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Pittsburgh’s Chatham Baroque to visit Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

Chatham Baroque, Pittsburgh’s long-standing period instrument ensemble, will be featured on the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series on Monday, March 2 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Violinist Andrew Fouts, violist da gamba Patricia Halverson, and theorboist and Baroque guitarist Scott Pauley will offer a program that Fouts said might be titled “Bach and Before.”

I recently caught up with Andrew Fouts for a telephone conversation about the group and their program.

Mike Telin: Is this going to be the group’s Cleveland debut?

Andrew Fouts: I’m in my eighteenth year with Chatham Baroque, and this will be the first time we’ve played in the Cleveland area.

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Arts Renaissance Tremont celebrates “The Art of Influence”

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By Mike Telin

On Sunday, March 1 at 3:00 pm, Arts Renaissance Tremont continues its season with The ART of Influence. The program features four dynamic pairs of musicians — once teachers and students, now artistic peers — who will take the stage for an engaging afternoon of music and stories. The free concert will be held at Pilgrim Congregational UCC in Tremont.

“Rich King joined the Cleveland Orchestra horn section in 1988 and he’s taught at CIM all these years,” ART artistic director Feza Zweifel said during an interview. “One of his students, Megan Guegold, is now a member of the horn section.”

King and Guegold will join pianist Joanna Huang in Johannes Brahms’ So Lass uns Wandern, Es Rauschet Das Wasser, and Walpurgisnacht, as well as playing Gunther Schuller’s Duet #1 for Unaccompanied Horns and Chanson (Homage a Darius Milhaud).

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Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) Semi-Finalist Jonathan Mamora in residency at The University of Akron

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by Mike Telin

When the Cleveland International Piano Competition set out to plan its 50th anniversary in 2024, CIPC president Yaron Kohlberg knew that some changes needed to be made.

“A lot has changed in the classical music world during the past 50 years,” Kohlberg said in an interview prior to that year’s competition. He added that the changes that were made were designed to create more and better ways for CIPC to serve the contestants, the audience, and the community at large.

One of the many alterations that Kohlberg and his team implemented was in the Competition’s prize structure, which featured a new artist development program that was open to all contestants. The program offers mentorship opportunities with leading pianists, faculty, and innovators in the classical music world, and short courses in personal branding and social media, fundraising, artist finances, and similar topics, offered in partnership with Young Concert Artists. It also included residencies at Northeast Ohio universities.

From February 18 through 28, pianist Jonathan Mamora will serve as artist-in-residence at The University of Akron School of Performing Arts. During his residency, he will present workshops, deliver lectures, and give a free public recital. These events are made possible through a partnership with Piano Cleveland and The Kulas Foundation.

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No Exit Presents: pianist Jenny Lin featured in METROPOLIS Reimagined

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by Mike Telin

This week, No Exit presents pianist Jenny Lin featured in METROPOLIS Reimagined at Heights Arts at 7:00 pm on Friday, February 13. The concert is free.

For this multimedia event, Lin will be joined by electronic artist Drake Andersen performing a new score to the 1984 restoration of Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis. This new score was created collaboratively by the ten composers of ICEBERG New Music.

This interview is reposted with the permission of the ensemble and author. 

No Exit’s Laura King spoke with the pianist and began by asking what excites her about this project.

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Johanna Wallroth sings Barber’s Knoxville with the Cleveland Orchestra

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by Mike Telin

Photo credit: Amélie Chapalain

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. —James Agee, in the preface to A Death in the Family

While searching for a text for the solo piece with orchestra that would become Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Samuel Barber said that Agee’s prose-poem particularly struck him because it reminded him so much of evenings when he was a child at home.

“I found out, after setting this, that Mr. Agee and I are the same age, and the year he described was 1915, when we were both 5,” Barber told James Fasset during a 1949 interview. ‘You see, it expresses a child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.”

Swedish soprano Johanna Wallroth said during a Zoom call that “Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is one of my absolute favorite pieces, and I’m very excited about making my Cleveland Orchestra and U.S. debut with it.”

On Thursday, February 12 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, conductor Barbara Hannigan will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in an all-American program that features Barber’s haunting work along with George Crumb’s A Haunted Landscape, Charles Ruggles’ Sun-Treader, and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture (arranged by Robert Russell Bennett). The program will be repeated on Saturday at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

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Tuesday Musical to feature Boston Brass & Imani Winds

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by Mike Telin

Since 1997, the Imani Winds have been at the forefront of expanding the wind quintet repertoire through their commissioning projects, adventurous programming, and unique collaborations, which have attracted audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

Since 1986, Boston Brass have been delighting audiences with one-of-a-kind musical experiences that feature imaginative classical arrangements, jazz standards, and the best of original brass repertoire.

On Tuesday, February 10 at 7:30 pm, these two venerable ensembles will join forces at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. Presented by Tuesday Musical, their program will include original works and arrangements of pieces by Dmitri Shostakovich, Paul Hindemith, Stevie Wonder, Astor Piazzolla, and Lalo Schifrin as well as a commissioned piece by trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval. Tickets are available online.

How did Boston Brass — José Sibaja and Jeff Conner (trumpets), Chris Castellanos (horn), Domingo Pagliuca (trombone), and William Russell (tuba) — and  Imani Winds — Brandon Patrick George (flute), Mekhi Gladden (oboe), Mark Dover (clarinet), Kevin Newton (horn), and Monica Ellis (bassoon) — come together?

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No Exit Presents LIGAMENT: an interview with Anika Kildegaard

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by Mike Telin

This week No Exit presents LIGAMENT — Anika Kildegaard (voice) and Will Yager (double bass) — on Friday, February 6 at Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall and on Saturday, February 7 at Praxis Fiber Workshop.

Their program features works by Zac Fick-Cambria, Ruby Fulton, James Dillon, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Katherine Balch. The Cleveland State Percussion Ensemble will perform a brief opening set. Both free concerts begin at 7:00 pm.

No Exit’s Laura King spoke with Anika Kildegaard  to learn more about her musical path and the intimate, exploratory listening experience LIGAMENT will offer their Northeastern Ohio audiences.

The interview is reposted with the permission of the ensemble and author. 

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Augustin Hadelich brings Mendelssohn to Severance Music Center

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by Mike Telin

“I absolutely love the beautiful playing of the Cleveland Orchestra,” violinist Augustin Hadelich said, “and every time I have returned has been a real highlight.”

On Thursday, February 5 at 7:30 pm, Hadelich will return to Severance Music Center to join The Cleveland Orchestra in Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Under the direction of guest conductor Antonello Manacorda, the program also includes Arnold Schoenberg’s Second Chamber Symphony, and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, “Unfinished.”

Although Hadelich’s busy touring schedule prevented a telephone interview, he graciously agreed to answer questions by email.

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Apollo’s Fire: Alan Choo shines light on Winter Sparks from Bach & Vivaldi

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By Mike Telin

Logging onto Zoom from Singapore, Apollo’s Fire concertmaster and assistant artistic director Alan Choo was in high spirits. “We just finished a dress rehearsal with Red Dot Baroque, Singapore’s first professional Baroque orchestra. It’s been around since 2018.”

Choo was especially excited to talk about his upcoming Apollo’s Fire concerts. He said what unifies the six works on “Winter Sparks” is that the composers take their works’ thematic material and pass it around to different soloists.

“Sometimes the music feels like a friendly conversation, sometimes it feels like a love duet, and sometimes it feels like a duo that is exploring the rhetoric of the conversation between soloists, which I think is quite interesting.”

On Thursday, January 29 at 7:30 pm at First United Methodist Church in Cuyahoga Falls, Apollo’s Fire will debut Winter Sparks from Bach & Vivaldi. The program will be repeated at 7:30 on January 30 & 31 at 7:30 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights and Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, and at 4:00 pm on February 1 at Rocky River Presbyterian Church. A pre-concert conversation with oboist Debra Nagy, hosted by Alan Choo, will take place one hour before each performance. Tickets are available online.

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No Exit and Zeitgeist: An Evocation of Our Current Time (Jan. 9)

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday, January 9 at SPACES, Cleveland-based No Exit and St. Paul-based Zeitgeist continued their long-standing collaboration with An Evocation of Our Current Time.

Unlike most performances where the audience is aware of what they will be experiencing, this one gave you very little information in advance other than it was to be “a 55-minute multimedia experience that draws on improvisation, film, artificial intelligence, environmental manipulation, lies, magic, gaslighting and other forms of chicanery.”

Unlike most No Exit concerts there were no elaborate programs to follow. And instead of presenting a number of works by a variety of composers, An Evocation of Our Current Time was a single work by No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer with technical assistance by James Praznik. As the capacity audience took their seats in the long gallery they were face to face with a dozen musicians, a projector, and a white wall.
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