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Jukka-Pekka Saraste returns to Cleveland with “Beethoven’s Fateful Fifth”

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by Mike Telin

After presenting two concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall on the 20th and 21st of January, The Cleveland Orchestra then headed south for their Florida residency. And on Friday, February 9 at 7:30 pm, they will return to their home base of Severance Music Center to present the first of three performances of Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online. [ALL PERFORMANCES ARE SOLD OUT]

This week also marks the long-awaited return of Finnish conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste. “It’s a pleasure to come back to Cleveland. It’s been a while — my last time was when I was in Toronto [as music director of the Toronto Symphony] — so it must have been about 20 years ago,” he said during a Zoom conversation from his home in Helsinki.

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No Exit: Piano Dada at Cleveland Museum of Art

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by Mike Telin 

This week No Exit will continue their season-long multifaceted exploration and celebration of Surrealism on February 9 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium with “Piano Dada.” The free concert takes an entertaining dive into the realm of dreams, the irrational, the unconscious and the inexplicable.

“We’re very excited about this concert because it is our Cleveland Museum of Art debut,” No Exit’s artistic director Timothy Beyer said during a telephone conversation.

The program will include five works for solo piano performed by Shuai Wang — Francis Picabia’s La Nourrice Américaine (fast) and La Nourrice Américaine (slow), Darius Milhaud’s Caramel Mou, Georges Auric’s Adieu, New York!, and E.L.T. Mesens’ Drie Composities Voor Klavier — as well as a video of Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist Anthem.

Beyer noted that with the exception of Milhaud, Picabia, Auric, Mesens and Tzara were not composers per se. “They were artists. But these are great pieces that represent the beginning of avant-garde conceptualized music, which is prevalent today — John Cage took his cues from the Dadist’s playbook.” [Read more…]

Taking Up Serpents: Fire-and-brimstone at BW

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by Mike Telin

In her 2023 article “The History of Snake Handling in Religion,” published in Grunge, Sarah Crocker writes, “According to National Geographic, [the practice] is now most often understood as a uniquely American religious observance, typically practiced in rural Appalachian churches that are associated with Pentecostal Christians and other charismatic Protestant denominations.”

On Friday, February 2 at 8:00 pm in the Kleist Center for Arts & Drama, Baldwin Wallace Opera will present Taking Up Serpents. With a score by Kamala Sankaram and an original story inspired by librettist Jerre Dye’s roots in the Deep South, the opera tells the story of 25-year-old Kayla, the estranged daughter of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who is dangerously bitten by one of his own snakes. Kayla’s journey home forces her to confront her troubled upbringing.

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CIM Opera Theater to present Glory Denied: a conversation with director Kathryn Frady

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by Mike Telin

After serving their country, many veterans are faced with multiple challenges as they re-adjust to civilian life. At the top of that list is reconnecting with and re-establishing a role in the family and in society. These issues will be addressed this weekend when the Cleveland Institute of Music presents Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied on Saturday, January 27 at 3:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. The production will be repeated on Sunday, also at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Based on the book by Tom Philpott, the two-act, 80-minute chamber opera tells the true story of Jim Thompson, the longest-held prisoner of war in U.S. military history, as he tries to re-assimilate into American life after spending nine years behind enemy lines in Vietnam.

“Glory Denied is undeniably one of the most performed American operas of our time,” guest stage director Kathryn Frady said by telephone. “Companies everywhere are doing it.”

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Modern Italian folk group Alla Boara celebrates new album at CMA

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by Mike Telin

While earning his bachelor’s degree in music performance from the School of Jazz at The New School in New York City, percussionist Anthony Taddeo was tasked with writing a paper, and his search for a topic led him to the New York Public Library. There he stumbled across a little-known archive of field recordings made by the folklorist Alan Lomax during a sojourn in Italy.

“My dad being from Italy, I thought that writing about Italian folk music would be a cool way to kind of dig into my roots,” the Cleveland native said during a recent conversation.  “I was absolutely dumbfounded by how beautiful and diverse the music was. I was so impacted by that — it was the first time I felt like my heritage and my profession collided. So I made a mental note to figure out some way to bring recognition to this beautiful art form.”

After completing a master’s in composition at Youngstown State University, touring North America and Europe, and being featured on over 30 albums, Taddeo decided to turn to the Italian folk music he had fallen in love with as an undergraduate.

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The Cleveland Orchestra MLK Celebration Concert: a conversation with violinist Amaryn Olmeda

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by Mike Telin

It’s always fun to ask someone how it feels to be making their debut performance with The Cleveland Orchestra. And while all the responses come with excitement, there was a bit of extra enthusiasm in the voice of Amaryn Olmeda.

“I can’t wait,” the 15-year-old violinist said during a recent interview. “It’s just so crazy to me because I grew up listening to all their recordings — putting them on my playlist and playing along with them. Then all of a sudden I’m performing with them. So I’m very excited for this opportunity and I’m very honored that they chose me to play with them at their Martin Luther King concert.”

On Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Daniel Reith and William Henry Caldwell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus in a program that commemorates 60 years since the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. The concert will feature works by J. Rosamond Johnson, Adolphus Hailstork, Jame P. Johnson, and the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, Allison Loggins-Hull. Click here for free tickets.

The program will also include Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane with soloist Amaryn Olmeda, winner of first prize and the audience choice award at the 24th Annual Sphinx Competition. I reached the violinist by phone and began by asking her how she came to choose the piece.

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Les Délices: Noel, Noel from darkness into light

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by Mike Telin

With the Winter Solstice and the conclusion of Advent upon us, the days grow shorter in the Northern Hemisphere — a quiet time for meditation, reflection, and anticipation that brightness will soon arrive.

On Wednesday, December 20 at 7:30 pm at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron, Les Délices will present Noel, Noel, performed by Amanda Powell (soprano), Debra Nagy (recorder and direction), Julie Andrijeski and Allison Monroe (violins), Rebecca Landell (viola da gamba), Mark Edwards (organ), and Daniel Swenberg (theorbo and Baroque guitar). The program will be repeated on Thursday at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church and Friday at the Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church, both at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

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Cleveland Chamber Choir: 
“Holidays from the Iberian Peninsula”

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by Mike Telin

“I can’t count the number of holiday programs I have conducted in my life,” Greg Ristow said during a telephone conversation. “But I think I’m more excited about this one than any I’ve ever conducted because the music is all so fun — there’s no other way to put it.”

On Friday, December 15 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin’s Fairchild Chapel, Ristow will lead the Cleveland Chamber Choir in “Holidays from the Iberian Peninsula.” The program includes works by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Matteo Flecha el Viejo, Vicente Lusitano, and Salamone Rossi, as well as music from the Sephardic Jewish tradition. The free program will be repeated on Saturday the 16th at 7:00 pm at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland.

While the concert will feature many audience favorites, Ristow noted that it also includes a number of long-hidden gems, including Flecha’s La Bomba, which opens the program. “He wrote in a genre we call ensalada, the Spanish word for salad, because it is as if you take snippets of madrigals, snippets of church polyphony, and snippets of Renaissance dance, and put them all together in a giant salad bowl and shake them up. And the result is this delightful, constantly changing mix of styles.”

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Apollo’s Fire: “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas” — Tina Bergmann talks about the hammered dulcimer

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by Mike Telin

Imagine that it’s Christmas night in Ireland, 1849. Families and friends gather for an evening of singing, storytelling, and due to the Potato Famine, tearful farewells. 

This setting serves as the inspiration for Apollo’s Fire’s “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas.” Written and designed by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, this theatrical concert follows the journey of the Irish immigrants who crossed the Atlantic to America through carols, reels, and stories.  

Led by Sorrell, the program features Irish singer Fiona Gillespie, vocalist Sam Kreindenweis, Kathie Stewart on wooden flutes, fiddlers Susanna Perry Gilmore, Emi Tanabe, and Caitlin Hedge, Tina Bergmann on hammered dulcimer, and Anna O’Connell on vocals and Celtic harp. Performances begin on Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30 at Bath Church UCC and run through December 17. Irish actress Derdriu Ring joins the company December 14-17. See our Concert Listings for times and locations. Tickets are available online.  

Bergmann, who is a regular on Apollo’s Fire crossover programs, first met Sorrell nearly 30 years ago while the conductor was looking for a hammered dulcimer player for an early American program. “She went to the Kent State Folk Festival, which is sort of my home festival, and came to one of the workshops where a good handful of hammered dulcimer players were presenting,” Bergmann recalled during a telephone conversation. “She approached me afterward and I invited her to my apartment. She had me play for her, and that’s how it started. I think it was in 1994, so it’s been an incredible journey.”

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No Exit & Zeitgeist delve into “The Unconscious”

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by Mike Telin

No Exit continues their Year of Surreality this week with “The Unconscious.” The ensemble will be joined by longtime collaborators Zeitgeist for a program featuring four world premiere films — The Birdhouse, conceived and written by Timothy Beyer and filmed by James Praznik, breathing room by Luke Haaksmsa, In Fourteen Steps by James Praznik, and Between Here and There, a collaboration between Zeitgeist and composer and multimedia artist Philip Blackburn. The free, 7:00 pm performances will be held on Thursday, November 30 at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, Friday, December 1 at Waterloo Arts, and Saturday, December 2 at SPACES.

As part of “The Unconscious,” Cleveland-based artists Leila Khoury and Kristen Newell have created Revelations of the Unconscious Mind (a surrealist dreamscape), which will serve as an exhibit unto itself as well as a performance space. The exhibit is on display at SPACES through December 15.

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