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Jacob Allen on Ohio Light Opera’s 2024 season

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by Mike Telin

One of the neat things about a summer light opera festival is that there is always a family atmosphere. Ohio Light Opera is a perfect example of that, especially when it comes to associate artistic director Jacob Allen and his relationship with the company. 2024 marks Allen’s 18th season — and his sixth position within OLO after he started out as a young artist performer.

Allen is directing two shows this season: Guys and Dolls and Me and My Girl, the latter of which opens on Thursday, June 20 at 2:00 pm at Freedlander Theatre.

The show includes music by Noel Gay and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Allen by phone to talk about the two shows he’s directing — and his history with the company.

[Read more…]

Brandon Ridenour returns to ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Mike Telin

This week, trumpeter Brandon Ridenour will be featured in three ChamberFest Cleveland programs both as a performer and arranger.

Ridenour’s journey to becoming a  trumpet soloist, collaborative artist, composer, and arranger began at age 5, when he started studying piano with his father. After picking up the trumpet in 5th grade band class in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ridenour went on to study at the Juilliard School. After graduating he became the youngest member to join the Canadian Brass and eventually embarked on a solo career.

In 2014 Ridenour became the first trumpeter in 30 years to win the Concert Artist Guild competition. In his role as performer-composer, he helped to launch the Brooklyn-based ensemble Founders, and in 2023, he joined the American Brass Quintet. As an educator, he serves on the faculties at Juilliard, The New School and the Manhattan School of Music, where he is passionate about developing a new model of education for a well-rounded, progressive musician of the future.

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Harpist Bridget Kibbey makes ChamberFest debut

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by Mike Telin

ChamberFest Cleveland launches its 2024 season — three weeks’ worth of concerts inspired by the theme of  “Sacred and Profane” — on Wednesday, June 12 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Opening night marks the ChamberFest debut of harpist Bridget Kibbey, who will be featured in Claude Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane — and throughout the first week of the festival. Tickets for all performances are available online.

I caught up with the Findlay, Ohio native on Zoom and began our delightful conversation by asking her if it was true that she first heard the harp in a church.

Bridget Kibbey: That’s true. It was a small country Mennonite church. I was taking piano lessons at the time and one of my Suzuki piano kid mates’ mother was a harpist. I saw her play and was just floored, so I started lessons with her right away at age nine. That’s what makes Ohio so special, there’s so many local music studios. I think that’s why Ohio produces great musicians, great music teachers, and music lovers.

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Steven Daigle previews the first three shows of Ohio Light Opera’s 2024 season

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday, June 8 at 7:30 pm, Ohio Light Opera will launch its 2024 season with the 1937 hit musical Guys and Dolls. The show is the first of six titles that will run in repertory through July 28 at the College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre. Tickets for all performances are available online.

“At some level, we’ve already worked on all six of the shows,” OLO artistic director Steven Daigle said by telephone during a rehearsal break last weekend. “We’re getting to know the singers better now that we’ve had more time to work with them, and we’re excited — it’s going to be a really great company.”

Based on two short stories by Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, Guys and Dolls follows a pair of big city gamblers and the women who are in love with them.

Daigle noted that OLO has been staging what he called “Golden Age Musicals” for the past eight to ten years. “We’re now at a point where we have already produced most of them. And when we were tracking some of the blockbusters, Guys and Dolls just came up as a fun show. [Read more…]

ENCORE returns with an ode to Planet Earth

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by Mike Telin

Each summer, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s Music and Ideas Festival brings artists and speakers from around the world to present engaging performances and thought-provoking discussions that are inspired by a theme such as Creatures of Emotion, Storytelling, and FIRE. The 2024 edition of the Festival will feature six concerts under the theme of Planet Earth.

“I wanted to highlight the universal connection that we humans have with nature,” ENCORE founder and artistic director Jinjoo Cho said during a telephone interview.  “Anybody who takes a walk in the beautiful Cuyahoga Valley National Park — listening to the sounds of nature — will feel more calm and more centered.”

Planet Earth begins on Friday, June 7 at Kendall Lake at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. “Roma Jazz on a Starry Night” features the Olli Soikkeli Band — Olli Soikkeli (guitar), Brad Brose (rhythm guitar), Paul Sikivie (bass), and Evan Arntzen (clarinet/saxophone). “Olli has a special place in that repertoire, and we’re excited to do our first concert with him.”

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Sentiment, Satire, Horror, and Noir in silent film (May 10)

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by Mike Telin

At a time when performing musical scores during the showings of blockbuster films has become popular  programming for symphony orchestras, it’s interesting to turn back the clock to an era when audiences never heard the actors’ voices and the music was always performed live by whatever size ensemble was available.

This past semester a group of Oberlin students in the Music and Melodrama on Stage and Screen class, taught by Emily Laurance, immersed themselves in the creation of film scores from a historical perspective.

On Friday, May 10 the members of the class presented their final projects at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Transformer Station. “The Many Moods of Melodrama: Sentiment, Satire, Horror, and Noir” was a fascinating and thoroughly entertaining evening that featured five short silent films exploring the melodramatic mode, with original scores performed by the students.

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She Scores: Celebrating Underrepresented Composers

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by Mike Telin

Since 2021, Local 4 Music Fund’s She Scores project has been providing a platform for underrepresented composers who, despite their immense talents, face barriers to having their works performed. And what began with performances of works by 16 composers has now blossomed into a four-concert series featuring works by 31 living composers who identify as female or nonbinary. “We have over 70 people involved in the festival this year,” Local 4 Music Fund executive director Amber Rogers said during a telephone interview.

The fourth edition of She Scores runs May 30 – June 2 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall, with performances at 7:00 Thursday-Saturday and 4:00 on Sunday. Emily Laurance will present a pre-concert lecture one hour prior to each performance. All concerts are free. Click here to read bios of the composers and performers.

“In the past, the call for scores only went out to composers in Ohio. This year we added Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and West Virginia. And we have composers from every one of those states represented in the programming,” Rogers said, adding that the jury reviewed around 80 submissions, all evaluated anonymously — the jury didn’t know who wrote what, or what their backgrounds were.

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Kira McGirr to solo with Cleveland Repertory Orchestra

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by Mike Telin

If you were to ask any mezzo-soprano which piece they would love to perform, the answer might very well be Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures. “It is true that we all want to sing it,” Kira McGirr said during a telephone conversation. “I think it’s because it fits the mezzo voice so perfectly. And there’s something about it that just grabs you.”

On Saturday, May 25 at 7:00 pm at Rocky River Presbyterian Church, McGirr will join conductor Matthew Salvaggio and the Cleveland Repertory Orchestra in Elgar’s five-movement song cycle for mezzo-soprano and large orchestra. The program also includes Jessie Montgomery’s Overture and Barbara Harbach’s Symphony No. 10 (“Symphony for Ferguson”).

Harbach’s work pays tribute to the tenth anniversary of the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after the killing of Michael Brown during the summer of 2014. In an email Salvaggio said, “Harbach was living and teaching in St. Louis at the time, and the piece takes music familiar to people living in Ferguson (like Wade in the Water and Chester) and transforms them into a powerful reflection on the events of that summer from the perspective of someone living in that community.” The concert is free. Click here for advance registration.

Back to the Elgar, McGirr and I continued our conversation by delving further into the piece, beginning with the poems that make up its text.

Kira McGirr: There are five different poets, but I see the poems following a journey as opposed to being just five different poems. I will give acknowledgement to the wonderful Elgar scholar Charles McGuire, who presents the idea that there’s a narrative through the five poems. [Read more…]

No Exit concludes Year of Surreality with “Breaking the World”

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by Mike Telin

For the past eight months No Exit has been celebrating their 15th anniversary with their most ambitious project to date: Surreality. “We hope people will enjoy exploring the irrational, illogical, inexplicable, strange, and utterly fantastical world that is Surrealism,” artistic director Timothy Beyer told us in October.

On Thursday, May 23 at 7:00 pm at Heights Arts, No Exit will conclude their Year of Surreality with “Breaking the World.” The free program will feature new works by Jerome Begin, Lauren Pearl, Stephen Haluska, and James Praznik, as well as Marcel Duchamp’s Erratum Musical, and a simultaneous poem recited by Gunnar-Owen Hirthe, James Praznik, and Timothy Beyer. The program will be repeated at 7:00 pm on both Friday (at Praxis Fiber Arts) and Saturday (at SPACES Gallery).

In a recent telephone conversation Beyer said that this week’s program is a culmination of the ensemble’s season-long exploration of Surrealist techniques and topics, including games and thought exercises, state of consciousness, and dada, which is not technically Surrealism, but is related.

[Read more…]

Leila Josefowicz to join The Cleveland Orchestra in Berg’s Violin Concerto

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by Mike Telin

Whenever the adventurous violinist Leila Josefowicz and The Cleveland Orchestra join forces, Northeast Ohio audiences are sure to be treated to a captivating performance of a  contemporary masterpiece. Since 2010 Josefowicz and The Orchestra have teamed up for concertos by Thomas Adès, Oliver Knussen, Igor Stravinsky, and two by John Adams.

“It really is an honor to have had so many beautiful opportunities to perform with that incredible orchestra,” Josefowicz said during a Zoom conversation. “There’s a great pride in the quality of what they do and I’m always super excited to be there and play my very best.”

On Thursday, May 23 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Josefowicz will join Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in Alban Berg’s haunting Violin Concerto. The program also includes Mozart’s Serenade No. 10, “Gran Partita,” and the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

The program, which will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm, is part of The Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival. Click here to see the full schedule of the Festival. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

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