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.
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.”
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.”
Despite the frigid Wednesday weather dumping snow outside the Cleveland Museum of Art, January 14 almost felt like a pleasant spring day inside Gartner Auditorium. That phenomenon had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with Trio Seoul, whose warm camaraderie and excellent musicianship brightened the venue considerably.
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