by Kevin McLaughlin
You might have gone to the Sunday, June 2 She Scores concert to hear exemplary works by female and nonbinary composers, or simply to enjoy some fresh new sounds. But once there, you would have stayed for the dazzling expertise on display, from both composers and performers alike.
Credit the Local 4 Music Fund and executive director Amber Rogers for organizing the fourth annual iteration of this splendid concert series, which ran from May 30-June 2 in CIM’s lovely Mixon Hall. Genre or gender aside, this was an afternoon of superb music.
Margi Griebling-Haigh’s Triskaidekaphilia (“love of the number thirteen”) for three violins made for an arresting and mathematical start. Violinists Ken Johnston, Leah Goor-Burtnett, and Emily Cornelius drew out the composer’s introspective and playful sides in this well-crafted three-movement work. [Read more…]
Unfinished works seem to be held in higher esteem for their being incomplete — the remaining music feeling more precious, conscious as we are of what else might have been lost. How to explain then, the impact of Mozart’s 
What is a little chamber music among friends? Pure enjoyment, that’s what. On Monday, May 6 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, you got the feeling that the pleasure had by this group — clarinetist Afendi Yusuf, violist Wesley Collins, and pianist Dawoon Chung — might have occurred with or without the rapt Rocky River Chamber Music Society audience in attendance.
It is one of Cleveland’s persistently good things that outlets for fresh new music — played by some of the area’s best musicians — continue to thrive. On Sunday, April 28, we were reminded of this again at Cleveland Chamber Collective’s presentation of Ty Alan Emerson’s 
The Cleveland Composers Guild found an ideal partner in the Factory Seconds Brass Trio (Jack Sutte, trumpet, Richard King, horn, and Rick Stout, trombone), who, along with other performers, assembled a recital program of the first order at Rocky River’s West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday, April 21.
I’ve been enjoying watching the tenor Matthew Polenzani’s masterclasses on YouTube. There’s one at Ravinia from a few years ago where he approaches students like a shy visitor, then gently teaches like he performs — guilelessly and penetratingly.