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NEOSonicFest: a look back at the beginning, and a peek at what’s on tap in 2019

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When a festival runs for long enough, it becomes interesting to look back and remember that it wasn’t always a staple of the local culture. At one time, it was entirely new.

“Last weekend,” Daniel Hathaway wrote in April of 2014, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony “burst suddenly into bloom like a crocus after a long winter with the first of two concerts anchoring its promising new enterprise, NEOSonicFest…”

Back then, music director Steven Smith had been thinking for years about how to keep the name and activities of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony alive, as Mike Telin reported in our very first preview of NEOSonicFest. The retirement of the orchestra’s founder, Edwin London, and the end of its residency at Cleveland State University had slowed the group’s momentum.

[Read more…]

Baldwin Wallace Opera presents Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress

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by Daniel Hathaway and Mike Telin

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress is based on a series of 18th-century engravings of the same name by William Hogarth and boasts a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. The opera chronicles the moral and physical demise of Tom Rakewell, who deserts Anne Trulove for London’s decadent delights. After many adventures initiated by Nick Shadow, a.k.a. the Devil, Tom ends up in a hospital for the insane. The moral of the story: the Devil will find work for idle hands. Click here to read a short synopsis.

On Thursday, March 21 at 7:30 pm at the Klais Drama Center, Baldwin Wallace Opera Theater takes on this entertaining tale of Tom and his pact with the Devil. The double cast includes Ethan Burck and Benjamin Krumreig as Tom Rakewell, faculty members Benjamin Czarnota and Marc Weagraff as Nick Shadow, DeLaine Crutchfield and Giuliana Bozza as Anne Trulove, and Nan Golz and Sarah Antell as Baba the Turk. Scott Skiba directs and Domenico Boyagian conducts the Baldwin Wallace Orchestra. Performances continue on March 22 and 23 at 7:30 pm and March 24 at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

We spoke with Marc Weagraff by telephone and began by asking him how it feels to play the Devil?

[Read more…]

Essay: When music is “about” something, don’t forget to listen

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Imagine two hypothetical works of music. Piece A has a story behind it — maybe a moment in history, or an issue facing the world, or that time the composer stubbed their toe — while Piece B is just music, period.

For composers, there are some advantages to writing a “Piece A.” They can easily describe it to people who might want to hear, publicize, perform, or present it. And those same people can quickly latch onto something that’s interesting (current event) or relatable (stubbed toe). But just as easily, that concrete description can come to overshadow the actual music in discussions about the piece.

Violinist Leila Josefowicz (above) gave me some gentle sass about this during an interview last fall. She was bringing John Adams’ Scheherazade.2 to The Cleveland Orchestra, and I had asked her a couple conceptual questions about the concerto, which reimagines the character of Scheherazade as a modern, empowered woman. Here’s what she said:

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra
announces summer plans

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by Daniel Hathaway

As The Cleveland Orchestra prepares to launch its seven-city Asia Tour from March 28 through April 13, and now that the days are beginning to grow longer and brighter, it’s time to have a look at the Orchestra’s concerts for the summer, single tickets for which go on sale on April 1.

Once again, the Orchestra will hold down two fronts — at the Blossom Music Center and at Severance Hall. The Blossom season, which begins on June 29 and ends on September 1, will be bookended by screenings of big hit movies with live performances of John Williams film scores. Blossom begins with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and ends two months later with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

In between its al fresco concerts in Cuyahoga Falls, The Cleveland Orchestra will put its Severance Hall air conditioning to good use in four “Summers at Severance” events — plus two screenings of the 1989 Batman film with a live performance of Danny Elfman’s score. There’s an outdoor component to the in-town concerts as well: the Severance audiences can spill out onto the front patios for food and drink before and after the performances.

The complete summer schedule follows. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque tells
the “Other Side of the Story”

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by Mike Telin

Curating thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts has become a calling card for the innovative, Cleveland-based ensemble Burning River Baroque.

In the past year, soprano Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust have presented “Suppressed Voices: Music of the Banished” which featured music by Johann Rosenmüller —  a German who escaped to Italy after being imprisoned for homosexuality — and Peter Philips, who was imprisoned as a Catholic in Anglican England, then later fled to the Spanish Netherlands. “Destructive Desires” examined works by Couperin, Rameau, Jacquet de la Guerre, Caccini, Eccles, and Courbois under the light of the #MeToo era.

On Wednesday, March 20 at Glo, Rauschenfels and Maust will be joined by Sarah Lynn, baroque flute, and Glenna Curren, baroque cello, in a concert titled “The Other Side of the Story.” The program, which draws on ancient mythology, literature, and Biblical passages, highlights characters whose viewpoints are underrepresented.

Presented by Fresh Perspectives, the evening includes a 6:45 pm pre-concert talk with host Devin Hinzo and musician Zach Manzi. [Read more…]

Paul Jacobs to play U.S. premiere
of Deutsch organ concerto
at Severance Hall

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by Daniel Hathaway

Organist Paul Jacobs will return to Severance Hall this week to play four performances of Viennese composer Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Okeanos with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra.

The concerts, which begin on Thursday evening, March 14 and run through Sunday afternoon, March 17, include Haydn’s Symphony No. 34 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. This week’s programs mark the first United States performances of Deutsch’s organ concerto, which received its debut in November of 2015 by Wolfgang Kogert and Radio-Symphonie-orchester Wien in the Großer Saal of Vienna’s Musikverein.

I caught up with Jacobs on his mobile phone during a break between auditions at the Juilliard School in New York to ask him for some of his impressions of Deutsch and Okeanos.

“I only knew Deutsch by name, but he has quite a successful career and reputation in Europe. It’s my hope that his music becomes better known here in the United States. It’s really excellent writing. We’ve spoken on the phone, and we’re the same age, which is an interesting feature of the collaboration.” [Read more…]

Trenney’s Sounding Light Choir to sing Pietá at St. John’s Cathedral

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Friday, March 15 at 7:30 pm, Tom Trenney will bring his Detroit-based Sounding Light Chamber Choir (“the choir of many voices…one song”) to St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland for a performance on the Helen D. Schubert series of John Muehleisen’s Pietà, a 90-minute cantata inspired by the stories of three grieving mothers.

“The first story is about the Passion of Jesus Christ,” Trenny said in a telephone conversation. “The second is about the World War II soldier John Kipling and his mother Carrie, who communicated through letters and writings by father Rudyard. The third is based on the eulogy from Matthew Shepard’s funeral.

“Pietá is about the incredible sense of hope and light that emerges on the other side of tragedy. It’s a message of compassion — the opportunity we all have to sit with someone in grief, and help them experience the joy and grace that is present even in the most difficult moments of life.” [Read more…]

Kent State Opera to stage Copland’s The Tender Land

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by Daniel Hathaway

For its spring production, Kent State Opera will present Aaron Copland’s 1954 opera, The Tender Land — a title that seems not to have been staged in Northeast Ohio for at least ten years, although a suite of orchestral excerpts has appeared with some regularity on concert programs.

In a telephone conversation with music director Jay White, the Kent professor admitted that Tender Land was not on his radar before he and Marla Berg decided to produce it at Kent. “The only thing I was familiar with was the choral arrangements of ‘The Promise of Living’ and ‘Stomp Your Foot,’” he said. “Marla wanted to do something in English again and we had done an excerpt from it in our scenes program a couple of years ago. There are essentially three main male characters and two main female characters, and for the first time, we actually had enough men to fill all the principal roles.”

Inspired by Walker Evans’ Depression-era photos and James Agee’s book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and with a libretto by Horace Everett under the pseudonym of Erik Johns, the opera was originally conceived for broadcast on television, but its producers sank the project. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: Jinjoo Cho, kitchen magnets & the Korngold Concerto

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Sometimes it feels appropriate to get right down to business. Last week, when I got in touch with Jinjoo Cho, that would have meant delving immediately into Korngold’s Concerto, which she played in the final round at the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis enroute to winning the Gold Medal. She’ll revisit the piece with Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony this Saturday, March 16 at 8:00 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall.

But there was something I’d read at the bottom of her bio that I needed to clear up first. So when she picked up the phone, I quickly put on my reporter’s hat and began to investigate.

“In the beginning they were more like souvenirs,” Cho said of her collection of kitchen magnets. “I would get one that reminded me of someplace. Now I feel like it’s become a full-on obsession. Whenever I see a cute one, I just can’t not buy it.”

[Read more…]

Chan E. Park brings pansori singing to Around the World Music Series in Kent

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Just as species can become endangered, so can forms of art. During the mid-20th century, that was the case with pansori — a Korean style of musical storytelling where a solo vocalist takes on many roles, accompanied by a barrel drum. Pansori received official protections and recognition from the South Korean government in 1964 and from UNESCO in 2003.

One of the foremost advocates of that art form in North America is Chan E. Park, who will bring pansori to Standing Rock Cultural Arts’ Around the World Music Series at the North Water Street Gallery in Kent on Saturday, March 16 at 8:00 pm. (Pay what you wish, or give a suggested donation of $10. A 7:30 pm reception will include free sujeonggwa, a traditional Korean ginger-cinnamon-persimmon punch.)

Today, five madang (or song cycles) make up the pansori repertoire. In Kent, Park will give a bilingual performance of one of those five, the Sugungga (“Song of the Underwater Palace”). That English title sounds a bit imposing, but it’s actually a fairly light tale about a dragon king, his loyal turtle, and the rabbit they plan to trick — but who turns the tables on both of them in the end.

[Read more…]

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