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Delving into the silent era:
Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium (first of two articles)

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by Mike Telin

When we think of film composers, the names Miklós Rózsa, John Williams, and Randy Newman immediately come to mind. But who were the important composers from the silent era?

Next week, a consortium of area arts organizations will come together to present a festival celebrating some of the major masterworks of silent cinema. To highlight the local connection, the inaugural Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium will focus on the music of Cleveland native and film music pioneer John Stepan Zamecnik.

The Festival kicks off on Sunday, February 13 at 3:00 pm at the Hermit Club, when violinist Isabel Trautwein and other members of The Cleveland Orchestra will join Rodney Sauer, music director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, in a concert of chamber works by Zamecnik and his mentor, Antonín Dvořák.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical presents violinist Joshua Bell and soprano Larisa Martinez

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by Mike Telin

If you’re bummed that Punxsutawney Phil has predicted six more weeks of winter, you can shed those cold weather blues on Tuesday, February 8 at 7:30 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, when Tuesday Musical presents celebrated violinist Joshua Bell and acclaimed soprano Larisa Martinez.

The evening is also one of the first stops on their debut tour as a married couple. And remember that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. Click here for tickets.

The concept for their program — “Voice and the Violin” — began to take shape during the pandemic. “It actually worked in our favor,” Larisa Martinez said during a telephone interview. “We didn’t have a honeymoon because I had my Carnegie Hall debut four days after the wedding. Then we were both so hectic and in different countries, so the pandemic was almost a silver lining — which is how this program was born.”

In a separate interview, Joshua Bell said that creating a program for the two of them was inevitable. “We both respect each other’s musicianship. We’re married to each other so we were together in the house and somehow the lockdown helped give it a kick-start. It was a chance to work on some new arrangements and to look for little gems for voice and violin. And now it’s finally coming to fruition.” [Read more…]

McDaniel and Kirkwood at the Bop Stop Feb. 11

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by Mike Telin

“When I was growing up in rural Mississippi my mother was very good about taking me to Jackson or New Orleans to see whatever the new, big art exhibition was,” composer and keyboardist Buck McDaniel said during a recent telephone interview from his home in New York. “It must have been in 2008 or 2009 that there was a retrospective of Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy. There were some of his paintings, and his textiles.”

On Friday, February 11 at 8:00 pm, McDaniel returns to the Bop Stop with his long-time collaborator, electronic producer Jacob Kirkwood. The evening celebrates the release of the Duo’s latest CD, Patterns on Dufy, featuring saxophonist Noa Even. The recording will be made available on all streaming platforms that same day. Click here for tickets to the in-person performance. The event will also be livestreamed on the venue’s Facebook page.

McDaniel noted that Dufy’s textiles are full of bright-colored patterns. “As an adult with a more advanced relationship with patterns, I saw how musical his textiles are. And how these small beautiful cells can, through repetition, become a beautiful dress.” [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, January 28, 2022

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:00 pm Dave Becker will lead the BW Symphony Orchestra in a program to be announced at Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory. The concert is free. Click here to access the live stream.

At 7:00 pm organist Daryl Robinson (Christ Church Cathedral, Houston & University of Houston) will present a recital sponsored by the Cleveland Chapter of the American Guild of Organists at the Immaculate Conception Church, 4129 Superior Ave., in Cleveland. The event is free.

Also at 7:00 pm, the Somerset Trio, Danna Sundet, oboe, Mark Addleman, horn and Elizabeth Etter, piano, will present a program to be announced at the Church of the Western Reserve, 30500 Fairmount Blvd, Cleveland. The performance is free.

IN THE NEWS: 

Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium  

Next month a consortium of area arts organizations will come together to present a series of events celebrating some of the major masterworks of silent cinema. To highlight the Cleveland connection, the Festival will focus on the music of Cleveland native and film music pioneer John Stepan Zamecnik.

The week-long Festival kicks off on February 13 at 3:00 pm at the Hermit Club, when violinist Isabel Trautwein and other members of the Cleveland Orchestra join Rodney Sauer, music director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, in a concert of chamber works by Zamecnik and his mentor, Antonín Dvorak. Click here for tickets.

Zamecnik’s music will accompany a screening of the Buster Keaton classic Steamboat Bill, Jr., at the Apollo Theater in Oberlin on February 16, and at three Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque screenings: Wings(Feb. 18), The Wedding March, (Feb 19), and Sunrise, (Feb 20). Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Wedding March, and Sunrise will all feature live accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, an ensemble nationally known for its definitive interpretations of historic film scores.

During the festival, Mont Alto will be working with Oberlin students in a Winter Term project on locating, selecting, and compiling historic photoplay music for silent film accompaniment. An end of term free performance will be held at the Birenbaum Innovation and Performance Space on February 15 at 7:00 pm.

Click here to access the Festival Facebook Page. COVID protocols will be in place for all events. Proof of vaccinations/booster will be checked at the door and masks must be worn at all times.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

In a year that was full of unexpected events, it appears that January 28 was left alone although our Daily Diary archives reveal two debuts and one final curtain call of note.

Today marks the birth of Polish-American pianist Arthur Rubinstein in 1887 in Łódź, Poland. With a career spanning eight decades, he is regarded as one of the greatest pianists — and the greatest interpreter of Chopin — of all time. Relocating to California during WWII, he became a naturalized U.S. Citizen in 1946. He also lent his talents to Hollywood, providing piano soundtracks for films, including Song of Love with Katharine Hepburn, and playing himself in Carnegie Hall and Of Men and Music. Click here to watch a documentary of his life with historic film footage.

On this date in 1944, British avant-garde composer John Tavener was born in London. We featured his life in our Daily Diary last November 12, marking the date of his death. The English composer achieved wide renown for his religious works, many of which reflected his conversion to Orthodox Christianity in 1977. Among his best-sellers: The Protecting Veil (recorded by cellist Steven Isserlis), Song for Athene (sung at the end of the funeral for Princess Diana in Westminster Abbey in 1997), and the haunting little setting of William Blake’s The Lamb, inspired by his 3-year-old nephew and premiered at the 1982 King’s College Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Watch Quire Cleveland perform The Lamb at Trinity Cathedral in December, 2013.

The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge included The Lamb in a 2013 tribute to Tavener, along with his Mother of God, Today the Virgin, Funeral Ikos, and Song for Athene. Stephen Layton conducted the ensemble at the European Festival of Church Music in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany in July 2013. Watch here.

Finally, today we note the passing of violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler on this date in 1962. Like Rubinstein, he was regarded as one of the greatest musicians of all time. Listen to a WQXR interview on his 80th birthday in 1955 here. Kreisler was famous for his encores, and you can binge-listen to two hours of them here.

DIARY: Friday, January 21, 2022

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:15 pm enjoy the McGaffin Carillon Concert & Live Stream with George Leggiero. The playlist includes a Telemann violin fantasia arranged for the bells, three Baroque dances from an 18th century carillon notebook, two Mozart waltzes and two traditional English folk songs dreaming of springtime. Parking is free in the lot in front of the tower on Euclid Avenue & on Bellflower Rd. behind the tower, or tune in to the live stream. The event is free.

At 7:00 pm CityMusic Cleveland presents “Tales and Scenes”. The program features Johann Sebastian Bach’s Piano Concerto in f with Elizabeth DeMio, Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye, Joaquín Turina’s Escena Andaluza, Manuel de Falla’s “Fire Dance” from El Amor Brujo, and Elena Ruehr’s World Premiere (commissioned by CityMusic Cleveland) Shrine Church of St Stanislaus, 3649 E 65th St, Cleveland, OH 44105. The concert is free.

IN THE NEWS: 

Because of concerns about the safety of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus (COYC, pictured) gathering and rehearsing amid the continued steady increase of Covid-19 cases, the Cleveland Orchestra has announced a program update and time change for the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra’s (COYO) concert on Sunday, February 20. The concert is now a matinee, beginning at 3:00 p.m. Trumpeter Dasara Beta, one of the winners of the ensemble’s annual concerto competition, will perform Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto, replacing the previously announced music by Beethoven and Mozart featuring COYC.  Contact the Ticket Office at 216-231-1111 for ticket information. Find Severance’s updated Health and Safety Policy regarding Covid-19 here.

Do you want to play the piano but aren’t sure where to start? Do you know how to play some piano and want to take your skills to the next level? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, The Music Settlement in partnership Piano Cleveland has a class for you. The Keys to Musicianship, a new ten-week course, will teach students the basics of keyboard technique while increasing their skills in notation, theory, and musical creativity. First session runs from March 10 through May 19 at the Settlement’s Ohio City Campus.

The  deadline to apply for Tuesday Musical’s 2022 Annual Scholarship Competition is January 31. Applications are accepted on-line HERE.

Musical America’s Susan Elliott writes: “since our last One to One with Afa Dworkin in July 2020, she has seen some progress in performing arts organizations’ efforts to diversify, but, as she now puts it, “not enough.” As president and artistic director of the Sphinx Organization, this month honoring its 25th year of “transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts,” Dworkin should know.

During the conversation Dworkin maintains that the only way to overcome “centuries of systemic, intentional, and implicit exclusion”  in the performing arts is for every member of an organization, be it one devoted to opera, theater, ballet, or classical music, to get on board. It’s not just a “top-down” issue, she tells Elliott, calling on conservatories to join the crusade, but perhaps more importantly, a “bottom-up” one. Click here to watch.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today we celebrate the births of a quartet of American composers. While they may not be household names, they have all had fruitful careers. [Read more…]

Contemporary Youth Orchestra Enters a New Era in 27th Year

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by Mike Telin

Since 1995 the Contemporary Youth Orchestra has been engaging young musicians — and the public — through the study and performance of contemporary classical music.

Throughout its history CYO has adopted an expansive definition of contemporary music through collaborations with turntable artists, video game composers, and singer-songwriters, and through the annual Rock The Orchestra concert, each of which provides the membership with a lens into different aspects of the music industry.

Originally calling Cleveland State University home, in March of 2018 the organization relocated to the Tri-C Metro Campus. With the departure in 2020 of its founder Liza Grossman and the hiring this past fall of Kristopher Morron as the Orchestra’s new music director and conductor, the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, now in its 27th year, is entering a new era.

On January 29, CYO will hold an Open House from 8:30 am until 12:30 pm at the Tri-C Metro Campus Auditorium. For more information, email Ben Kipp.

Kipp, who is in his eighth year as CYO’s director of educational programming, said that the organization is proud of all the things that have been accomplished — especially their partnership with Cuyahoga Community College. “Tri-C is a big part of how we see the Orchestra merging into the greater music education community,” he said. “Along with Kim Deichler, our executive director, we’ve been strategizing and studying other successful groups in music and the arts. But I can’t stress enough how important the partnership with Tri-C is.” [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, January 13, 2022

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 pm Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”), Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Intensity (2019-2020), and  Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in the Mandel Concert Hall at Severance, 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Performances run through Saturday. Tickets available online.

IN THE NEWS: 

Oberlin Opera Theater Professor Christopher Mirto remembers “The Puppy Episode” as one of the funniest TV moments of his life. Actually a two-part episode of Ellen DeGeneres’ eponymous sitcom that aired in spring 1997, “The Puppy Episode” marked—in hilarious fashion—the long-rumored coming out of the program’s central character as well as the comedian who portrayed her.

Now a new opera inspired by the watershed moment will receive its world premiere at Oberlin: The Puppy Episode, composed by Matthew Recio with libretto by Royce Vavrek, will be presented in two performances Wednesday and Thursday, February 16 and 17, in Warner Concert Hall. Each performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Click here to read Erich Burnett’s article.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

According to the website Angel Number, the number 13 represents the combined energy of the numbers 1 and 3. It is a number with very strong symbolism and has great power.

Number 1 has a vibration of new ideas, new beginnings, progress and individuality, while the number 3 symbolizes passion, motivation, optimism, self–expression, inspiration. Number 3 is also the number of the Ascended Masters.

The number 13 is a karmic number. If the power of this number is used for selfish reasons, this number can bring disaster and destruction to the person who misused its power, causing this person illness and disease. It is the fear of disaster and destruction that causes Triskaidekaphobia — the fear or avoidance of the number 13.

In honor of this date we’ve created a playlist of 13 works that contain the number 13 in the title.

1) J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp No. 13 from The Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1 performed by Sviatoslav Richter. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, January 16, 2022

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 pm Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Hans Abrahamsen’s Vers le silence and Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Igor Levit in the Mandel Concert Hall at Severance, 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Performances run through Saturday. Tickets available online.

Click here to watch the pianist’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert from November 29, 2019.

IN THE NEWS: 

The Cleveland Museum of Art is home to the longest-running concert series of any museum of North America, presenting more than 5,000 concerts over the course of its first century.

In launching the Recorded Archive Editions, CMA will make available historically significant recordings of performances that were exceptional and unique to Cleveland.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, December 16, 2021

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:00 pm at The Temple-Tifereth Israel, CityMusic Cleveland will present From the New World. The program features the premiere of a new work by Michi Wiancko, in addition to Francisco J. de Castro’s Trio Sonata Op. 1 No. 3, Andrea Falconieri’s Passacalle a 3, Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D “Fandango,” as well as Folias echa para mi Señora Doña Tarolilla de Carallenos and selections from the Codex Martínez Compañón. Performerss include Guillermo Salas-Suarez & Alan Choo, Baroque violins, Yael Senamaud, Baroque viola, Sophie Benn, Baroque cello, QinYin Tang, harpsichord, and Jeremy Bass, Baroque guitar. The concert is free.

The Cleveland Orchestra Holiday Concerts continue at 7:30 pm in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center. Tickets are available online.

At 7:30 pm in Kulas Recital Hall, the Oberlin Guitar Ensemble, directed by Stephen Aron, performs works by Astor Piazzolla,  Mauro Giuliani, Yvonne Desportes, J.S. Bach, Leo Brouwer, Maneul de Falla, and Celso Machado. The concert is free. Click here for a detailed program and here to access the live stream.

At 8:00 pm at First Congregational Church UCC in Elyria, the Eastman School of Music Historical Keyboards Department (pictured), under the direction of Lisa Goode Crawford, presents J.S. Bach’s Concertos for Multiple Harpsichords. Performers include Lindsey Williams, Dylan Sanzenbacher, Ryan Chan & Ali Santos, harpsichords, James Marshall and  Rachel Smith, violins, Juliana Kilcoyne, viola, Owen Cummings, cello, and  Ariel Walton, bass. On the program: the Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C, BWV 1061, Concerto for Three Harpsichords in d, BWV 1063, and  Concerto for Four Harpsichords in a, BWV 1065. The performance is free.

IN THE NEWS: 

On Tuesday, Jeannette Sorrell made her conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic. New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini wrote:  “…the New York Philharmonic — joined by Apollo’s Singers, the chorus of the early-music ensemble Apollo’s Fire, and four superb vocal soloists, all led by Jeannette Sorrell — gave a splendid performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Riverside Church.”

Click here to read the full review.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this day in 1770 Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany. In response to a request for a comment, we received a text from the composer saying: “Enough with the celebrating, I’m 251 years-old. Leave me alone already.”

However, if you still want to keep the party going, click here to read musicologist John Wilson’s essay on why we should change the way we program Beethoven in his anniversary year.

December 16 also saw the birth of American operatic tenor James McCracken in Gary, Indiana in 1926. Hailed by The New York Times as “the most successful dramatic tenor yet produced by the United States…” McCracken began singing in his church choir during childhood.

McCracken, who studied music at Columbia University, made his professional opera debut in 1952 in the role of Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème with Colorado’s Central City Opera.

While still a student, he sang minor roles at the Metropolitan Opera, and in 1957 made his debut at the Vienna State Opera. In 1963 he began his long association with The Met, and quickly became one of the company’s principal dramatic tenors.

Click here to listen to McCracken sing Nessun dorma with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia conducted by Lamberto Gardelli.

No Exit embarks on a number of firsts 

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by Mike Telin

Note: the concert on Saturday, December 18 has now been cancelled due to COVID concerns.

Now that musical ensembles are presenting concerts in front of in-person audiences, many groups are reviving plans that had been put on hold.

On Saturday, December 18 at 8:00 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop, No Exit will present the last of three area concerts in partnership with a group of composers known as The Collective.

The program includes works by Amelia Kaplan, Mathew Rosenblum, Douglas Knehans, Cindy Cox, Pamela Madsen, and Konstantin Koukias. The concert is free.

“This is a new adventure in programming — playing an entire program of pieces by one group of composers,” No Exit artistic director Tim Beyer said during a recent telephone conversation. “We will be playing their works throughout this season.” [Read more…]

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