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DIARY Monday, January 9, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Charnofsky’s Monday playlist

. Potter to join Les Délices, JazzFest plans jam sessions

. Almanac remembers Harvard professor/composers, The MET’s Rudolph Bing & some premieres

HAPPENING TODAY:

Join host Eric Charnofsky from 2:00 until 4:00 this afternoon for another edition of Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music. The playlist includes Jan Engel’s Symphony in B, Cindy McTee’s Einstein’s Dream (orchestra and computer sounds), Michael Daugherty’s Labyrinth of Love (soprano, winds, piano, contrabass, percussion), Leopold Mozart’s Trumpet Concerto, Joseph Fennimore’s two Sonatas for piano, four hands, and selected transcriptions of music by Vivaldi, featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Click here to listen to the internet feed: or tune in to 91.1 FM in the greater Cleveland area.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Les Délices has announced the appointment of Laura Potter as its new Executive Director. [Read more…]

WEEKEND DIARY: January 6-8, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

LOOKING AHEAD IN JANUARY

Until administrators in Imperial Rome began fiddling with the calendar, the year very sensibly began in March with the reblooming of nature, rather than in January when “dogs are sticking to the sidewalks” and it can seem like the beginning of a new Ice Age, as in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of our Teeth. But the Northeast Ohio concert calendar is already bustling with activity. Here’s a rundown for the next four weeks.

Apollo’s Fire and The Cleveland Orchestra are back in business early following the holidays, the former with two Baroque Bistros that promise to “Drive the Cold Winter Away (January 7 and 8), the latter with a guest appearance by conductor Alan Gilbert and the premiere by Paul Yancich of a new timpani concerto by James Oliverio and Nielsen’s somewhat obscure Sinfonia espansiva (second and last performance Jan. 7). Franz Welser-Möst returns to Severance Music Center with the Orchestra and Chorus for Schubert’s Mass in E-flat, flanked by Schubert’s 8th Symphony and Berg’s Lyric Suite (Jan. 12, 13 & 14).

Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony are back early in the month as well on Jan. 14 for Julia Perry’s Pastoral, Xavier Foley’s Double Concerto “For Justice and Peace,” featuring bassist and composer Foley with violinist Eunice Kim (Foley also solos in Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto No. 2).

Peter Lawson Jones will emcee the annual Martin Luther King Birthday concert on Jan. 15 at Severance Music Center, with The Cleveland Orchestra and Celebration Chorus performing music by Black composers Florence Price and William L. Dawson, and an afternoon Music Settlement concert at the Bop Stop will celebrate King’s mission through music and the written word. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, January 5, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Tonight: Cleveland Orchestra with Gilbert and a trio of soloists

•News: Kent Blossom applications open, CIM’s Sara Daneshpour (pictured) appointed professor at CCM, and Dwight Oltman memoir available

•Almanac: a trio of famous pianists in Medtner, Brendel, and Pollini

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 pm, Alan Gilbert leads The Cleveland Orchestra in a concert that includes Haydn’s Symphony No. 90, Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3 (“Sinfonia espansiva”), featuring soprano Liv Redpath and baritone Justin Austin as soloists, and the world premiere of James Oliverio’s timpani concerto Legacy Ascendant, which will shine a spotlight on principal timpani Paul Yancich. The program will be repeated on Saturday. Tickets are available here, and you can read Mike Telin’s recent interview with Oliverio here.

[Read more…]

DIARY Wednesday, January 4, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway and Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

. Oltman tributes welcome

. Wax cylinders spin again & a January classical music diet

. Marking the birthdays of Pergolesi & the 33-⅓ rpm vinyl record

DWIGHT OLTMAN:

Although we haven’t yet received an official obituary for Dwight Oltman, who passed away in North Carolina on December 31, ClevelandClassical.com invites his many former students and colleagues to offer tributes in his honor to be archived on a special page in this website beginning in the near future. Please email them here.

INTERESTING READS FROM THE WEB:

Wax Cylinders Hold Audio From a Century Ago. The Library Is Listening.

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts acquired a machine that transfers recordings from the fragile format of wax cylinders. Then a batch of cylinders from a Met Opera librarian arrived. Read the article from The New York Times here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, January 3, 2023

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•News: Applications open for Tuesday Musical Scholarship Competition

•Almanac: a pair of living American composers in Beth Anderson and Kevin Puts (pictured)

NEWS BRIEFS:

As of the first of the new year, and until January 31, Tuesday Musical is accepting applications for its 2023 Scholarship Competition, the 67th edition. Twenty-three scholarships, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 each, will be awarded to college students majoring in music performance and/or music education, provided they are Ohio residents, or they are studying with a music teacher at an Ohio college or university. The competition will be held in-person on March 18 at The University of Akron. Winners will then be invited to the Final Round/Winners Concert on May 21. Click here for more information.

[Read more…]

DIARY Monday, January 2, 2023

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Oltmans passes at 83

. Two NYT clippings of interest

. A Rebel invokes chaos

R.I.P. DWIGHT OLTMAN

We resume the Diary today with the sad news that conductor Dwight Oltman (pictured) passed away on December 31 at the age of 83 at his home in Waynesville, North Carolina, where he retired in 2014 and later co-founded the Smoky Mountain International Conducting Institute and Competition in 2017. His more than 40-year-long career on the podium at Baldwin Wallace, especially for the BW Bach Festival, combined with his musical leadership of Cleveland Ballet and the Ohio Chamber Orchestra have earned him an honored place in the Musical Pantheon of Northeast Ohio.

We will publish an obituary on Wednesday in this Diary, and invite his many former students and colleagues to offer tributes in his honor to be archived on a special page in this website. Please email them here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, December 22, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Tonight: Apollo’s Fire’s Irish-Appalachian Christmas

•BGSU has openings to teach viola, oboe, voice & composition

•R.I.P. clarinetist Stanley Drucker (pictured)

•Holiday podcast listening

•Our almanac, including a long, important, and strange day in music history with Beethoven

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Play House, Apollo’s Fire concludes the two-day run of its Irish-Appalachian Christmas program “WASSAIL!” The concert, which celebrates the American immigrant experience, features such instruments as fiddle, Medieval harp, hammered dulcimer, and bagpipes. Get tickets here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, December 21, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Today is the Winter Solstice

. Holiday music at the Atrium, a Winter Solstice Concert, and WASSAIL! from Apollo’s Fire

. Piano Cleveland Social Club

THE WINTER SOLSTICE is scheduled for today at 4:47 pm in the Northern Hemisphere. Despite a recent run of blazingly sunny days, this moment marks the point when we northerners are tilted as far away from the sun as possible, producing a Wednesday with the shortest daylight and longest night of the year. Just the thing to warm our hearts as the latest episode of the COVID-19 saga unfolds.

Given no alternative, we might as well enjoy our mutual planetary experience today, and as usual, music comes to the rescue.

Click here to listen to the carol commissioned for the 1998 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge. Gile Swayne set his own English text in his Winter Solstice Carol (it alternates with familiar Latin phrases from the Christmas Day antiphon to the Magnificat): [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, December 20, 2022

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today: organist David Kazimir at the Covenant

•News: Cleveland Cello Society’s 2023 season, honors for Takács & Case Symphonic Winds, and a spotlight on OMEA prep at Beachwood High

•Almanac: birthdays for composer John Harbison and pianist Mitsuko Uchida

HAPPENING TODAY:

Organist David Kazimir’s program for today’s Tuesday Noon Organ Plus Concert at Church of the Covenant consists of North German settings of the Magnificat — music by Dietrich Buxtehude, Samuel Scheidt, and J.S. Bach. A freewill offering will be taken up.

[Read more…]

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