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Re:Sound New and Experimental Music Festival (June 11)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project hosted its annual Re:Sound New and Experimental Music Festival June 8-11 at various Cleveland venues. I was lucky enough to catch the final two performances on Sunday afternoon at the Convivium 33 Art Gallery.

Pakistani-born Zeerak Ahmed, who performs under the name SLOWSPIN, and trumpeter Theresa May each held the audience in thrall in programs of live music interacting with pre-recorded sounds.

Ahmed’s music is mesmerizing. She sings with devotional yearning, eyes closed, left arm raised, and in perpetual movement, dancing out meanings of the words. Her songs are in English but also Urdu, Farsi, and Purbi. Whether or not words are understood, deeply felt emotion always cuts through. [Read more…]

ENCORE: Cavani String Quartet & Mwatabu Okantah (June 10)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Music and poetry augmented one another on Saturday, June 10 at the Akron Public Library.

This much-anticipated concert on the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute series featured the impeccable playing of the Cavani String Quartet and infectious recitations by Mwatabu Okantah, poet and Professor of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University. Alongside standard repertory, the Cavani performed several Americana-inflected string quartets to the words of Okantah, providing a moving amalgam of words and music.

[Read more…]

She Scores: a cornucopia of first-rate pieces (June 3)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Seven first-rate pieces for small ensembles received superb performances on Saturday, June 3 as part of the Local 4 Music Fund’s She Scores series, which spanned three programs over three days in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University. Oberlin Conservatory musicology professor Emily Laurance provided informative and engaging remarks beforehand. The program offered a cornucopia of ear-tugging, seldom-heard pieces, or premieres, all by women-identifying or non-binary composers, many with Ohio or Cleveland connections.

Akron native Margi Griebling-Haigh, a longtime fixture of the Cleveland new music scene, was represented by ¡de Chiripa!, the opening work. The title translates to “by chance” or “by a fluke,” suggesting a playful or casual perspective. Scored for English horn and two guitars, the work references Spanish music both through its title and its use of Phrygian semitones and dance rhythms. Guitarists Andy Poxon and Bryan Reichert contributed to the Mediterranean warmth, and English hornist Cyn Warren displayed apt nobility and ardor.

[Read more…]

Jason Vieaux opens the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival (June 1)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On Thursday, June 1 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall, guitarist Jason Vieaux opened the 2023 Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival with a sparkling display, mixing assured technique with an impressively broad guitar ethos. In a program stretching from Albéniz to Metheny, Vieaux acquitted himself with ease and authority, setting a high bar for every festival recital to follow.

The night began with one of Andrés Segovia’s favorite works, Albéniz’s Torre Bermeja, a short piano piece that, in the hands of a skilled player like Vieaux at least, seems more suited to the guitar. His touch throughout was light, particularly in the repeated sixteenth-note triplets, which imparted buoyancy and optimism. 

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“Honoring Black Composers” at Karamu House (May 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Sunday afternoon’s audience at Jelliffe Theatre at Karamu House was treated to a thoughtfully curated, well-performed program honoring several 20th- and 21st-century Black composers. Karamu House made for an especially congenial setting, and Allison Loggins-Hull, The Cleveland Orchestra’s 11th Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, was a gracious and thought-provoking host. This was the last event in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival.

Loggins-Hull periodically provided notes about the program. She is an elegant and compelling presence onstage, and a passionate spokesperson on behalf of her music as well as that of her fellow composers — notably through the lens of social justice.

Transcribed by the composer from her 2014 violin work, Jessie Montgomery’s Rhapsody No. 1 for solo viola felt like a slice of American fiddle tradition, enhanced by Eliesha Nelson’s sympathetic and sonorous performance. A plaintive six-note melody begins its journey, first in double stopped dialogue with itself, then as isolated accents over furious arpeggiation, before ending largely as it began.

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All-Stravinsky in Rocky River: variety and charm (May 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Variety and charm abounded in an all-Stravinsky program at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church Monday evening, May 15, presented by the Rocky River Chamber Music Society. How delightful to hear this repertoire — Stravinsky’s droll and cerebral inventions in small combinations — heard almost exclusively on conservatory or college programs these days. Top-flight musicianship on the part of Cleveland Orchestra members and fellow professionals helped make the case. Congratulations to trumpeter Amanda Bekeny and clarinetist Daniel McKelway for putting it all together.

The succinct duos that opened the program, Fanfare for a New Theatre for trumpets and Lied Ohne Name for bassoons, made a nice pairing for their length and affective dissimilarity. Where the trumpets skirmished, the bassoons chatted dispassionately — both in under a minute. Accurate and faithful playing of both works only left us wanting more.

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No Exit: season highlights at Heights Arts (May 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

No Exit gave another of their enticing concerts on Saturday in one of Cleveland’s friendliest of venues, the Heights Arts Gallery on Lee Road. Highlighting selections from the ensemble’s 2022-2023 season, the May 13 program featured music for solo clarinet, string duo, and percussion, all written during the last two decades or so.

If there was anything to complain about, it was the loud air fan in the gallery ceiling that just…never…stopped. The lasting impression of this No Exit concert, however, was of interesting new works played by musicians who really knew what they were doing.

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Cleveland Women’s Orchestra shines in music by White, Sibelius & Dvořák (Apr. 30) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In 1993 Dolores White was commissioned by the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra to write Celebration, Salute to the Arts for the centennial celebration of the Chicago World’s Fair, and the resulting work was premiered by CWO that year at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is fitting, then, that the Orchestra’s program on Sunday, April 30 featured that work, both as tribute to the longtime Cleveland-based composer — who died on March 23 — and as a wider celebration of the arts and women’s contribution to it. The concert at Severance Music Center also featured Dane Johansen in a silky performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, and the King Christian II Suite of Jean Sibelius.

Conductor Jungho Kim (pictured) began by describing the orchestra’s commission of Celebration, and his meeting with the composer not long before her passing to discuss the upcoming concert. At age 90, White was so occupied by performances and personal appearances that she only had a few minutes to meet with Kim outside her apartment. Unconcerned by passing cars and street noise, as the conductor recalled, White intently pointed out important passages in the score. Kim was moved by her unflagging energy and attention.

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The Jerusalem Quartet: another Chamber Music Society gem (May 2)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

A great string quartet, it is said, plays as one: four players and sixteen strings channeled as a single instrument, even as each player worth his or her own salt retains something distinctive. Time and rehearsals, with luck and hard work, will result in a convincingly melded whole.

The Jerusalem Quartet plays with a remarkably blended, superbly unified voice. On Tuesday evening, May 2 at Disciples Christian Church, unity was in evidence in a splendid program of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Bartók — another gem in the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s series.

Before composing his Second String Quartet in F major in 1941, Prokofiev felt some pressure by local arts officials to incorporate folk melodies — not his usual practice — drawn from the northern Caucasus region, a remote corner to which the composer had recently been relocated. Whether Prokofiev was being subversive or sincere, there is power in his unvarnished, almost raw representation. On Tuesday night the Jerusalem leaned into the rawness.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: David Russell (Apr. 22)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

For the grand finale to this season’s International Series, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society welcomed David Russell in a much-anticipated appearance at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. With easygoing charm and astonishing skill, Russell delighted and flabbergasted the capacity crowd on Saturday night, April 22 in a program of familiar and unfamiliar works.

In his opening remarks, Guitar Society executive director Erik Mann announced that this would be the last CCGS concert to take place at Plymouth Church, with the series moving to the Maltz Performing Arts Center next season. The intimacy of Plymouth will be missed, but the recently refurbished Maltz will give the series an upgrade in prestige.

[Read more…]

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