by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND CLASSICAL HIGHLIGHTS:

FRIDAY — 6 pm: BlueWater Chamber Orchestra Flute and Strings, Reid Gallery, Cleveland Museum of Art | 7:30 pm – Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, Sinatra and Soul, Music Box Supper Club.

SATURDAY — 7 pm: Cleveland Repertory Orchestra, New Morning: Twenty-Five Years After September 11, Cuyahoga Community College Eastern Campus, Highland Hills | 7:30 pm: Cleveland Orchestra Recital Series, Lang Lang, piano (pictured), Mandel Concert Hall, Severance Music Center | 7:30 pm: Oberlin Guest Recital. Carlos Bedoya, guitar, Kulas Recital Hall.

SUNDAY — 3 pm: Cleveland Cello Society. Documentary Film Screening: Strangers on the Earth. Cleveland Orchestra cellist Dane Johansen talks about his pilgrimage along Spain’s Camino de Santiago with his cello, LatinUS Theater, Cleveland. | 4 pm – CIM Insiders, pianists Ralitsa Georgieva and Carolyn Gadiel Warner & Friends, Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music | Oberlin Faculty Recitals — 4:30 pm: Jonathan Moyer, organ, Finney Chapel & 7:30 pm: Alexa Still, flute, and Hyunsoo Kim, piano, Stull Recital Hall.

For Details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

Estonian-born composer Arvo Pärt was born on September 11 in 1935. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

Due to Labor Day, the Newsletter will be sent on Friday this week.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: On this date in 1684, German organist and composer Johann Rosenmüller died at Wolfenbüttel, where he ended his career as choirmaster at the ducal court. Previously, he was organist at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig before getting run out of town for alleged homosexual activities. He fled to Venice to work at San Marco and at the Ospedale della Pieta.

Watch videos  of Rosenmüller’s Das ist meine Freude and Nisi Dominus performed by Burning River Baroque at St. Alban’s in Cleveland Heights in March, 2018, and of his Magnificat in c by ARTEK and Les Sacqueboutiers du Toulouse in 2017 at Old St. Patrick’s in New York.

And on September 10, 1941, British conductor, harpsichordist and musicologist Christopher Hogwood was born in Nottingham. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12:15 noon, Florence Mustric gives a lunchtime concert on the Beckerath organ at Trinity Lutheran Church in Ohio City.

At 6:30 pm, the Canton Symphony’s Summer Serenades sponsors a string quartet at the Canton Garden Center.

And at 7:30 pm, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society opens its 77th season with works by Gabriel Fauré, Reinhold Gliére, and Johannes Brahms played by Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Joel Link, principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag, and their colleague Dawoon Chung, piano.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

On November 6, The Cleveland Orchestra will release “Signature Welser-Möst,” a limited-edition, 15-disc vinyl box set commemorating Franz Welser-Möst’s quarter century as music director. 1,000 copies will be available at $450 each. Read the announcement here.

INTERESTING VIDEO:

The Violin Channel has launched a new “Never Have I Ever” series on YouTube. Its first featured guest is the Poiesis Quartet. “Get an inside look at the quartet, from their stand partner distractions and rehearsal room confessions to practice routines and group chat secrets.” Click here to watch the series. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

On this date in 1613, Italian composer Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, died in Naples. Distinguished for his harmonic adventures in madrigals and sacred music, Gesualdo was also notorious for having murdered his first wife and her lover after catching them in flagrante delicto.

Cecil Gray and Peter Warlock (the nom de plume for composer Philip Heseltine) tell the story in their 1926 book, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa: Musician and Murderer. A court refused to prosecute. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S HEADLINE:

Cleveland Orchestra musicians call for competitive wages, authorize strike in contract talks

Read the Sept. 3 cleveland.com article by Peter Chakerian here. (Photo: Zachary Lewis)

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

This Labor Day weekend The Cleveland Orchestra wraps up the Blossom season with three performances of “The Music of John Williams.” Conductor Sarah Hicks will lead Music by the “Maestro of the Movies,” including selections from Superman, Star Wars, & Jurassic Park. Concerts take place at 7 pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

On Friday at 8:30 pm Classical Revolution Cleveland presents “String Quartets Up Close and Personal” with Edwin Huizinga, Aaron Mecham & Boaz Mecham, violins, and Rebecca Landell, cello, performing works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland.

On Saturday at 1 pm, Akron Symphonic Winds offers Happy Birthday, America! at the Made In Ohio Festival with works by John Williams, John Phillip Sousa, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and more at Hale Farm and Village in Bath.

If you’re looking for some Jazz, the 2026 edition of the Hingetown Jazz Festival kicks off at 2 pm on Saturday with the Evelyn Wright Trio at Bop Stop. Click here to see the full lineup of free performances.

And on Sunday at 6:30 pm, you can catch a Summer Serenade by the Canton Symphony string quartet at the Canton Garden Center.

For Details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Will return on September 8.

There are no scheduled events today.

The Almanac will return on September 7.

…is on hiatus and will resume on Wednesday, September 2.

The next weekly newsletter will be sent on Thursday, September 3.

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

On Saturday at 7 pm, Antonello Manacorda will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus, with pianist Nelson Goerner, in Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Nocturnes, and Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G and Suite from Mother Goose.

Then on Sunday at 7 pm, vocalist Tony DeSare will be featured with the Orchestra, Steven Reineke, conducting, in “Let’s Misbehave,” a program of music by Cole Porter, featuring symphonic arrangements of hits like “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “Night and Day.”

For Details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC: 

On August 21, 1893, French composer Juliette Marie Olga Lili Boulanger was born in Paris, American soprano Queena Mario (née Queena Tillotson) made her first vocalizations in Akron in 1896, English mezzo-soprano Janet Baker debuted in 1933 in Hatfield, Yorkshire, and the celebrated American choral conductor Gregg Smith was born in Chicago in 1931. Add to that list American composer Lansing D. McLoskey, who arrived more recently — in 1964 in Cupertino California. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 at Blossom, songwriter and bandleader Jon Batiste joins conductor Jonathan Taylor Rush and The Cleveland Orchestra in a mix of originals and classics from his Grammy Award-winning albums.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

by Jarrett Hoffman

Tomas Luis de Victoria — the most well-known composer in Spain during the 1500s, and considered one of the greatest composers of the 16th century as a whole — died between August 20 and 27, 1611 in Madrid.

There’s been a revival of interest in Victoria’s work over the past hundred years, and his name is no stranger to the program booklets — and YouTube channels — of Northeast Ohio’s ensembles. [Read more…]

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at 12:15 noon, organist Robert Myers plays “Baroque Without Bach” on the Music Near the Market series at Trinity Lutheran Church in Ohio City (Beckerath organ).

And at 6:30 pm, the Canton Symphony’s Summer Serenades presents a Woodwind Trio at the North Canton Civic Center.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

by Mike Telin

Today we mark the passing of Russian art critic, patron, and ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (pictured below with Igor Stravinsky), who died in Venice, Italy on August 19, 1929 at the age of 57.

Although Diaghilev composed his first work at age 15 and later studied music with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, it was his passion for promoting Russian art that would lead to his founding of The Ballets Russes. From 1909 to 1929 the Paris-based company toured across Europe as well as North and South America. Interestingly, the company never performed in Russia. Still, because of its innovative collaborations with important choreographers, composers, designers, and dancers, The Ballets Russes is heralded as the most important company of the 20th century. [Read more…]