by Mike Telin
“The hardest part of programming a John Williams concert is that there’s so much you have to leave out,” Cleveland Pops music director Carl Topilow said during a telephone conversation. “I’ve seen programs that focus on Spielberg movies, for example. But our idea was to present a cross-section of his music.”
On Friday, November 12 at 8:00 pm in Mandel Hall at Severance, Topilow and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra will present “A Salute to John Williams.” The program will include selections from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter. Tickets are available online.
And if you have any doubt that Topilow is ready to be back at Severance conducting some of the music he loves most, check out this video. (Spoiler alert — Superman is involved.)
Perhaps the greatest composer/movie director partnership is that of Williams and Steven Spielberg, which dates back to The Sugarland Express in 1974 and continued a year later with Jaws. “There’s an interesting story of how it all began,” Topilow said. [Read more…]
In Book XIII of Ovid’s epic poem 
HAPPENING TODAY:
On Thursday, November 4 at 7:30 pm The Cleveland Orchestra will welcome the return of guest conductor Jakub Hrůša and welcome cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason to the Mandel Concert Hall stage for the first time.
“Creativity is the expression of life, so for me the question is why on earth would you not be creative? Why on earth would you not want to grow?” flutist, composer, improviser, author, teacher, and inventor Robert Dick said during a recent telephone interview. A leader in contemporary flute music, he has redefined the instrument’s musical possibilities. 
Whether it was the passing of his mother in February 1865 or the death of Robert Schumann later that same year, no one is certain what motivated Johannes Brahms to compose his large-scale, non-liturgical Requiem in the German language.
It’s always interesting to hear how musicians come to choose their instruments. Some want to follow in the footsteps of a family member, while others prefer to chart their own path. “What drew me to the saxophone to begin with was my grandma,” Gabriel Piqué said during a recent telephone conversation. “It’s something you never want to hear your grandma say, but I brought one home and she said ‘Gabe, that instrument is sexy.’ I think I was in the 6th grade, and that’s when I decided that I didn’t want to play clarinet or flute, I wanted to play the saxophone.” 
If you ask a musician what new skill they learned during the past eighteen months, more often than not, the answer is video editing. And, in a relatively short amount of time, many became quite good at it. 
HAPPENING TODAY:
Four hundred years after his birth on this date in 1605, English polymath Thomas Browne was commemorated by his adopted home city of Norwich with a series of sculptures commissioned in his honor. One of those was a large, marble brain — perfect as a representation of that famous thinker, but also as a resting spot for pigeons, who apparently can be seen drinking rainwater from its folds.
In Greek mythology the nine Muses were the source of knowledge and inspiration for poets, musicians, and philosophers. “They inspired everybody,” bassoonist Catalina Guevara Víquez Klein, said during a telephone interview. “That’s the reason Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is called the 10th Muse, because she too inspired everybody.”