by Robert Rollin
The Youngstown Symphony’s third Classical Series concert on Saturday night, November 23 in the Ford Family Recital Hall featured a delightful program for small orchestra led by Randall Craig Fleischer. The highlight was a spirited performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, K. 466, with Di Wu, laureate of the 2009 Van Cliburn competition, as soloist. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Accordion music remains alive and well in Northeast Ohio. The first evening concert of the International Digital Electronic Accordion Society (IDEAS) symposium took place Friday evening, November 8 at Warren, Ohio’s Avalon Inn and Resort. If anything, the organizers outdid last year’s opening event. Jazz and cinematic music took center stage. Highlighting the virtuoso performances was the appearance of New Jersey jazz accordion great Eddie Monteiro (left), accompanied by talented drummer Bob Bacha. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
On Friday evening, November 15, Opera Western Reserve delivered an excellent performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth at Stambaugh Auditorium. The lead singers were exceptional, as was conductor Susan Davenny Wyner’s splendid orchestra. Barbara Luce’s costumes were lively and added color to the darkly sad subject. Blocking and stage presence were outstanding, but constrained by the presence of a single set that never really changed. This limited the production, despite imaginative lighting effects.
by Robert Rollin
On Friday evening November 1, Youngstown’s Calvin Center for the Arts hosted a concert featuring sarangi virtuoso Harsh Narayan of Mumbai, India, accompanied by tabla artist Joe Culley of Kent, Ohio. The concert took place in the Yoga room, an intimate space that provided a warm atmosphere for the small but enthusiastic audience. Narayan explained that the sarangi dates back to 6th Century India, when at first it accompanied the human voice, even imitating vocal ornaments and slides. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon, September 15, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, under conductor and artistic director Daniel Meyer, opened its season with an imaginatively varied concert at The Temple-Tifereth Israel. Amitai Vardi was featured in Srul Irving Glick’s The Klezmer’s Wedding, a delightful one-movement piece for clarinet and string orchestra.
by Robert Rollin
The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Randall Craig Fleischer, helped celebrate the centennial of the Butler Institute of American Art with a fittingly exciting and American program in Bacon Great Hall of the North Education Building on Saturday, July 27. The audience filled the converted church space, whose live acoustic was perfect for rousing works by George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, as well as TV and film composer Gregory Prechel’s Impressions of the Butler, featuring projections of paintings from the museum’s collection.
by Robert Rollin
This past week, metropolitan Warren, Ohio played host to the International Digital Electronic Accordion Society. The terrific Friday night concert on November 9 at the Avalon Inn & Resort, part of a symposium, drew world-class professionals from New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Canada, and the United States. The evening opened with an accordion ensemble playing a lively musical mélange. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday night, November 3, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society presented the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet in an outstanding concert at First Unitarian Church. An especially imaginative highlight was guitarist/composer Robert Beaser’s short, single-movement Chaconne, receiving its world premiere in a version written for the LAGQ.
by Robert Rollin
On Friday, October 5, the Baroque string band ACRONYM presented The Battle of Vienna in Youngstown’s Ford Family Recital Hall on Youngstown State University’s inaugural Donald P. Pipino Performing Arts Series. The program was a mélange of inventive 17th-century works employing novel techniques brought by Italian composers to the German-speaking lands, including Venetian polychoral effects. ACRONYM’s consistently fine intonation and exceptional ensemble were nothing short of amazing all evening. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
On Saturday, September 29, the Youngstown Symphony opened its 2018-19 season with an all-Mozart concert mixing theatrical, operatic, and symphonic elements. The majority of the evening juxtaposed operatic arias with excerpts from Mozart’s letters, read from stage left by actor James McClellan — costumed as the composer himself. [Read more…]