. It is also the sound: the blend and technique of their voices — bright, expressive, coordinated — and their obvious and present joy in what they are doing.

Anton Armstrong, who may be approaching choral hall of fame status, is in his thirty-fifth year as choral conductor at St. Olaf, and only the fourth director of its Choir in a venerable line going back to 1912. He spoke infrequently but well: just when we were wondering if he would do so at all, he found a microphone and drew our attention to the themes of the program — chosen just after the last election — as commentary on “the times” we are in, the need to come together as a nation, to be kind to one another, and to find common ground.

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Anthony McGill & Emanuel Ax on Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series (Feb. 5)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The crackle in the air on February 4 was perhaps more or less routine for clarinetist Anthony McGill and for Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series, which always seems to bring out the best in performers. But still, his kind of artistry doesn’t come along every day. Add to it pianist Emanuel Ax’s exquisite contributions, and you had a real night to remember in Finney Chapel.

Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke Op. 73 (Fantasy Pieces) are heard with equal pleasure performed on clarinet (Schumann’s original) or cello. But McGill showed the advantages of his instrument with his branded suppleness, his crayon box full of sound colors, and a chameleon’s ability to be heard or veiled at will.

The duo emphasized the picturesque over the dramatic in these three miniatures — Schumann originally entitled them “Soirée Pieces.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and Musical Theater Project (Jan. 25)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Many things about George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 show Girl Crazy set it apart — the cast of future superstars (Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman), the creativity of the Gershwin brothers, the artistry of orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett — all distinguishing it as a landmark musical. But in the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and The Musical Theater Project’s ninth annual collaboration on Saturday, January 25 at the Maltz, the songs were the stars.

Though the weather outside was frightful, your heart would have to have been frozen solid not to be affected by songs like “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” “Bidin’ My Time,” “But Not For Me,” and “Boy! What Love Has Done to Me” — songs memorable, charming, and tender, that set Girl Crazy apart as one of Broadway’s most endearing scores.

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Pahud and Bax perform magnificently for Cleveland Chamber Music Society (Jan. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At the latest Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concert at Disciples Church on Tuesday evening January 21, flutist Emmanuel Pahud and pianist Alessio Bax, performed magnificently, but also made quite an impression on the young audience, perhaps for years to come.

Pahud, the longtime principal flutist of the Berlin Philharmonic and something of a rock star in the flute world, received a Beatles-like reception from the many flute students in attendance. There were shrieks of excitement and standing ovations, and at intermission an extended period of selfie-taking and high fives with the star.

Established and new works by J.S. Bach and Nicolas Bacri were featured, as well as transcriptions of violin pieces by Mozart, Clara Schumann, and César Franck by Pahud. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VII (Jan. 12)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program titled Music of America VII held on Sunday, January 12 at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, the Cleveland Chamber Collective presented a concert of attractive and varied new music, inspired by sounds from around the globe —  India to Buenos Aires and Bali to Manhattan.

At two and a half hours, the program might have stood a trimming, but it would be hard to know what to cut — the works and performances by familiar and rising Cleveland professionals were uniformly splendid. Director Ty Alan Emerson served as gracious host as well as stagehand and impresario.

In Reena Esmail’s Blaze, a duo for violin (Emily Cornelius) and tabla (Dylan Moffitt) much of the intensity came from Cornelius’s relationship to Moffitt’s exact playing — we were drawn in by the quietness of Moffitt’s tabla and by Cornelius’s attention to it. The two drifted in and out of sync, with the violinist both captive to and rebelling against the insistent rhythm, even while she conjured enigmatic extremes of darkness and ecstasy.
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