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Cleveland Opera Theater to present La traviata at the Maltz

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by Mike Telin

Violetta Valéry is among the most popular of the many sopranos who die in the last acts of operas. You can relive the story of that “fallen woman” this weekend when Cleveland Opera Theater turns the Maltz Performing Arts Center into an opera house for Verdi’s La traviata.

Scott Skiba directs, Domenico Boyagian conducts, and the cast features Angela Mortellaro as Violetta, Benjamin Werley as Alfredo, and Grant Youngblood as Germont. The Act II party scene is always a highlight, but this one, featuring Cleveland Burlesque, promises to be a show-stopper. The lights go up on Friday, April 26 at 7:00 pm and on Sunday, April 28 at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“Cleveland Burlesque performs all around Cleveland,” Skiba said during a telephone conversation, “and I reached out to them because we are setting the production in contemporary times. I was thinking, who would Flora hire to perform at her party, and I thought she would hire burlesque dancers.”

[Read more…]

Chagrin Arts: fusing art and music with bassoonist Barry Stees

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Inside every artist’s brain is a region where the words of their mentors float around like balloons, even years or decades later. During a recent phone call, bassoonist Barry Stees looked back on one such piece of advice from the late K. David Van Hoesen, his former teacher at the Eastman School of Music.

“He was always encouraging us to read literature, view art, and take in other forms of culture to fill in the context behind the music we were learning,” said Stees, who serves as assistant principal bassoon in The Cleveland Orchestra.

That stuck with him. And now, he’s developed a concert program themed around music and the visual art and artists that inspired it. He’ll bring that to life with pianist Randall Fusco, oboist Cynthia Watson Sperl, and the Callisto Quartet at Chagrin Falls United Methodist Church this Friday, April 26 at 7:30 pm as part of the Chagrin Arts series. Visual art will be displayed on the walls, and shown on projections.

[Read more…]

David Krakauer, klezmer, and Jewish identity

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by Jarrett Hoffman

By age 30, clarinetist David Krakauer began to feel that he was missing something in his life. He had already developed a high-level career as a chamber musician, including winning the Naumburg Award with the Aspen Wind Quintet. But he found himself thinking of the jazz playing he had left behind in his early twenties.

“There was this moment where I thought, wow, I kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater,” Krakauer told me during a recent phone call. “I wanted to get back to improvising and playing ‘off the page.’”

He took an interest in klezmer music, “almost as a hobby,” he said, and started doing small gigs at Jewish community centers. “I was suddenly learning all about the Jewishness that I hadn’t really known I had. There was a shock of recognition in playing that music — I thought, this sounds like the strong Yiddish accent of my grandmother. I felt like I had come home in a way.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: a conversation with Judicaël Perroy

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by Mike Telin

The decision to pursue the path of a professional musician came late for Judicaël Perroy. “I didn’t decide until I was in my twenties,” the French-born guitarist wrote in an email. Perroy, who serves on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory, said that although he learned to play the guitar early in life, he was always interested in other subjects while he was in school. “I was kind of a child prodigy and everybody thought that I would become a guitarist. So I decided late because I wanted it to be my decision.”

On Saturday, April 27 at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church, Perroy will make his Cleveland debut with a concert featuring works by Bach, Sor, Mertz, Villa-Lobos, and Albéniz. The concert is presented as part of the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

The Spring Quartet: a conversation with Joe Lovano and Jack DeJohnette

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by Mike Telin

On Wednesday, April 17 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series will present The Spring Quartet, an all-star ensemble that includes drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxman Joe Lovano, bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Leo Genovese. The concert is part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Program. Tickets are limited and available online.

Click here to read a preview of tomorrow night’s concert. Here we continue our conversations with Lovano and DeJohnette to talk about their careers and how they came to jazz.

Joe Lovano was born in Cleveland, where his father was a noted tenor saxophonist. After graduating from Euclid High School he went on to study at the Berklee College of Music. Lovano is a self-proclaimed Cleveland ambassador and is thrilled to have recently spent two nights at the Bop Stop recording for National Public Radio’s Jazz Night in America. When I spoke to him, he was in a four-day residency at San Francisco Jazz.

[Read more…]

THE LONG VIEW: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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by Mike Telin

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aka Notorious RBG

On Thursday, April 18 at 7:00 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, pianist Angelin Chang, soprano Patrice Michaels, and classical music producer James Ginsburg will present Michaels’ THE LONG VIEW: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Nine Songs. The cycle serves as the centerpiece of this one-act, 75-minute dramatic concert which also includes works by Vivian Fung, Stacy Garrop, Lee Hoiby, Lori Laitman, and John Musto as well as projection designs by Yee Eun Nam. A Question & Answer session will follow the performance. Admission is free and open to the public.

This nine-song cycle by Michaels (daughter-in-law of RBG) brings to light many aspects of Justice Ginsburg’s personal and professional life through letters, remembrances, conversations, and court opinions. The cycle has been recorded by Michaels for Cedille Records, the Chicago-based label of James Ginsburg (son of RBG). The album Notorious RBG in Song is available from Cedille.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical: Lara Downes, Bernstein, and women composers

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Pianist Lara Downes will bring together two recent projects, one devoted to Leonard Bernstein, the other celebrating women composers, when she visits E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on Thursday, April 18 at 7:30 pm as part of Tuesday Musical’s Fuze Series.

Bernstein’s own works, new arrangements of his pieces, and works that were dedicated to him by John Corigliano, Lukas Foss, and Michael Abels will make up the first half of the program — mostly taken from Downes’ 2018 album For Lenny.

Next is The Answer is: Yes, a recent Bernstein-inspired piece by Tuesday Musical composer-in-residence Gregg Kallor, premiered in October. New to this performance is a dance aspect — Downes will collaborate with the Miller South Dance Ensemble, directed by Ashley Watts, and comprising students from Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts in Akron.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: The Spring Quartet

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by Mike Telin

It’s been three decades since the Oberlin Conservatory launched its Jazz Studies Program, and beginning on Monday, April 15, the school will mark the milestone with a three-day celebration. (A full schedule is below.) The festivities will culminate on Wednesday, April 17 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel with an Artist Recital Series performance by The Spring Quartet, an all-star ensemble that includes drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxman Joe Lovano, bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Leo Genovese. Tickets are limited and available online.

The membership of the Spring Quartet spans three generations, something that DeJohnette, a 2012 NEA Jazz Master, said makes for a nice balance of older and younger generations. “There’s this exchange of inspiration from Esperanza and Leo and you need that young energy,” he said during an interview.

In a separate interview Joe Lovano said that the group shares a common musical vocabulary which is the reason the four members “clicked from the very first downbeat.”

DeJohnette agreed. “Sometimes people come together and the magic happens,” he said. “We have a lot of love and respect for each other as people and as artists, and the propensity to work together cooperatively is greatly enhanced because of that.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: period brass players Steven Marquardt & Todd Williams talk about Bach’s B-Minor Mass

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by Daniel Hathaway

Patrons of Apollo’s Fire and the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival will have the rare experience this weekend of hearing J.S. Bach’s great B-Minor Mass performed locally for the first time on period instruments. Among those will be three natural trumpets and a single natural horn — both played without valves. The distinguished performers will include trumpeter Steven Marquardt and hornist Todd Williams.

Marquardt and his colleagues Perry Sutton and Stanley Curtis will be doing a lot of trumpeting during the Mass. “The Bach is really quite demanding. We play in eleven of the 27 movements, compared to only five in Handel’s Messiah — and two of those are back to back, so it’s more like four,” he said in a telephone conversation.

Williams, on the other hand, will be making a true cameo appearance, playing only in the “Quoniam” of the “Gloria,” an unusual bass aria supported by solo horn and a pair of bassoons. “The ‘Quoniam’ is not as stratospheric as the trumpet parts, though it has its own challenges,” he said in a separate conversation. “You sit there for 45 minutes, then you have to play a very difficult and quite famous solo. It’s sort of a wild movement, with a mood change that’s a bit shocking after what came just before. [Read more…]

No Exit remembers composer Ladislav Kubik

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by Jarrett Hoffman

How should we remember someone after they pass away?

Czech-American composer Ladislav Kubik died in 2017, and many of the obituaries written for him described an impressive career — from his Guggenheim fellowship to first prizes in several major competitions and a 26-year teaching post at Florida State University.

One short article included below went in a different direction. You got the sense from reading it that this writer really knew Kubik, and that his loss was personal.

The writer was Tim Beyer, director of No Exit. And that new music ensemble will give the premiere of Kubik’s 2017 Nocturnes in three free concerts next week devoted to the composer’s works. Nocturnes, a No Exit commission, turned out to be Kubik’s last completed piece.

[Read more…]

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