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CMA’s Performing Arts: Behind the Beat video series

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by Mike Telin

When the performing arts world came to a sudden halt back in March, Tom Welsh, director of performing arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, began to think about how to respond.

“After the shutdown there was a dash to develop online content,” Welsh said during a recent telephone conversation. “That sparked the Museum staff to create the curatorial video series On My Mind. So I stepped back and thought, instead of just inviting musicians to play on-screen, why not talk to them and hear what they have to say about how they’re confronting the situation and feeling in this weird moment.”

Hosted by Welsh, Behind the Beat features artists who have direct connections to CMA, and highlights the Museum’s rich legacy of music.

In Episode 1, Welsh speaks with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet. “Aleksandra’s new work Antennae was to have been premiered at CMA at the end of March, so that piece was the first big casualty of COVID-19,” Welsh said. After returning to Serbia, Vrebalov phoned Welsh, telling him that she had gotten in touch with Harrington, and had re-written a short excerpt from Antennae for string quartet. “That was Kronos’ first online-only production.” [Read more…]

Les Délices embraces change with two new online series 

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by Mike Telin

Trying to second-guess the future in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic has left every performing arts organization in the world trying to figure out a path forward. All are attempting to answer the same question: when and how will we be able to perform in front of an in-person audience?

Cleveland-based period instrument ensemble Les Délices has decided the best path would be to create an all-virtual 2020-2021 season. One series, Embracing Change, will feature four new, 60-minute pre-recorded concerts complete with on-screen titles, program notes, artist interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. First screenings will include live post-concert Q&A with the artists. Concerts will be available on demand for ten days and audiences can enjoy a closing “Reception” during the final day of each cycle. To view the season and purchase single tickets and subscription packages click here.

In a recent telephone conversation, Artistic Director Debra Nagy said that part of the genesis of Embracing Change was that she had already planned the 2020-21 season back in the fall of 2019. “I continued to tweak and build a budget and then COVID-19 hit in March of 2020.”

Nagy said she spent some time in denial and grieving, but as the weeks progressed, and studies were released about the possible dangers of singing and performing in large groups, she began to ask herself: what does this mean for Les Délices?  [Read more…]

The Best of ChamberFest Cleveland on WCLV 104.9 Ideastream

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by Mike Telin

Founded in 2012 by Diana and Franklin Cohen, ChamberFest Cleveland has become a highly anticipated event each June for people seeking an immersive chamber music experience.

If the absence of live Festival performances this summer is leaving a void in your soul, take note: ChamberFest is collaborating with WCLV 104.9 Ideastream to broadcast nine programs drawing on material from all eight festival seasons on the station’s Wednesday evening “Ovations” Series and six, one-hour Sunday evening broadcasts. WCLV co-founder Robert Conrad will host and produce the series. Click here to view the schedule.

It’s no secret that since the pandemic caused the cancellation of all live performances, there has been a seemingly never-ending “stream” of performances by musicians and arts organizations over the Internet. Coupled with the reality that our lives are now spent in front of a glowing computer screen, this has caused our eyes and minds to grow weary.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater’s Summer Concerts return online 

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by Mike Telin

With the weather forecast to be 85 and sunny with no rain in sight, why not take a picnic to your backyard or front porch and enjoy a family-friendly evening of music courtesy of Cleveland Opera Theater?

Beginning on Saturday, June 20 at 7:00 pm, the company will take its popular Opera For All free summer concerts online. (And if you’re looking for a culinary theme to accompany your listening pleasure, Saturday just happens to be National Ice Cream Social Day.)

“Our hope is that families will be listening together,” Megan Thompson, Cleveland Opera Theater director of education and outreach, said by telephone. “We won’t be announcing the programs until the night of each concert, but it will be a nice mix of familiar pieces, lesser-known works, and we almost always sprinkle in some fun musical theater pieces as well — especially from the Golden Age.”

Performances will continue on July 25 at 7:00 pm (National Hot Fudge Sundae Day and Wine and Cheese Day) and on August 30 at 7:00 pm (National Toasted Marshmallow Day — s’mores perhaps?). [Read more…]

Credo goes online for summer 2020

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by Mike Telin

When it became clear that moving forward with an in-person music festival on the Oberlin campus was out of the question, Credo wasted no time making the decision to take the 2020 Festival online. “We thought that if the projections were right, there would be portions of the population that would feel safer with this method,” Credo’s Artistic Director Peter Slowik said during a recent telephone interview. “I think we had announced Credo Online by March 15, and I believe we were the first music festival to do that.”

Beginning on June 22 and continuing through July 10, nearly 160 students will be logging in every day to participate in live events including master classes, private lessons, and chamber music excerpt classes. Students will also have access to a variety of recorded content such as curated concerts by the Arianna, Callisto, and Jasper String Quartets, and faculty lectures about technique, as well as music theory and history discussions. They can also engage with their fellow Festival participants during “hangout sessions.”

How did the Festival planners figure out how to make everything work smoothly and efficiently? “It’s funny, because you solve one problem only to discover that you’ve created another,” Slowik said. “Most music festivals are built on the premise that you get a bunch of people together, sort them out, and do a lot of interactive things. But when you have students from five time zones in the U.S. alone, not to mention Asia, and teachers in three time zones in the U.S., it gets a little interesting when you’re planning remote private lessons. It’s also important that everybody is together for a master class, so those need to be scheduled at a certain time of day.”

[Read more…]

CD Review — Patchwork

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by Mike Telin 

On their recent, self-titled debut album, the Cleveland-based duo Patchwork — Noa Even and Stephen Klunk — present five commissioned works that draw on free jazz, metal, progressive rock, and the avant-garde. Released on New Focus Records, the album takes you to a sonic world never dreamed possible from a saxophone and drum set duo. As we have come to expect from Even and Klunk, the five works are an exploration of extended techniques. More importantly, their performances are bewitching — ensemble playing at its best.

[Read more…]

BW Vocal Performance Capstone Project takes Hansel and Gretel online

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by Mike Telin

When the 2020 Vocal Performance Program class at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory got together this past August to discuss what their Capstone Project would look like, they decided to create something that would combine their voice studies with their entrepreneurship classes, and involve a community partner.

The seven seniors began laying the groundwork by meeting with Cleveland Opera Theater’s director of education and outreach Megan Thompson, who helped them figure out what they wanted the project to entail and how to structure it. They also discussed what it means to be a teaching artist.

The group ultimately decided that they would design an opera outreach project for elementary school children and produce a thirty-minute adaptation of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel.

During a class interview via Zoom, Kailyn Martino, who created that adaptation, said the goal was to make sure that their version would be engaging for elementary school students. “We’ve included the most memorable music from the opera like the Prayer and the Sandman and Dew Fairy arias, and the scene where Gretel teaches Hansel to dance. The plot is driven forward through the narration, so we get to share the entire opera with the kids without keeping them there for hours.” [Read more…]

Violinist Andrew Sords launches Green Point Editions

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by Mike Telin 

“I’ve always been fascinated with works that are on the fringe of the repertoire,” violinist Andrew Sords said by telephone. The problem with learning and ultimately performing works that are off the beaten track is that even with published works, the editions are often riddled with mistakes, if not illegible. “I’m a little OCD when it comes to the score that’s in front of me. I want it to be legible, correct, and have it provide some historical context.”

Following years of frustration, Sords has taken matters into his own hands. Joining forces with music engraver Daniel Singer, the violinist’s new venture, Green Point Editions, sheds light on musical gems that are often neglected on concert stages. Currently available are works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Jenö Hubay, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jean Sibelius, Claudio Brindis de Salas, and Eugène Ysaÿe/Frederic Chopin.

Misprints in published editions have existed for centuries. Sords noted that Dvořák’s Violin Concerto has a famously wrong note in the final arpeggio. “You can’t blame the performer simply because they are playing from prints that their teachers said had the correct notes. But have some curiosity. Look at the Urtext, or prints from the 19th century that might be a little more accurate.”

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical Scholarship Competition: investing in the future 

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by Mike Telin

If you are looking for a good return on your investment, give scholarships to budding musicians to help them over the financial humps during their early careers. Since 1955, Akron’s Tuesday Musical has been providing financial assistance through its Annual Scholarship Competition to College and University music performance and education majors who are Ohio residents or studying with a music teacher at an Ohio institution.

Earlier this year Tuesday Musical announced that brothers Richard Zook and Douglas Zook Jr. had endowed a new prize for the Scholarship Competition with the creation of the Howard E. Leisinger Viola Prize in honor of their maternal grandfather. 

Leisinger, who grew up on a farm near the Maryland-Pennsylvania line, began studying music privately with a neighbor when he was young. “I have only the haziest memory of my grandfather — he died when I was very young,” Douglas Zook said by telephone from his home in Doylestown, Ohio. “The story I heard is that my grandfather’s family, being practical farmers, weren’t particularly supportive, but he continued.”

[Read more…]

Oberlin Stage Left: 
“Something for everyone”

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by Mike Telin 

Artists, arts organizations, and schools of music have found inventive ways of providing homebound audiences with a seemingly never-ending stream of performances during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The question is, what will make yours stand apart from the others? 

Beginning on Tuesday, April 14 at 7:30 pm, the Oberlin Conservatory will debut Oberlin Stage Left, a new online series featuring faculty and students, as well as fascinating guests from throughout the musical world. The programs promise to be fun, informative, and “distinctly Oberlin.” New episodes will be broadcast on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoons. The inaugural performance will feature harp professor Yolanda Kondonassis and the Oberlin Orchestra, Raphael Jiménez, conducting, in Ginastera’s Harp Concerto, preceded by a recently recorded interview with Kondonassis by Conservatory Dean William Quillen.

[Read more…]

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