by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS  WEEKEND:

SATURDAY: At 1 pm, Cleveland Orchestra trombonist Shachar Israel revives his week-long Cleveland Trombone Seminar with a solo recital in CSU’s Drinko Recital Hall (pictured: participants in 2016), and at 4 pm, CelloBello presents Astrid Schween & the Verona Quartet at Cleveland Violins. Saturday evening at 7, the third of four SheScores concerts featuring female and non-binary composers takes place in Mixon Hall at CIM, and at 8 pm, Cleveland POPS orchestra salutes the US Armed Forces at Severance Music Center.

SUNDAY: Afternoon performances at 3 pm include Heights Arts Close Encounters with oboist Frank Rosenwein and the Omni Quartet at Barrie Carriage House & the Euclid Symphony at Shore Cultural Center. At 3:30, Western Reserve Chorale sings songs of America at Church of the Saviour. 4 pm performances bring guitarist Nacho González Nappa & flutist Shea del Bosque to Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church for original arrangements of tango, Brazilian and Cuban music, and Local 4 Music Fund concludes its four-concert SheScores run at CIM’s Mixon Hall.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Beginning in June, the Cleveland Museum of Art will collaborate with Ideastream Public Media to present a new series, Third Thursdays, at Transformer Station. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Local 4 Music Fund  presents the second of four free She Scores concerts featuring music by underrepresented composers. Tonight’s program includes works by Chloe Arnold, Erin Busch, Gala Flagello, Karen Griebling, Alexis Lamb, Annick Odom, Rachelle Ryan, and Elizabeth Start. Emily Laurance will give a pre-concert lecture at 6 pm.

And tonight at 7:30, Mourning [A] BLKstar and Kaboom Studio Orchestra will present a joint concert at Baldwin Wallace University’s Kleist Center in Berea.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Associated Press notes that the late Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence will receive its US premiere by San Francisco Opera on June 1. Its characters “are living ghosts, traumatized survivors of a school shooting that occurred 10 years earlier, but the memory of which intrudes like an unwelcome guest on a wedding celebration taking place in the present. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The first of four SheScores concerts of music by underrepresented composers hosted by Local 4 of the Cleveland Federation of Musicians begins at 7 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Read our preview article here. Rehearsal photo by Derek Snyder.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

American composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros was born on this date in 1932 in Houston. Oliveros is best known for her philosophy of “deep listening” — a term she coined after making a recording in an underground cistern in Port Townsend, WA. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon today, organist Steven Kuerbitz will play music by Joseph Jongen, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and J.S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant. Click here for the live stream.

IN MEMORIAM: 

Friends and colleagues of Cleveland composer H. Leslie Adams (pictured) have reported his passing on May 24 at the age of 96. Read his bio on the American Composers Alliance website here, and on the Cleveland Arts Prize website here (on the occasion of his Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015).

JAZZFEST OUTDOOR SCHEDULE:

On Friday, Tri-C JazzFest announced the schedule for its outdoor concerts in Playhouse Square on June 21 & 22. Download the press release here.

INTERESTING READ:

“Memo to Orchestras: Do More Opera.” New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe saw a Cleveland Orchestra performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” last week and wrote that the production was “a reminder that ensembles can help fill the gap as opera grows harder to find.” Read his review here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti was born on this date in 1923 in Dicsöszentmartin, Transylvania. [Read more…]

The Diary will return on Tuesday, May 28.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7, No Exit New Music wraps up its Year of Surreality: Breaking the World at Heights Arts, and at 7:30 Leila Josefowicz joins The Cleveland Orchestra for Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. Franz Welser-Möst fills out the program with Mozart’s Serenade No. 10, “Gran Partita,” and the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On May 23, 1885, Paraguayan composer Agustín Barrios Mangoré was born in San Bautista de las Misiones. The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society presented Paraguayan guitarist Berta Rojas in a 2020 online concert devoted to his music, including special guests Paquito D’Rivera (clarinet), Milagros Caliva (bandoneon), and Marcelo Enrique Barrios (the composer’s great-grandson). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 6 pm this evening, the Cleveland International Piano Competition presents its 2005 First Prize winner Chu-Fang Huang in CIPC Piano at the Pub at Forest City Brewing.

And at 7:30, Samuel Gordon leads Singers Companye (pictured left at the Maltz) in its program Jubilate Deo  at First Methodist in Cuyahoga Falls.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On May 22 in 1874, Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem was first performed at the church of San Marco in Milan, ending a long requiem saga for the composer, who had originally proposed a collaborative work by several Italian composers to honor Gioachino Rossini after his death in 1868. [Read more…]