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Cleveland Museum of Art: Omara Portuondo (Nov. 1) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At 93, the great Cuban vocalist Omara Portuondo knows a few things. She knows the value of her own experience, though she defies her age in stamina and enduring vocal ability. By now physically frail, on November 1 in Gartner Auditorium she was led to her high-backed wicker chair where she ensconced herself to offer a distillation of a lifetime of music-making.

Her quartet of skilled players — José Portillo, piano, Ramses Rodriguez, drums, Lino Piquero, bass, and Degnis Bofill, Latin percussion — were mindful of the honor, though none was old enough to hear the Cuarteto d’Aida from her Tropicana days, or her Batista-era LPs sold to tourists on the Plaza de Armas in Havana. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony celebrates the organ with Robert Mollard (Oct. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The sound of an organ in orchestral settings is always an aural thrill. A cornucopia of colors and sonorities on its own, the organ, when mixed with strings, winds, brass, and percussion, more than doubles the pleasure and the fun.

In his welcoming remarks, music director Christopher Wilkins drew attention to the evening’s sonic star and focus — a digital impersonator of sounds, painstakingly prepared by Robert Mollard to sound just like a pipe organ. Putting out fullness and variety, if not always the seismic events associated with cathedral organs, Mollard nevertheless created excitement and beauty in his appearance with the Akron Symphony at E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday, October 21.

Since the first official work on the program, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Worship: A Concert Overture, takes as its basis the hymn tune Old 100th (“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”), two bonuses were in store to orient us. Principal flute Barbara O’Brien played the unadorned tune in gorgeous, silvery tones, and Mollard let loose with Robert Hebble’s Toccata on Old Hundredth, a festival of organ prowess.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Chorus:
Whitacre’s The Sacred Veil (Oct. 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Sacred Veil, as one might expect from an hour-long work about death and grief, is not an easy listen. Eric Whitacre’s music, evocative and emotional, makes potent company with Charles Anthony Silvestri’s words, a chain of poems on the loss of his wife Julia Lawrence Silvestri (Julie), who died of ovarian cancer in 2005 at the age of 36. The inclusion of Julie’s own poetry, along with Whitacre’s, increases the impact.

On Friday, October 20 during a performance by The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, the Severance Music Center audience, perhaps expecting lighter fare, listened closely, though gloomily. Told through particularities — one couple’s experience of early love and childbirth, the young woman’s diagnosis, prognosis, and ultimately her death — Sacred Veil’s power lies in its wider applicability. The words, projected in supertitles above the stage, penetrated the heart; the music sealed the deal.

[Read more…]

Detroit Opera: playing with perspective in Madame Butterfly (Oct. 15) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Madame Butterfly performed at Detroit Opera last Sunday, October 15, reminded us of this opera’s stubborn beauty. Puccini’s ravishing score, coupled with radiant singing, sparkling sets, and inspired lighting and costumes, overtook potential criticism of its perspectival flaws.

Don’t get me wrong — there is much bigotry and male and racial chauvinism to call out in David Belasco’s play and Giuseppe Giacosa’s and Luigi Illica’s libretto, as well as a lack of agency of the lead. And Detroit’s Japanese and Japanese American artistic team of Matthew Ozawa (artistic director), Kimie Nishikawa (scenic design), Maiko Matsushima (costumes), and Yuki Nakase Link (lighting) did so, but without changing much.

Their version (a co-production with Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, and Utah Opera) leans into the white male fantasy aspect of the story, rather than mitigate or excuse it. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland celebrates Black Excellence (Oct. 19) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

“Celebrating Black Excellence” was CityMusic’s organizing theme for the latest of their 2023-24 season presentations, held at the sound-absorbent East Zion Baptist Church on Thursday, October 19.

You can quibble about how “Black” the program was, with a lineup that included Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto, selections from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance.

But as for “Black excellence,” there was an abundance. Works by Jessie Montgomery, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and William Grant Still each sparkled in smart, moving, and inspiring ways. And the three vocal soloists, all current students at Oberlin Conservatory, shone.

[Read more…]

Arts @ Holy Trinity:
Miguel Espinoza Fusion
(Oct. 8)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Imagine a small band of musicians, each skilled but of dissimilar traditions, combining their talents for a banquet of world styles — Celtic, flamenco, Brazilian, and French — and you have an idea of the artistry of Miguel Espinoza Fusion. Presented at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron on Sunday, October 8, this was the inaugural concert of Arts @ Holy Trinity’s 40th season.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra premiere if ‘Whereas the Reality Trembles’ percussion extravaganza steals the show from Mozart and Tchaikovsky (Oct. 5)

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Photo: Roger Mastroianni

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

by Kevin McLaughlin

The world premiere of a percussion extravaganza stole the show on Thursday night in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center, and may have set a record for the most percussion ever assembled on one stage.

Beginning the concert, Franz Welser-Möst’s account of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 was airy and buoyant, despite larger-than-fashionable forces (42 strings). The outer movements were joyous and rhythmically meticulous, and the Orchestra’s ability to coalesce and balance was uncanny.

[Read more…]

Lunchtime with Soh-Hyun Park Altino at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Sept. 29)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It’s certainly not something you hear every day: a concert-lecture of Korean traditional music played on the modern violin. Can this kind of thing work? Should it? 

It turns out the answer to both questions is absolutely, yes. Born and raised in Korea, and a violin graduate of Peabody Institute and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Soh-Hyun Park Altino was the perfect guide and persuader during her concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Friday afternoon, September 29.

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society opens season with Stout premiere (Sept. 25)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program of Cleveland discoveries on Monday, September 25, a lively crowd at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church got to hear Richard Stout’s new work, Songs of Correspondence, based on letters of early 20th-century American author Willa Cather.

Featured performers were mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, faculty at Baldwin Wallace, and the Poiesis Quartet (Sarah Ma and Max Ball, violins, Jasper de Boor, viola, and Drew Dansby, cello), who formed at Oberlin Conservatory and were Grand Prize winners of the 2023 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. The concert kicked off the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: “Symphonie Concertante” (Sept. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The concert by CityMusic Cleveland on Thursday, September 21 in Fairmount Presbyterian Church was a reminder of two things: that there is an abundance of appealing music yet to be heard or played out, and there are exceptional performers in Cleveland ready to play it. The consistently splendid CityMusic (now in its twentieth year) maintained its high standard with a program of infrequently heard works by George Walker, Joseph Bologne, Tōru Takemitsu, and W.A. Mozart, aided by guest solo violinists Kyung Sun Lee and Jung-Min Amy Lee (pictured at another venue).

Walker’s Lyric for Strings has the quiet solemnity of Barber’s famous Adagio for Strings, and like that piece, it started life as the second movement from an early string quartet. Walker added the title Lament (later Lyric for Strings) and dedicated it as an elegy to his grandmother. From the first notes the ensemble, led by concertmaster Laura Hamilton, conveyed the right mood and established a bath of tonal beauty that benefitted every piece to come.

[Read more…]

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