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CelloBello Celebrates the Cleveland Quartet: a conversation with Paul Katz

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by Mike Telin

Prior to embarking on a tour of the Soviet Union in 1988, the Cleveland Quartet — Donald Weilerstein and Peter Salaff (violins), James Dunham (viola), and Paul Katz (cello), received word from Goskino USSR, the State Committee on Cinematography, that they wanted to make documentary about the tour. “They wanted it to be an English-language film made for American television.” Paul Katz recalled during a Zoom conversation.

But with the abolishing of Goskino in November of 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December of that year, the film, although in its final edits, was never released. “I don’t know exactly how it resurfaced, but I noticed there was a video of Barber’s Adagio with the Cleveland Quartet on YouTube. It is footage from the film, so I thought that it had to live somewhere.”

On November 29 at 7:30 pm at Reinberger Chamber Hall in Severance Music Center, Notes From Behind the Iron Curtain: Cleveland Quartet’s 1988 Soviet Tour will finally receive its premiere. Following the screening, attendees will have the unique opportunity to engage in a Q&A session with Cleveland Quartet members.

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Pietari Inkinen to make Cleveland Orchestra debut

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by Mike Telin

“I am thrilled to be making my debut with this wonderful orchestra,” Pietari Inkinen said. “The Cleveland Orchestra is one of the greatest in the world and for any conductor it is an honor to be invited to conduct in Cleveland.”

On Friday, November 24 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, the Finnish conductor will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Dvořák’s Othello Overture and Symphony No. 8, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Augustin Hadelich as soloist. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 and Sunday at 3:00. Tickets are available online.

Born in Kouvola, Finland, Inkinen began studying the violin and piano at the age of  four. He attended the Sibelius Academy, where he graduated with diplomas in violin in 2003 and conducting in 2005, and also studied violin at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. As a violinist, he has appeared as soloist with many orchestras including the Finnish Radio Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic, and as a chamber musician he has appeared with the Inkinen Trio at the Wigmore Hall and St. John’s Smith Square.

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No Exit: “Surreal Games” (Oct. 14)

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by Mike Telin

To celebrate their 15th anniversary No Exit has created their most ambitious project to date. Their season-long series Surreality encompasses a range of artistic media to present an immersive, multidisciplinary exploration of surrealism as expressed in music, art, film, poetry, literature, and performance art.

The series kicked off with “Surreal Games,” which took its inspiration from the parlor games and thought exercises employed by the Surrealists. The program featured world premieres of musical works interspersed with poetry, as well as a corresponding art installation titled Collaborage, which was on view at Heights Arts. I attended the performance at SPACES on October 14.

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Apollo’s Fire presents Fire and Joy: Nicole Divall talks about the ‘Viola of Love’

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by Mike Telin

“The first time I played the viola d’amore it was a bit of a rush job,” Apollo’s Fire principal viola Nicole Divall recalled. “It was for the St. John Passion and I borrowed an instrument and just fell in love with it. Its sound was just so sweet and beautiful I couldn’t stop practicing.”

On Thursday, November 16 at 7:30 pm at First United Methodist Church in Akron, Divall will be the featured soloist in Vivaldi’s Concerto in d for viola d’amore and orchestra.

Directed by Jeannette Sorrell, the program also includes Bach’s Oboe Concerto in F with Debra Nagy as soloist, Vivaldi’s Concerto in d for Two Violins & Cello, and three Bach Sinfonias as well as Brandenburg Concerto No. 4

The program will be repeated on Friday at 7:30 at Lakewood United Methodist, on Saturday at 8:00 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, and Sunday at 4:00 at University Circle United Methodist Church. Violinist Andrew Fouts will give a pre-concert talk one hour before each performance. Tickets are available online.

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CIM Opera Theater explores a Baroque fantasy world of love and magic with student production of Handel’s Alcina

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by Mike Telin
This article was originally published in the Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com

“Fantasy and opera go hand-in-hand really well,” CIM Opera Theater interim director JJ Hudson said during a telephone call. And when it comes to fantasy, the Cleveland Institute of Music’s upcoming production of George Frederick Handel’s Alcina is all about fantasy. “We’re not downplaying the various reversals of fortune via magic — that’s part of the fun, and we want this show to be fun,” says Hudson.

Still, Hudson does think the opera’s plot is a little bizarre. The story takes place on a magical island belonging to the sorceress Alcina, who seduces every man who comes along, only to turn them into rocks or wild animals once she’s grown tired of their company.

Her most recent victim is the knight Ruggiero, which causes his fiancée Bradamante and her guardian Melisso to follow him to the island. Disguised as a man named Ricciardo, she attempts to free Ruggiero with the help of a magic ring. The plan goes astray when Alcina’s sister Morgana becomes smitten with Ricciardo and dumps her lover Oronte. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra presents Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child: a conversation with Aphrodite Patoulidou

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by Mike Telin

Canadian composer Claude Vivier was born in 1948 in Montreal. That same day he was placed in an orphanage by his mother where he would live until age two and a half, when he was adopted by the Vivier family. The composer spent his entire life in hopes of finding his birth parents — but to no avail. His ongoing search for his identity inspired many of his compositions including his 1980 work for soprano and orchestra, Lonely Child.

On Thursday, November 9 at 7:30 pm, soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou will sing Vivier’s haunting work with The Cleveland Orchestra. The Severance Music Center program, under the direction of Barbara Hannigan, also includes Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 44 (“Trauersinfonie”) and Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. The program will be repeated on Friday at 11:00 (no Vivier) and Saturday at 8:00. Tickets are available online.

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, Aphrodite Patoulidou exemplifies the 21st-century creative. Now based in Berlin, the soprano is also a songwriter, photographer, painter, and poet. She was also the lead singer with the heavy metal band Igorrr.

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Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra: a new season of discoveries

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by Mike Telin

A challenge in programming for a young orchestra as talented as the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra is choosing repertoire that teaches them how to be a better 21st century ensemble while also being enjoyable to play.

On Sunday, November 12 at 3:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Daniel Reith will lead the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in two well-known works, and two of Reith’s recent discoveries. Tickets are available online.

The concert will open with Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. The work was written as a tribute to the University of Breslau, which had awarded him an honorary doctorate in philosophy. And like all good students, Reith said he was happy that the young musicians of  COYO are such a curious group.

“Telling them about the origins of the piece really caught their attention,” the conductor said during a Skype conversation. “ I thought it would be fun to do a piece that contains themes of famous student songs of Brahms’ time. And explaining the background to the song about a little fox who is annoying his parents by his curiosity, really fascinated them.”

The afternoon will continue with María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir’s Oceans, a work Reith said he discovered through lucky coincidence. “I was searching for pieces on the topic of water for one of our educational concerts last season. Sadly it didn’t fit that program, but it was a wonderful discovery that I thought would be a great piece for COYO.”

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Stewart Goodyear to make Cleveland debut at CIM

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by Mike Telin

“This will be my first time in Cleveland,” Canadian pianist and composer Stewart Goodyear said by phone from Toronto, where he serves as Artist in Residence at the Royal Conservatory. “Toronto is so close, I don’t know why it took me so long, but I am excited about my visit.”

Goodyear will make his Cleveland debut on Wednesday, November 8 at 7:30 pm in Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall. The program will include works by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Clara Schumann, and Goodyear himself. The concert is part of CIM’s Perspective Series. The event is free but reservations are required.

How did this debut come about? “I just received a call from the Cleveland Institute of Music asking me if I would be interested in doing a mini residency that would be a combination of lessons, a lecture, and a recital.”

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Rocky River Chamber Music Society: a conversation with cellist Keith Robinson

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by Mike Telin

While it is common to discover that a trio of musicians all attended the same conservatory or university, it is not so common to discover that the trio all attended the same high school. “Hyunsoon and I were in high school together at the North Carolina School of the Arts,” cellist Keith Robinson said during a recent phone call. “In fact, Dan went there too.”

On Monday, November 6 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Robinson will be joined by pianist Hyunsoon Whang and clarinetist Daniel McKelway in a concert that includes Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata in c, Sergei Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata in C, and Johannes Brahms’ Intermezzo in A, Op. 118, No. 2 as well as his Clarinet Trio. The free concert is part of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series. Click here for the livestream.

Robinson, who is a founding member of the Miami String Quartet, noted that Monday’s concert will be his debut performance of the Prokofiev Sonata. “Hyunsoon and I have played the Barber and Rachmaninoff sonatas together and we were thinking about doing the same. Then we said, ‘Wait, let’s learn a new piece’ — it just makes it interesting for us.”

The cellist said that he has found the Prokofiev to be “really enchanting,” and that it complements Barber quite well. “They’re pretty close in age — Barber wrote his in 1932 and Prokofiev was in the late ‘40s. The Barber is dark and brooding, and the Prokofiev can be pretty funny at times. You can tell the Barber is heavily influenced by Brahms, and because it’s in the key of c-minor, it is dark.”

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Dana Jessen receives Cleveland Arts Prize

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by Mike Telin

Tonight, October 26, the Cleveland Arts Prize will hold its 63rd annual awards ceremony at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The CAP promotes creativity in Northeast Ohio by honoring artists for artistic excellence and recognizing community leaders who help arts flourish in the region.

Among the list of distinguished recipients is Dana Jessen, who will receive a mid-career artist prize for music. Jessen is a trailblazer in the world of new and improvised music. Hailed as a “bassoon virtuoso” (Chicago Reader), she is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a Huygens Fellowship. In addition to her active solo career, her resume includes world premiere performances with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Dal Niente, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra, S.E.M. Ensemble, and the Amsterdam Contemporary Ensemble. As an educator she serves as Associate Professor of Contemporary Music and Improvisation at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

I caught up with Dana Jessen by phone and began our conversation by congratulating her.

Dana Jessen: Thank you. I am incredibly honored. I was telling somebody that it felt like the Cleveland Arts Prize was actually looking at all of the things that I do. It’s not just that I’m a bassoonist, but that I also write my own pieces, I play with electronics, and I improvise. I also interpret pieces that I’ve commissioned. And I teach. So it’s very humbling to be seen for the entirety of what I do as opposed to one thing or the other.

[Read more…]

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