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Jakub Hrůša returns to Cleveland Orchestra with music from Germany, Czech Republic (Mar. 5)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — During Jakub Hrůša’s first decade of Cleveland Orchestra appearances, the Czech conductor programmed a wide range of music, including works from his home country, cornerstones of the orchestral canon, and lesser-known gems. This weekend’s concerts feature all three.

On Thursday, March 5, after more than four years away from the Cleveland podium, Hrůša returned to Severance Music Center with music by Johannes Brahms, Bohuslav Martinů, and Vítězslava Kaprálová. Without a concerto, the program focused instead on the forms of the symphony and sinfonietta — as well as on the synergy between Hrůša and the Orchestra, which produced some very fine playing.

[Read more…]

Trobár returns to its roots with “Songbook for a King”

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by Stephanie Manning

In the medieval era, musicians and poets had a different perspective on the process of creation. “They thought of composing as finding and seeking out words and notes that already exist,” Allison Monroe said in a recent phone interview. That’s why the artistic director named her ensemble Trobár  — an Occitan-language word meaning “to find” or “to seek.”

“ That’s where the word ‘troubadour’ comes from, as well as ‘trouvère,’” she explained. “And that repertoire is really at the root of who we are as an ensemble.”

On March 19 at 7:00 pm, the medieval music ensemble will return to those roots by revisiting a program from Trobár’s earliest days, “Songbook for a King.” This concert draws its pieces from the “Manuscrit du Roi,” a famous thirteenth-century anthology of French music. Pay-what-you-can tickets for the performance at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River are available online. [Read more…]

[VIDEO] Cleveland Ballet presents Messiah with BlueWater, Cleveland Chamber Choir

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by Stephanie Manning

Handel’s Messiah will come to life at Playhouse Square on March 20-21 in a co-production by Cleveland Ballet, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and Cleveland Chamber Choir. Gregory Ristow will conduct the live musical forces as the dancers perform the iconic two-hour oratorio, choreographed by Robert Weiss.

Take a look inside rehearsal and hear how this collaboration came together in the video below, featuring Cleveland Ballet artistic director Timour Bourtasenkov and répétiteur Dameon Nagel.

Messiah will be presented at the KeyBank State Theater on March 20 at 10:30 am & 7:00 pm, March 21 at 7:00 pm, and March 22 at 2:00 pm. Tickets available online.

Watch the video below and find it on Instagram and Facebook. [Read more…]

Wit’s Folly presents a Valentine’s Day “Serenade” (Feb. 14)

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by Stephanie Manning

The warm light spilling out onto the Waterloo Road sidewalk on February 14 came from Praxis Fiber Workshop, which had opened its doors that evening for a concert by Wit’s Folly. Beyond the large windows curtained with vertical string lights lay the open showroom area, with colorful art adorning the walls and even hanging from the ceiling. Quite the dynamic space to hear some 18th-century music.

For this Valentine’s Day program, guest flutist Ellen Sauer Tanyeri joined violinist Guillermo Salas-Suárez, violist Jonathan Goya, and cellist Jane Leggiero in a collection of music featuring the flute, with a Wit’s Folly twist. The group decided to combine movements from two of Beethoven’s Serenades (Op. 8 and Op. 25), to make a serenade of their own.

[Read more…]

‘Frenzied Tangos’ from Adams, Diehl headline Cleveland Orchestra premieres (Feb. 19)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Just like his music, insistent and perpetually in motion, John Adams has little interest in slowing down. At 79, the celebrated composer and conductor is as busy as ever, and he’s never far from his next premiere.

A Cleveland Orchestra regular, Adams returned to the Mandel Concert Hall podium on Thursday, February 19 for “Frenzied Tango,” a program of firsts that reunited him with pianist Aaron Diehl. The performance revealed plenty of gems, both in his own works and those he chose to precede them.

[Read more…]

Thorpe Ensemble makes lighthearted inaugural outing at Rocky River Presbyterian (Feb. 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

Perhaps the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday is not the best time to schedule a concert. So when only a small group of people showed up at Rocky River Presbyterian Church on February 8 to hear the Thorpe Ensemble, scheduling conflicts could be assumed to be the culprit.

The size of the audience said nothing about the quality of the playing, and those who were off preparing for the Big Game missed a lovely afternoon of string duets and trios.

For those of us who did attend, the atmosphere was genial and relaxed. Violinist Hadar Zaidel, violist Michael Strauss, and cellist Julie Myers King all play together regularly in the Akron Symphony, and they clearly enjoyed their inaugural outing as a trio. Strauss, providing occasional commentary, explained that their “Thorpe” name derives from Jim Thorpe, an Olympic gold medalist and important figure in 1920s Cleveland pro football.

[Read more…]

Resonance Project rings in the Lunar New Year with “Qin and Strings” (Feb. 7)

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by Stephanie Manning

Gazing at Chinese paintings in the shān shuǐ (山水) style, whose artists use ink and a brush to create beautiful landscapes, you might notice two patterns. First, any people depicted are often dwarfed by the enormous scenery. Second, the painters don’t need to cover every inch of canvas — sometimes they let the blank space do the talking.

This appreciation of nature and the use of space influenced Irwin Shung and his piece Seven Chinese Characters, as the pianist and composer explained at the Resonance Project concert on February 7. That work opened the evening’s program, “Qin and Strings,” presented at Forest Hill Church in Cleveland Heights. The group timed this celebration of Chinese music to the upcoming Lunar New Year celebrations.

Using the projector screen on the side of the stage, Shung clicked through a carousel of images to give historical and cultural context to the program — a fusion of performance and pre-concert talk that worked very smoothly. Eventually he sat down at the piano to perform Seven Chinese Characters, a flowing and meditative journey that also draws inspiration from Li Bai’s poem “Quiet Night Thought” and a traditional melody called “Jasmine.”

[Read more…]

Soprano Estelí Gomez and composer Gilda Lyons collaborate on Les Délices’ “La Diosa”

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by Stephanie Manning

The Venn diagram of performers who love early music and those who love new music is closer to a circle than one might think. Take soprano Estelí Gomez, who is as likely to appear on a Baroque program as she is on a contemporary one.

“One of the reasons people love doing both is that the composer has a lot of excitement for and trust in the performer,” Gomez said in a recent interview.

From the composer’s perspective, that idea of artistic freedom is “wonderfully liberating,” Gilda Lyons said in that same Zoom call. While research is important, “I’m never going to know as much as the performers do about their specific instrument. So I’m going to leave space for them to be the artists that they are.”

[Read more…]

American Brass Quintet visits Oberlin Artist Recital Series

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by Stephanie Manning

With more than 65 years as an ensemble under their belt and a commitment to commissioning new works, the American Brass Quintet has a lot of repertoire to choose from. “We’ve got such an extraordinary wealth of music,” bass trombonist John Rojak said. For at least the past 15 years, “every piece that has been coming in is one we want to keep playing.”

Several of those works appear on the group’s current program, which they are set to bring to the Oberlin Artist Recital Series on February 20. Trumpeters Brandon Ridenour and Tiago Linck, hornist Eric Reed, trombonist Hillary Simms, and Rojak will take to the Finney Chapel stage to present works by Anthony Barfield, Philip Lasser, Jennifer Higdon, Osvaldo Lacerda, and David Biedenbender. Tickets are available online.

Although the majority of the evening’s works are less than a decade old, the concert first finds its footing in the 16th century, with John Dowland’s Earl of Essex Galliard & Can She Excuse My Wrongs. Rojak described how Brandon Ridenour combined the two pieces into his own, “really cool” edition. [Read more…]

BW Opera presents a memorable double bill about women’s empowerment (Feb. 1)

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by Stephanie Manning

Asked at the post-concert talkback about her musical influences, composer Kamala Sankaram described an eclectic hodgepodge — Kaija Saariaho, Radiohead, and the Cameroonian electronic musician Francis Bebey, to name a few. “For the most part, things that I write sound very different from each other,” she said. “So it’s interesting that these two pieces sound kind of similar.”

Sankaram was referring to the pairing of A.E. Reverie and Rise, a duo of chamber operas recently co-presented by Baldwin Wallace Opera and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The February 1 performance in the Museum’s Gartner Auditorium showcased a double-bill united not just by composer but also by topic: both operas center on female protagonists pushing against gender stereotypes.

[Read more…]

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