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Cleveland Chamber Choir shines with music to mark the hours and seasons (Oct. 25)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Often called The Vespers, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil reaches for something beyond an evening service. Its fifteen movements, rooted in Russian Orthodox chant, rise and surround like incense — not to display magnificence, but to deepen the mystery. Rachmaninoff was so fond of the work that he requested the fifth movement, the Nunc dimittis, be sung at his funeral.

On Friday evening, October 25, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, directed by Gregory Ristow, presented this monumental work in Trinity Cathedral — a resonant space of tradition and calm, where the beauty of the setting matched the beauty of the sound.

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Tuesday Musical opens season with epic works from pianist Marc-André Hamelin (Oct. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On Tuesday evening, October 21, pianist Marc-André Hamelin opened Tuesday Musical’s 2025–26 season in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall with a program of unusual range and scale. He mapped the human mind and heart across an often-epic landscape — Beethoven’s granite Hammerklavier, Robert Schumann’s not merely scenic Waldszenen, and Ravel’s hallucinatory Gaspard de la nuit.

Composed between 1817 and 1818, the Hammerklavier marks Beethoven’s turn toward the monumental and visionary. Deaf by this time, he wrote for some idealized instrument and listener — music indifferent to ordinary technical or emotional limits. Deemed nearly unplayable at its premiere, it later found champions, Liszt foremost among them, who revealed its vast scope.

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Miró Quartet at Finney Chapel (Oct. 10)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Friday evening, October 10, the Miró Quartet continued its complete Beethoven cycle and marked its thirty-year homecoming with the three “Razumovsky” quartets of Op. 59. Founded at Oberlin in 1995 by violinist Daniel Ching and cellist Joshua Gindele, the group later took its enduring form with the arrivals of second violinist William Fedkenheuer and violist John Largess.

After winning a competition hat-trick at Fischoff, Banff, and Naumburg, as well as an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Miró found a home as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Texas at Austin. Returning to Oberlin for this six-concert Beethoven marathon gave the evening an air that was both valedictory and self-renewing.

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Apollo’s Fire: Dido and Aeneas (Oct. 3)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Some operas overwhelm us with spectacle, others with sheer length. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, first performed in the late 1680s, does neither. Barely an hour long, it holds a world of feeling — new love, dark magic, and nobility in death.

On Friday evening, October 3 at Greystone Hall in Akron, Apollo’s Fire gave the work youthful resonance by returning it to Purcell’s premiere setting, a London boarding school for girls. Jeannette Sorrell’s direction added a Shakespearean pulse — brisk, lively, and human. The performance opened with the chaconne from Purcell’s King Arthur, an elegant and radiant overture that set the evening’s tone.

Sorrell’s newly written prologue replaced Purcell’s lost original and set the scene as a school play that turns suddenly real — a nod to the opera’s first performances by students and to the scale of its story. Her approach emulated the fast-moving style of seventeenth-century English theater, when audiences stood at the players’ feet and tragedy mingled with laughter. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra opens 108th season with heroic U.S. premiere of Deutsch’s ‘Urworte’ (Sept. 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND — On Friday evening, Sep. 26, before The Cleveland Orchestra opened its 108th season, Music Director Franz Welser-Möst joined President and CEO André Gremillet onstage for a conversation previewing the next ten programs. With a reenergized music director, an impressive slate of repertoire, soloists, and guest conductors, the Orchestra’s 2025-26 season looks especially bright.

Austrian composer Bernd Richard Deutsch has become a familiar figure here in Cleveland under Welser-Möst. During his tenure as the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow from 2017 to 2020, the Orchestra introduced his organ concerto “Okeanos” and later, his large orchestra work “Intensity.” On Friday came a third U.S. premiere, “Urworte” (2024). Such partnerships nourish everyone: the composer gains a champion, the orchestra fresh music, and the repertoire welcome enrichment.

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Great Lakes Theater: Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George (Sept. 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Great Lakes Theater opened its fall season at the Hanna Theatre with Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George. I saw the performance on September 27. In a house of just over five hundred seats, the show feels almost purpose-built for intimacy: audiences sit close enough to hear breaths behind every phrase and to see the small adjustments of light and posture that bring French Neo-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat’s world into focus.

Winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Sunday resists conventional structure. Its first act imagines the years Seurat spent creating his pointillist landmark, La Grande Jatte. Sondheim and Lapine do not present the artist as genial or approachable. He is exacting, self-absorbed, forever chasing the perfect dot of color at the expense of his personal relationships. The cost is clear: his model and lover, another Dot, leaves him, unable to compete with the canvas.

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Akron Symphony plays Mahler 1 (Sept. 20)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Akron Symphony opened its season Saturday night, September 20 at E.J. Thomas Hall, with a program that combined geniality, youthful cheek, and grand ambition. Under the direction of Christopher Wilkins the orchestra sounded happy to be back and playing before an excited house.

Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture is a thank-you note written to honor a university that gave him an honorary degree. As Wilkins reminded us, Brahms never went to college, but here he donned the cap and gown like a puckish undergrad, weaving together student songs more often heard in beer halls than lecture halls. Under Wilkins, the piece carried both dignity and delight. The opening had the sincerity of ceremony, then the tunes tumbled in like students fresh from hijinks on the quad. The orchestra answered with warmth, rhythmic lift, and good humor. When the final tune arrived, it rose like an alma mater — or a sudsy cheer — echoing fondly across the years. [Read more…]

Omar Sosa Trio at CMA (Sept. 10)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Omar Sosa has a way of turning concerts into ceremonies. Before sitting down to play on Wednesday, September 10 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, he invoked Elegguá, the Afro-Cuban deity of the crossroads, snapping the irukére — a Yoruba horsetail whisk — to clear the space, invite protection, and “open the way.” The gesture set a ritual tone, reminding listeners they were at a spiritual gathering as much as at a musical performance.

Sosa brought his new trio, Outside the Box, to Gartner Auditorium for its Cleveland debut. The group includes his longtime collaborator Yosvany Terry on saxophones and young drummer Julian Miltenberger, whom Sosa introduced as “a 25-year-old from Philly — the next generation.”

Terry’s early contributions on soprano saxophone were so compelling that he temporarily shifted the group’s center of gravity. [Read more…]

A conversation with Cuban bandleader Omar Sosa

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Cuban-born pianist, composer, and bandleader Omar Sosa has forged a three-decade career blending Afro-Cuban roots with global jazz traditions, and a decidedly philosophical perspective. He has earned multiple GRAMMY® and Latin GRAMMY® nominations, major awards, and has attracted an international following.

When he makes his debut in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on September 10 at 7:30 pm, he will  bring along his new Trio, Outside the Box. Tickets are available online.

I spoke with Sosa by Zoom in a lively, warm conversation as he prepared to take the stage at the Detroit Jazz Festival over Labor Day weekend. Though he has traveled the globe, Cleveland has been on his radar through a personal connection. His former partner is the daughter of the well-known local architect Julian Madison. “She always told me, I hope you can play in Cleveland one day,” Sosa recalled. “And now that we’ve split up, I will play in Cleveland. Life is like that.”

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The Cleveland Orchestra and Blossom Festival Chorus seamlessly mesh with The Lion King (Aug. 29)

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By Kevin McLaughlin|Cleveland Classical

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio – With the unhurried grace of a great cat, on Friday, August 29 at Blossom Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra and Blossom Festival Chorus made the live score of Disney’s The Lion King sound effortless. Ably led by conductor Sarah Hicks, Hans Zimmer’s music and the ear-catching songs of Elton John and Tim Rice took on a vividness and power that occasionally outdid the movie.

In her introduction, Hicks reminded the larger-than-usual and decidedly youngish crowd that The Lion King marks its 30th anniversary this year. She invited them to cheer for their favorite characters — Simba, Nala, perhaps Timon — and to boo the villainous Scar. This audience was eager to comply.

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