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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.

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

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?

[Read more…]

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. 

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

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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Relic Ensemble takes a deep dive into The Odyssey

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by Mike Telin

What is there not to like about Homer’s Odyssey? The ancient Greek epic chronicles the warrior Odysseus’s ten year journey home following the Trojan War during which he is confronted by storms, monsters, and temptations.

On Sunday, January 18 at 7:30 pm at Heights Theater, the period instrument Relic Ensemble will present “The Odyssey.” The one-hour, original program will be presented without intermission. Tickets are available online.

I spoke with violinist Aniela Eddy and cellist Cullen O’Neil, two of the group’s founders and began by asking them where their Odyssey begins. [Read more…]

No Exit and Zeitgeist: An Evocation of Our Current Time

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by Mike Telin

NO EXIT evocation_jan_2026This week Cleveland-based No Exit and St. Paul-based Zeitgeist will continue their long-standing collaboration with “An Evocation of Our Current Time.” This 55-minute multimedia experience draws on improvisation, film, artificial intelligence, environmental manipulation, lies, magic, gaslighting and other forms of chicanery.

The 7:00 pm free performances are on Thursday at Trinity Cathedral, Friday at SPACES, and Saturday at Heights Arts.

No Exit’s Laura King spoke with artistic director/composer Tim Beyer about how the ensemble’s recent Surreality season reshaped their creative trajectory, why it’s important for artists to grapple with the foundational instability of “now,” and how audiences might react when confronted with a work that both mirrors and distorts the world we inhabit.

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

Laura King: Tim, please talk about how Surreality reshaped your thinking about what a No Exit concert can be, and how An Evocation of Our Current Time has grown out of that evolution.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire to bring back Praetorius Christmas Vespers

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by Mike Telin

On Friday, December 12 at 7:00 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Akron, Apollo’s Fire will revive its popular Praetorius’ Christmas Vespers under the direction of Jeannette Sorrell.

Soloists include sopranos Rebecca Myers, Andréa Walker, and Molly Netter, countertenor Doug Dodson, tenors Michael Jones and Matthew Newhouse, and bass Matthew Dexter along with Apollo’s Singers, and members of Apollo’s Musettes (Treble Youth Choir). The program will be repeated at 7:00 pm on the 18th and 19th at Trinity Cathedral, 7:00 pm on the 20th at First Baptist Church, and at 4:00 pm on the 21st at St. Raphael Catholic Church. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Jeannette Sorrell on Zoom and began our conversation by asking her when she first created the program.

Jeannette Sorrell: Exactly 20 years ago. So, we’re bringing it back on the 20th anniversary of the premiere. [Read more…]

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