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Les Délices to premiere Jonathan Woody’s Much Love Betray’d on Orpheus program

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by Mike Telin

No mythological character has inspired musicians more than Orpheus. Legend has it that his music was so powerful that trees and mountains bowed in his presence — his song so beautiful that he convinced the ruler of the underworld to allow him to bring his love Eurydice back from the underworld.  

The legend will be brought to life on Thursday, October 7, when Les Délices debuts “Song of Orpheus” on Marquee TV. The program features rarely-heard cantatas by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Philippe Courbois performed by Hannah De Priest, soprano, Jonathan Woody, baritone, Shelby Yamin, violin, Debra Nagy, oboe, Rebecca Reed, gamba and cello, and Mark Edwards, harpsichord. The program will also include the premiere of Woody’s cantata Much Love Betray’d. The online-only event will remain available on demand through November 6. Click here for tickets.

Woody’s performance resumé includes two national tours with Apollo’s Fire, and appearances as soloist with period groups including the Boston Early Music Festival, Tafelmusik, Trinity Wall Street, New York Polyphony, Bach Collegium San Diego, and New York Baroque Incorporated. But he is also a leader in the historical performance performer/composer movement.

During a recent telephone conversation, Woody said that his dedication to keeping the early music canon alive can be traced back to when he was a student of musicologist and historical performance pioneer Bruce Haynes. “I was lucky enough to have him as a professor at McGill University, and he definitely engendered the mentality that the canon of early music could remain alive, and that we had the power to continue to add to it and make it something that wasn’t just stuck in the past.”

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, September 30, 2021

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by Mike Telin

NEWS BRIEFS:

The biggest news in American music occurred this past Monday with the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Terrance Blanchard’s Fire Shot Up in My Bones (above, New York Times photo of Blanchard on the Met stage by Wayne Lawrence as published on The Hub (League of American Orchestras).

Yes it was the first performance on the Met stage in 18-months, but more importantly it was the first time the company has staged an opera by a Black composer (Blanchard), a Black librettist (Kasi Lemmons), a Black co-director for a main-stage production (Camille A. Brown), as well as an almost entirely Black cast, chorus and dance troupe. The Opera is based on a 2014 memoir by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, recounting his turbulent upbringing in rural Louisiana.

Writing for NPR, Nate Chinen says that “Blanchard’s music for Fire is glowingly consonant but full of subtle harmonic and timbral surprises (along with strategic flickers of dissonance). He goes on to say: “Strikingly, given Blanchard’s profile as a jazz artist, Fire eludes description as a ‘jazz opera.’ Its language is avowedly classical, with elements drawn from the canonical composers, like Puccini, that defined Blanchard’s early exposure to the art form.” [Read more…]

CD Review — Frank Huang explores Solo Piano Works of Nikolai Medtner

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by Mike Telin

Although Rachmaninoff is said to have called him the greatest composer of his lifetime, the music of Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) has never achieved the notoriety of his friend and constant supporter.

With the release of the first of his nine-disc recording project of the Russian Romantic composer’s works for solo piano on the Centaur Records label, Frank Huang leaves you anticipating the next eight with adroit performances of three of Medtner’s beguiling compositions.

The recording also leaves you asking yourself why Medtner’s music isn’t programmed more often.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, September 23, 2021

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

At ​​7:30 pm it’s the Vanessa Rubin Quintet. Presented in partnership with Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, Rubin will sing classics, ballads and blues on the Maiden Lane Stage, 51 E. Market St. in downtown Akron. In case of rain, the concert moves next door into the Musica Club. The event is free.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Cuyahoga Arts and Culture reports that while the wider economy is reopening, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to be devastating for local nonprofit arts organizations and creative workers.

According to a survey of 65 of General Operating Support grant recipients, steady job loss and revenue loss has continued in 2021. The organizations reported 1,636 total people laid off, furloughed or with reduced hours between January and June 2021.

And that after more than 15 months, 65 Cuyahoga County-based arts and culture nonprofits funded by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture continue to report layoffs as organizations operate with less capacity.

The survey finds that Federal funding is helping to make up some lost revenues and helping groups to adapt programming and connect with residents. But overall, the pandemic continues to negatively impact the creative economy and community quality of life.

From March 2020, when the 65 CAC-funded organizations began tracking, through June 30, 2021, the organizations reported:

  • Total people laid off, furloughed, or hours reduced: 4,793
  • Total revenue loss: $146,025,012
  • Total federal funds (CARES Act, Shuttered Venue Operators Grants, etc.) received: $81,294,617
  • Total revenue loss not recouped: $64,730,395

“The hard truth is that the creative economy will be one of the last to recover from the pandemic,” executive director of CAC, Jill M. Paulsen said. “Ohio’s creative industry continues to suffer from the highest unemployment rate among all sectors. CAC has accelerated payment of our grants and worked with Cuyahoga County to secure CARES Act funding, but it may not be enough for some organizations.”

Read the full report here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, August 26, 2021

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

​​At 6:30 pm, Stars in the Classics Summer Garden Concert features pianists Alexander Kostritsa, Cher Liu, Nikolay Pushkarev and John Simmons, violinists Maria Beyens, Victor Beyens, Maude Cloutier and Regina Laza, violist Brian Slawta, cellists Brendon Phelps and Mingyao Zhu, clarinetist Shihao Zhu, oboist Adrian Gonzalez, bassist Henry Samuels and vocalists Elizabeth Frey, and Isa Luchi. The program includes a selection of music by Russian, Czech, and Scandinavian composers. Socially distanced seating, prepackaged food and canned beverages included. Bring your own wine.. Private residence in Orange Village. Rain date: August 27. Tickets: $50 ($75 patron). RSVP here. If it’s sold out, there’s another performance on August 29.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year Festival returns this Friday and Saturday, bringing you online performances from the world-class ensembles nominated for the magazine’s 2021 Orchestra of the Year Award. Each concert begins at  2pm (EST), and will be available to watch for 24 hours on the Gramophone website, Facebook page and YouTube channel.

The Festival will feature performances by the Academy of Ancient Music, Accademia Bizantina, Bamberger Symphoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, The Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Philharmonia Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. Click here for more information.

Akron’s ArtsNow has released a new video that showcases Tuesday Musical’s Annual Scholarship Competition as part of the Akron Cultural Plan. Click here to listen to Oberlin graduate and Akron Symphony clarinetist Amer Hasan talk about how being a Tuesday Musical scholarship recipient has impacted his career in music.

And this morning Kirshbaum Associates announced that the Emerson String Quartet will retire at the end of summer 2023. Truly the end of an era.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Today we wish Nico Muhly a happy 40th birthday. Born in Randolph, Vermont, the composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist grew up in Providence, Rhode Island where he sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church. After studying at the Wheeler School in Providence he went on to enroll in the dual-degree program at Columbia University and the Juilliard School.

While at Juilliard, Muhly worked for composer Philip Glass, first as an archivist, and later as an editor, conductor, and keyboardist.

Muhly’s musical influences are diverse, ranging from the Anglican choral tradition to minimalism. He has written for and collaborated with artists including Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, James McAlister, Björk, the indie rock band Grizzly Bear, Antony and the Johnsons, and toured with Irish songwriter, actor, vocalist and guitarist Glen Hansard.

He has received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tallis Scholars and St. John’s College, Cambridge. His more than 100 works for the concert stage include the operas, Two Boys and Marnie, both of which were staged by the Metropolitan Opera. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective and Inlet Dance Theater at Cain Park 

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by Mike Telin

In her article Four Qualities of Classic Literature, MJ Booklover says that

A great writer has something specific to say, or perhaps, more typically, a big question to ask about the nature of the world as it was in the times of that writer. But a great work also observes truths about the human condition as it occurs in any age. 

Perhaps no writer has captured the timeless truths of the human condition more profoundly than William Shakespeare, and nowhere as persuasively as in The Tempest, the inspiration for Ty Alan Emerson’s new ballet, Caliban Ascendant.

“This project started about eight years ago when I was working with a friend of mine, Josh Legg,” Emerson (pictured below) said during a telephone conversation. “He’s a choreographer and a wonderful person. We wanted to collaborate on a project so we started talking about what we’d like to do. I had seen many productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I saw one at Bowling Green that was really fun — they actually put a gamelan onstage and Caliban was played by a two-person puppet. So I thought, ‘I’d like to dig into that.’”

On Sunday, August 29 at 8:00 pm at Cain Park Amphitheater, the Cleveland Chamber Music Collective in partnership with Inlet Dance Theatre will present the world premiere of Caliban Ascendant. The ballet is based on a story developed by Joshua Legg and Ty Alan Emerson and features music by Emerson and choreography by Bill Wade in collaboration with Dominic Moore-Dunson, Kevin Parker, Emily Stonecipher, and Katie Wilber. [Read more…]

Jonathan Biss to perform
Caroline Shaw’s Watermark
with The Cleveland Orchestra 

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by Mike Telin

When pianist Jonathan Biss pitched the concept for his Beethoven/5 project to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, he was certain the idea of commissioning five composers to write new concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven’s, would be seen as too daunting. Much to his surprise, the SPCO ran with the idea. Even more of a surprise was the number of orchestras who signed on to the project as co-commissioners.

In November of 2017 Biss gave The Cleveland Orchestra premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Piano Concerto: Il sogno di Stradella, (Beethoven No. 4). He’ll follow that up on Saturday, August 28 at 7:00 pm at Blossom Music Center with Caroline Shaw’s Watermark (Beethoven No. 3).

“Being with The Cleveland Orchestra is always special for me,” Biss said during a recent telephone conversation. “And given that I played the Sciarrino in Cleveland, I need to talk about how different the two pieces are and how unbelievably different the composers’ approaches to the project were.”

Biss noted that the connection between the Sciarrino and the fourth concerto is so oblique that he had to “go hunting for it.” But with Watermark, Caroline Shaw clearly uses the third concerto as its starting point.

“Caroline said something that I found very interesting. She said that she was trying to ‘write the writing process of Beethoven,’ which I think was her way of saying that she’s imagining how Beethoven might have found his way toward many of the ideas that ended up being central to the third concerto. I think it’s interesting because although I’ve spent my whole life immersed in great music, I don’t think I understand all that much about how the creative process works — how a composer gets from a blank page to a fully realized piece of music. So I find it incredibly fascinating to hear someone like Caroline, whose life’s work is being a composer, engage with the question of how someone else conceives of a piece of music.”

[Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, August 19, 2021

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by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:00 pm, the Fine Arts Association Faculty Artist Recital Series will present the Fine Arts Chamber Orchestra, Michael Lund Ziegler, conducting, and the Muse Trio (Jenny Cluggish, violin, Melissa Lund Ziegler, viola and Daniel Pereira, cello). The inaugural performance by the orchestra includes Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, Ernst von Dohnáni’s Serenade in C, Op. 10 (Muse Trio), and the premiere of Gamer Troll Loses Control, a new work by Matthew Saunders inspired by Fine Arts Student Artwork by Gabe Elliot, Rosalynd Gruden, Callie Roberts and Sophie Shaposka. Fine Arts Association, 38660 Mentor Ave. Willoughby. Click here for tickets. Read our preview article here.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Lorain County Community College Signature Series, curated by composer Jeffrey Mumford, will present four concerts during the coming season. Oberlin cello professor Darrett Adkins will play the Annual Eva Hornyak Memorial Concert on September 28, Duo Anime (percussionists Andrew Pongracz and Mell Csicsila) will premiere a new work by LCCC’s Gerald Evans on February 8, the Longleash Piano Trio, (Pala Garcia, violin, John Popham, cello & Renate Rohlfing, piano) will perform on March 29, and the CIM New Music Ensemble, Keith Fitch, director, will close out the season on April 19. Concerts are free on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm in the Cirigliano Studio Theatre at the Stocker Center for the Arts in Elyria (except for the CIM Ensemble, who will perform in Cinema Hall).

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Today we celebrate the birth of composer ​​George Enescu, but we’ll begin by marking the passing of Russian art critic, patron, and ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (pictured above, center, with Igor Stravinsky, left, and dancer Serge Lifar, right), who died in Venice, Italy on August 19, 1929 at the age of 57.

Although Diaghilev composed his first work at age 15 and later studied music with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, it was his passion for promoting Russian art that would lead to his founding of The Ballets Russes. From 1909 to 1929 the Paris-based company toured across Europe as well as North and South America. Interestingly, the company never performed in Russia. Still, because of its innovative collaborations with important choreographers, composers, designers, and dancers, The Ballets Russes is heralded as the most important company of the 20th century.

Together with the Company’s artistic director Léon Bakst, Diaghilev spawned a new style of ballet designed to be appealing to a general audience, rather than just the upper class. Of the company’s unique style, fashion designer Coco Chanel is reported to have famously said that “Diaghilev invented Russia for foreigners.”

During the company’s history, Diaghilev staged many works by Rimsky-Korsakov and commissioned ballet scores from a who’s-who list of composers including Nikolai Tcherepnin, Claude Debussy (Jeux, 1913), Maurice Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé, 1912), Erik Satie (Parade, 1917), Manuel de Falla (El Sombrero de Tres Picos, 1917), Richard Strauss (Josephslegende, 1914), Sergei Prokofiev (Le pas d’acier, 1926 and The Prodigal Son, 1929), Ottorino Respighi (La Boutique fantasque, 1919), and Francis Poulenc (Les biches, 1923).

Diaghilev’s most celebrated collaborations were with Igor Stravinsky, from whom he commissioned ballet scores for The Firebird and Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). Diaghilev and Stravinsky also collaborated on Les noces (1923) and Pulcinella (1920), for which Pablo Picasso designed the sets and costumes. [Read more…]

Jahja Ling returns 
to the Blossom Stage

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by Mike Telin

When Jahja Ling returns to the Blossom Music Center podium on Sunday, August 22 at 7:00 pm, the concert will mark the continuation of a relationship between Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra which began in 1984.

“My first concert was at Severance in January of ‘85 and my first Blossom concert was in July of ‘85,” Ling said during a recent telephone conversation. “Aside from last year, which was cancelled due to the pandemic, if you count from ‘85 until now, this is the 36th consecutive season. I think it is a record.”

The all-Brahms program will feature the Violin Concerto with Sayaka Shoji as soloist and Symphony No. 3. Tickets are available online.

The past year and a half has been difficult for many people, including the 69-year-old conductor. “I got COVID,” he said. “It was last July, so over a year ago. I was taken to L.A. because my son works at Cedars-Sinai, and was hospitalized for five days. I received very good treatment and have had no issues after that, thank God.”

Ling’s experience with COVID played an important part in his programming choices for Sunday’s concert. [Read more…]

Violinist Sayaka Shoji to make her Cleveland Orchestra debut

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by Mike Telin

Having performed on three occasions with CityMusic Cleveland, Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji is no stranger to Northeast Ohio audiences. But when she returns to Cleveland this Sunday, August 22, it will be to make her debut with The Cleveland Orchestra, performing Brahms’ sublime Violin Concerto.

“I’m excited and very happy that this is happening,” Sayaka Shoji said by telephone from her home in Paris. “It was programmed last year, and of course we all had a difficult period, but they re-programmed it and I am very grateful.”

Under the direction of Jahja Ling, the 7:00 pm all-Brahms program also includes Symphony No. 3. Tickets are available online.

When asked why she thinks the concerto is one of the greatest in the repertoire, the violinist said it is partly because Brahms was a demanding, self-critical composer. “He also collaborated on the piece with his friend Joseph Joachim. And the result of that intensive collaboration is what makes it a jewel.”

[Read more…]

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