by Mike Telin
For a young musician, winning a concerto competition is always an honor. And performing that concerto with an orchestra is a moment to cherish. “I’ve played many concertos before with piano, but this is my first time with an orchestra and I’m enjoying it a lot,” Elena Ziegler said.
On Friday, May 3 at 8:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Ziegler will perform Lalo’s Cello Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. Under the direction of Daniel Reith, the program also includes Valerie Coleman’s Umoja and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Tickets are available online.
I reached the Copley High School junior by telephone and began our conversation by congratulating her on winning the competition and asking how she came to choose the Lalo.
For the recent set of concerts in their season-long celebration of the surreal, No Exit turned to two pivotal events in the history of dadaism for inspiration — the 1920 Festival Dada and the 1923 Soirée du Coeur à Barbe. This program, “Piano Dada,” included works of poetry, theater, and music that were performed at those historic Paris festivals. I attended the performance on March 16 at Heights Arts.
Like many, composer Ty Alan Emerson watched the events of January 6, 2021 unfold on the national news. “Even though I wasn’t there, I felt that this was an attack on me, my belief in our Constitution, and our democracy,” Emerson said during a telephone conversation, adding that he “needed to do something.”
In her program note, composer Gabriella Smith writes that her organ concerto 
