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The Cleveland Orchestra: organist James McVinnie performs Breathing Forests

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by Mike Telin

In her program note, composer Gabriella Smith writes that her organ concerto Breathing Forests is “a reflection on the complex relationship between humans, forests, climate change, and fire. The massive sound and architecture of the organ feels something like the grandeur of a forest to me, and its breath reminiscent of the glorious exchange of carbon dioxide to oxygen that forests perform on a massive scale. 

“This is an example of how music and art can make a difference in how we talk about climate change,” organist James McVinnie said during a telephone interview. “It’s a piece that everyone, especially young people, should hear.”

On Thursday, April 4 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, McVinnie will make his debut with The Cleveland Orchestra in Smith’s Breathing Forests. Under the direction of John Adams, the concert will also include Adams’ City Noir with saxophonist Timothy McAllister as soloist and Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: Timothy McAllister plays John Adams

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by Mike Telin

“It’s just a thrill to come to Cleveland,” Timothy McAllister said during a telephone conversation. “And audiences will be witnessing a piece that for the saxophone has literally made history — and I’m honored to be part of that history.”

On Thursday, April 4 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, McAllister will join The Cleveland Orchestra in John Adams’ City Noir. Under the direction of Adams, the concert will also include Gabriella Smith’s Breathing Forests with organist James McVinnie as soloist and Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Based in Ann Arbor, McAllister serves on the faculty of the University of Michigan, and is no stranger to Northeast Ohio, having performed Avner Dorman’s Saxophone Concerto with CityMusic in 2014. His first Cleveland Orchestra performance came in November of 2018 when Matthias Pintscher led Bartók’s The Wood Prince Suite.

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Poiesis Quartet to join Mezzo-Soprano Nancy Maultsby at Baldwin Wallace

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by Mike Telin

Winning a competition can serve as a jump-start to a young musician or chamber ensemble. Case in point: the Poiesis Quartet, founded during Oberlin Conservatory’s Advanced Quartet Seminar program in Fall 2022. During their first year as an ensemble, they became the 2023 Grand Prize winner of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. They were also awarded the Gold Medal and BIPOC Prize at the 2023 St. Paul String Quartet Competition.

And when Cleveland Orchestra trombonist and composer Richard Stout was looking for a string quartet to perform his Songs of Correspondence — which he wrote for his Baldwin Wallace faculty colleague Nancy Maultsby — on the opening concert of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series in October, he sought out the Poiesis. Click here to read an interview with Richard Stout.

On Monday, March 25 at 7:30 pm in Gamble Auditorium, Nancy Maultsby and the Poiesis Quartet — Sarah Ma and Max Ball (violins), Jasper de Boor (viola), and Drew Dansby (cello) — will perform Stout’s song cycle based on letters of Willa Cather. The program will also include Clint Needham’s String Quartet No. 2, “Shades Of Green.” The concert is free.

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Wild Up at CIM: graphic scores & Julius Eastman

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by Mike Telin

On the homepage of the new music ensemble Wild Up, you’re met with this description of who they are: “We’re Wild Up. We’re a band. An experiment in its second decade. We make shows, and records. We tell stories and make projects that live somewhere between new music and theater and performance art and pop.”

On Sunday, March 24 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, the CIM Perspectives series will present the new music and composer collective Wild Up. Their program includes works by Raven Cachon, inti figgis-vizueta, Jürg Frey, Felipe Lara, and Julius Eastman. The concert is free but seating passes are required.

I caught up with artistic director and conductor Christopher Roundtree (pictured) by phone and began the conversation by asking him to talk me through the group’s program.

Raven Chacon’s Whistle Quartet

We all love Raven, and Whistle Quartet is beautiful. It’s a graphic score with simple instructions. It says the first player should use a very small whistle to create a musical line of their choosing that responds to the score. And then another player comes in and tries to replicate that line as accurately as possible, followed by a third person, then a fourth person, and so on.

Raven’s scores are beautiful to look at, and his Zitkála-Šá score was in the 2022 Whitney Biennial.

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Josefina Maldonado returns to Cleveland Orchestra for Julia Perry’s Stabat Mater

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by Mike Telin

Following Josefina Maldonado’s Cleveland Orchestra debut in November 2022 in John Adams’ El Niño, Stephanie Manning wrote for ClevelandClassical.com that the mezzo-soprano “more than held her own amid such a strong cast. Her round and resonant voice projected well in all registers, consistently controlled…”

On Thursday, March 21 at 7:30 pm, Maldonado will return to Severance Music Center for performances of Julia Perry’s Stabat Mater. Under the direction of Dalia Stasevska, the program also includes Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus and Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2, and will be repeated on Friday, March 22 at 7:30 and Saturday, March 23 at 8:00. Tickets are available online.

“The Cleveland Orchestra is world-class, and I look forward to coming back and working with Dalia Stasevska. She’s an excellent conductor,” Josefina Maldonado said during a telephone conversation.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: Ilya Gidalevich shares insights into the 2024-25 Severance Season

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by Mike Telin
Kevin McLaughlin contributed to this article

During “Fanfare: A Patron Appreciation Event,” a special unveiling of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2024-25 season at Severance Music Center on Friday, March 15, music director Franz Welser-Möst was joined onstage by president and CEO André Gremillet and violinist Katherine Bormann.

The conversation was lively. Welser-Möst was particularly excited to talk about soprano Asmik Grigorian, who will perform Strauss’ Four Last Songs and the final scene from Puccini’s Suor Angelica (March 13 and 15). “Not since Netrebko has there been a singer with that kind of charisma,” he said, adding that during the Salzburg performances of Suor Angelica “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “¡Hispania! A Voyage from Spain to the Americas” — a conversation with Sophia Burgos

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by Mike Telin

This week Apollo’s Fire will present “¡Hispania! A Voyage from Spain to the Americas.” Designed by Jeannette Sorrell, this new production features the music of Spanish composers Diego Ortiz, Gaspar Sanz, and Santiago de Murcia, blending virtuosity with lively dance rhythms. The ensemble of strings, plucked instruments, and percussion includes musicians from Mexico and Costa Rica, with flamenco guitarist Jeremías García and Puerto Rican soprano Sophia Burgos featured as soloists.

Performances are on Wednesday, March 20 at 7:30 pm at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Akron, Thursday the 21st at 7:30 at St. Rocco Parish, and Friday the 22nd at 7:30 and Saturday the 23rd at 8:00 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. A pre-concert conversation with guitarist Jeremías García begins one hour before each performance. Tickets are available online.

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CityMusic Cleveland: Laura Hamilton plays Four Seasons Recomposed

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by Mike Telin

Without a doubt, The Four Seasons — that group of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi — is one of the most recognizable works in the classical music canon. And like many, composer Max Richter fell in love with it as a child, as he told NPR’s Audie Cornish in an interview.

“It’s beautiful, charming music with a great melody and wonderful colors. Then, later on, as I became more musically aware — literate, studied music and listened to a lot of music — I found it more difficult to love it. We hear it everywhere — when you’re on hold, you hear it in the shopping center, in advertising; it’s everywhere. For me, the record and the project are trying to reclaim the piece, to fall in love with it again.”

That project he’s referring to is his The Four Seasons Recomposed (after A. Vivaldi). On Thursday, March 14 at 7:30 pm at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, violinist Laura Hamilton (pictured) will join CityMusic Cleveland in Richter’s inventive re-imagining of Vivaldi’s masterpiece. Under the direction of guest conductor Annunziata Tomaro, the program, “Rediscovered Classics,” will also include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. The program will be repeated on Friday at 7:30 at Lakewood Congregational Church, Saturday at 7:30 at Shrine of St. Stanislaus, and Sunday at 4:00 at St. Noel Catholic Church. All performances are free.

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BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: a conversation with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis

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by Mike Telin

“I think everybody who plays an instrument has a piece that when they heard it for the first time, they said — this is what I want to do with my life because I want to play this piece as many times as I can,” harpist Yolanda Kondonassis said during a Zoom call.

On Saturday, March 16 at 7:30 pm at Church of the Covenant, Kondonassis will perform Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro with the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra. Under the direction of Daniel Meyer, the program will also include the world premiere of Takuma Itoh’s Kohola Sings for harp and chamber orchestra, Roland’s Suite by Lully, and selections of Fauré’s Incidental Music to Pelléas et Mélisande with soprano Amanda Powell. Tickets are pay-what-you-wish.

Kondonassis recalled hearing the Ravel live for the first time at the Cleveland Institute of Music while she was still in high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy. “My teacher at Interlochen brought me to Cleveland with her on spring break. She was a student of Alice Chalifoux — who would become my mentor and teacher. I stayed with Alice and would go with her to CIM when she taught. I happened to go to somebody’s degree recital and I remember hearing the Ravel in The Pavilion, where Mixon Hall is now, and thinking it was the most phenomenal ear candy I had ever experienced.”

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Tuesday Musical: Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra Tour of Peace

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by Mike Telin

This week the Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra will embark on its first North American tour. Under the direction of Dmitry Yablonsky, the “Tour of Peace” will stop in Akron for a performance at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, March 12 at E.J. Thomas Hall.  Presented by Tuesday Musical, the program will include music by Myroslav Skoryk, Ignaz Moscheles, Felix Mendelssohn, Baruch Berliner, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets are available online.

Born in Moscow to a musical family, Dmitry Yablonsky was accepted into the Central Music School for gifted children at the age of six, where the cello became his instrument of choice. “I have to thank my mother, who took me out of the Soviet Union in the 70s,” Yablonsky said during an interview. Growing up in New York City, he went on to study cello at the Juilliard School of Music. During graduate school at Yale University he studied conducting with OttoWerner Muller.

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