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Michelle Cann at Severance: smiles, laughter, and learning something new (May 19)

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by Stephanie Manning

What’s the best part about attending a dinner party? Maybe it’s the friendly conversation, the relaxed atmosphere, or a lovely musical performance. Michelle Cann’s recital had all three.

On May 19, the pianist welcomed the audience into her (temporary) home at Severance Music Center, entertaining with both elegant musicianship and cheerful dialogue. The warm lighting, low ceiling, and plush seats of Reinberger Chamber Hall helped make it feel as if the packed crowd was listening from inside Cann’s living room.

Presented in Cleveland as part of the 2025 Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival, “The Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance” is a program as much about education as it is about performance. [Read more…]

DIARY, Tuesday, June 3, 2025

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by Stephanie Manning

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:00 pm, organist Jonathan Moyer presents this week’s program of the Tuesday Noon Organ Plus Concerts. Moyer, who is the Church of the Covenant’s primary organist, is also an assistant professor at Oberlin Conservatory.

If you can’t make it to University Circle in person, you can listen to the live stream here.

INTERESTING READ:

Should the Met stage all their operas in English? Absolutely, argues John McWhorter in a recent New York Times opinion piece. “Many opera fans object to translation on the grounds that composers set the music to the words carefully, according to the accent patterns and vowel colors of the language in question,” he writes. But “opera is better when you can understand it.”

Needless to say, this article has generated plenty of debate in the comments — there are almost 250 of them. Form your own opinion by giving those and McWhorter’s article a read here. [Read more…]

DIARY, Monday, June 2, 2025

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by Stephanie Manning

LOOKING AHEAD:

The first week of June gets off to a quiet start, but things will quickly pick up into the weekend as summer offerings like the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival and ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival kick into gear.

Learn more about what’s ahead by visiting our Concert Listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which has been going on since May 21 in Fort Worth, Texas, announced its six finalists last night. Among them is Evren Ozel (pictured, photo by Mike Grittani), the second-prize winner in last year’s Cleveland International Piano Competition. Local audiences may also recognize him from appearances at ChamberFest Cleveland and the Cooper Competition.

As part of the final rounds, Ozel will perform Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 tomorrow evening with Marin Alsop and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He will perform again on Friday, June 6 with Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4. All rounds can be streamed live here. [Read more…]

ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival dances its way to the 10-year mark

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by Stephanie Manning

When you’re excited about something, sometimes all you want to do is get up and dance. Hence the title of this year’s ENCORE–Gates Mills Music & Ideas Festival: “By Leaps & Bounds.”

“ We wanted to have an image of a celebratory dance for our 10th anniversary,” said artistic director Jinjoo Cho in a recent interview. “And the theme also looks forward to the next ten years of our festival. So it just seemed like a perfect double meaning.”

Since 2016, the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute has hosted its annual summer concert series here in Northeast Ohio, featuring performances by local and visiting artists. The Summer Academy, which takes place simultaneously, provides training, mentorship, and performance opportunities for young musicians ages 13 to 26. This year’s Music & Ideas Festival begins on June 6, and tickets are available online. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: horn, violin, and piano make a delightful trio (May 5)

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by Stephanie Manning

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season-ending concert, featuring the principal horn of The Cleveland Orchestra, was understandably marketed as “Nathaniel Silberschlag & Friends.” But the other two names contained in the “& Friends” — violinist Genevieve Smelser and pianist Alicja Basinka — were equally as important to the evening’s success.

On May 5 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the trio of local musicians delivered a wonderfully relaxing evening of chamber music by Johannes Brahms and Charles Koechlin. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra presents world premiere of poignant, Cleveland-inspired work by Allison Loggins-Hull (May 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Composer Allison Loggins-Hull spent the past three years immersing herself in the city of Cleveland as The Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow. Drawing on her interactions with residents and community organizations, her valedictory composition, Grit. Grace. Glory., is a sonic celebration of the city she recently called home.

The piece, co-commissioned by the Toronto Symphony, received its world premiere by Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on Thursday, May 8, at Severance Music Center. The 22-minute work was the rightful centerpiece of the evening, interposed between symphonies by Mozart and Prokofiev.

[Read more…]

Soprano Katherine Jolly, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and Cleveland Chamber Choir unite for “I Believe!”

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by Stephanie Manning

Since joining the Oberlin Conservatory voice faculty in 2019, soprano Katherine Jolly has kept up with her performing career. But doing so usually takes her outside of Northeast Ohio.

“ I travel a lot for my outside engagements,” she said in a recent interview. So, being the featured soloist on a program with both the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir “is pretty special.”

On Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 pm, the two local ensembles will collaborate to present “I Believe! Knitted Voices of Justice and Faith.” The concert at Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral concludes both groups’ anniversary seasons: the 15th for BlueWater and the 10th for the Chamber Choir. Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available online, and the event will also be live streamed. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra wraps up season with emotional performances (May 4)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Spring is always the season of farewells for the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO). Twenty-nine of the middle- and high school musicians who performed in Mandel Concert Hall on Sunday pinned a white flower to their black attire — signifying that as graduating seniors, their time with the group would shortly come to a bittersweet end.

The May 4 concert at Severance Music Center also bid farewell to COYO’s music director Daniel Reith, who has led the ensemble since the fall of 2022. Sunday’s event left both students and conductor with plenty to be proud of.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra brass and percussion celebrate Akron’s 200th in ambitious Tuesday Musical program (Apr. 22)

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by Stephanie Manning

There are very few American cities who can count themselves as having an official fanfare. But now, Akron is one of them.

To celebrate the city’s 200th anniversary, Tuesday Musical commissioned composer Peter Boyer to write Festive Fanfare (For Akron’s Bicentennial). More than a concert piece, a recording of the four-minute fanfare will soon be made available for open-access use at Akron civic events. On April 22, a packed house heard it live for the first time as part of a wide-ranging program by the brass and percussion players of The Cleveland Orchestra.

“Kid — candy store,” Boyer said from the stage at E.J. Thomas Hall, gesturing to himself and then the musicians to describe his excitement. [Read more…]

Conductor Kazuki Yamada’s stylish Cleveland Orchestra debut features Elgar, Mozart, and pianist Francesco Piemontesi (Apr. 24)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Edward Elgar’s first symphony was a long time coming. But once the British composer finally put pen to paper at age 51, audiences at the time simply couldn’t get enough. But tastes change, and that rapturous response in 1908 couldn’t guarantee eternal success. The piece has now settled into relative obscurity for many American orchestras.

Today, Britain is still the most likely place to hear Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 — so it made sense that The Cleveland Orchestra’s performance on April 24 should be led by the conductor of a British ensemble. City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra music director Kazuki Yamada ascended the Severance Music Center podium, making his assured and elegant Cleveland Orchestra debut.

Elgar’s symphony is unconcerned with quaint, pastoral English scenes — instead, it’s often stormy, celebratory, and in-your-face, sometimes all at once. On Thursday, Yamada confirmed his reputation for passion and expressivity as a conductor in his interpretation of the symphony.

[Read more…]

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