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Oberlin Artist Recital Series:
Craig Terry talks about “Songplay”

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by Mike Telin

Last week, pianist Craig Terry shared Akron’s Thomas Hall stage with opera stars Lawrence Brownlee and Eric Owens for a Tuesday Musical concert — it was fantastic. On Wednesday, February 27 at 7:30 pm, the pianist will return to Northeast Ohio for a performance on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series, where he will share the Finney Chapel stage with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato.

The evening, titled “Songplay,” is based on DiDonato’s recently released album of the same name, with arrangements by Terry. It features songs from the early Baroque to American Classics, and from pure classical to improvised jazz. Tickets are available online.

“This tour has six stops, and the one with Larry and Eric has eight,” Terry said during a recent telephone conversation. “On Sunday I perform with Larry and Eric in Seattle, and on Monday the Joyce tour starts in the same theater. I’ve never played consecutive dates in the same space with different artists before, but this is a really fun time for me.”   [Read more…]

Big Read Cleveland delves into race, Trinity’s BrownBag Series responds

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“We’ve heard this story before,” tenor Matt Jones said during a recent telephone conversation. We had been talking about the cartoon caricature of tennis star Serena Williams that was published in the Herald Sun of Australia last fall, and was widely seen as racist. “I’m glad that we’re still talking about these things and why they happen.”

Jones will join soprano Kristine Caswelch and pianist Nicole Keller at Trinity Cathedral next Wednesday, February 27 at 12:00 pm for a BrownBag Concert conceived in response to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. That 2014 finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry has been described as “an anatomy of American racism in the new millennium” (Parul Sehgal, Bookforum). A second performance takes place on Sunday, March 24 at 2:00 pm at the Main Branch of Lakewood Public Library.

Some quick background on the program: it’s the result of a web of partnerships among two local organizations, Music and Art at Trinity and the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning (CAL), one regional, Arts Midwest, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). CAL was selected to host one of this year’s NEA Big Read programs, in which a series of events are planned around a book, with the purpose of broadening people’s understanding of the world, their community, and themselves.

[Read more…]

Met Opera star Jennifer Rowley returns to Baldwin Wallace

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by Mike Telin

“Be Prepared” may be the Scout motto but it is also the personal mantra of opera star Jennifer Rowley. “In my career I’ve had a lot of opportunities to jump in at the last minute for someone who was ill,” the soprano said during a telephone conversation from New York City. “And if I hadn’t been prepared to seize each of those moments, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

This season the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory alum returns to The Metropolitan Opera to perform the title roles in Puccini’s Tosca and Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur. It also marks her debut with Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, singing Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore. And when she’s not traveling to opera houses around the world, Rowley serves as BW’s 2018-2019 guest Artist-in-Residence.

On February 15 at 7:00 pm, Rowley will return to her alma mater to present a concert of bel canto scenes and songs with pianist Jason Aquila in Gamble Auditorium. On Saturday, February 16 at 4:00 pm in Fynes Hall, Rowley will work with students during a master class. Both events are free. [Read more…]

Sulayman, Sorrell & Apollo’s Fire win Grammy for Songs of Orpheus

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by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire was among the Grammy winners for classical music announced in Los Angeles on February 10. The award in the Best Solo Vocal Album category was given for the ensemble’s Avie recording, Songs of Orpheus, featuring tenor Karim Sulayman. Conductor Jeannette Sorrell led an ensemble that included Julie Andrijeski, Johanna Novom, Karina Schmitz, René Schiffer, Rebecca Landell Reed, William Simms, and Brian Kay.

[Read more…]

Looking for a Valentine’s Day concert? Perhaps we can help you

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by Daniel Hathaway

It’s Valentine’s Day all week this week, and aside from the obvious gifts — flowers, chocolates, and shiny bling — there are a number of ways to take to heart the new advice of gifting your love interest experiences rather than things.

Our Concert Listings have been providing such a service since the website was launched in 2008. Consider this message from one of our readers way back in 2009:

I’m grateful for ClevelandClassical.com for so many reasons. In fact, I learned about Nathan Gunn’s performance at Oberlin through you, which has now become the central feature of my surprise Valentine’s Day date with my fiancée! I owe you big time now.

Here are some suggestions for your own Valentine.

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No Exit: 5 composers, 5 premieres, part 2

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you ask a bunch of composers how they dreamed up their latest pieces, they’ll all have something completely different to say.

That’s what I learned this past week, when I spent time on the phone with five of them to ask about their new chamber works being premiered by No Exit this weekend.

That new music ensemble, directed by Tim Beyer, will give free performances of these pieces at Heights Arts (Friday, February 15 at 7:00 pm), SPACES gallery (Saturday, February 16 at 8:00 pm), and WOLFS gallery (Friday, March 1 at 7:00 pm) in this second installment of the group’s Cleveland Composers Series.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra:
fifteen minutes with
Mozart program soloist Kiera Duffy

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by Daniel Hathaway

Soprano Kiera Duffy will make her third Cleveland appearance and her Severance Hall debut this weekend when she sings Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate with Harry Bicket and The Cleveland Orchestra.

In a telephone conversation from South Bend, Indiana, where she teaches at the University of Notre Dame, Duffy said, “Coming to Cleveland seems like a homecoming, because some of the most important gigs of my early professional career were there doing early music.”

Those gigs were with Apollo’s Fire, including performances and a recording of Handel’s Dixit Dominus over a decade ago, and more recently, the Praetorius Christmas Vespers. Since that time, Duffy has expanded her musical universe to include new music as well.

“Early music and new music make a strange pair of bedfellows, but they often go hand in hand in people’s careers. Obviously I’ve sung a really broad range of repertoire over mine. [Read more…]

Doric String Quartet to make Northeast Ohio debut at Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

Over the years I have heard many interesting stories about how chamber music ensembles have come into existence. But I was not prepared for the answer I received from cellist John Myerscough of the Doric String Quartet.

“Alex Redington and myself are the two founding members,” he said. “We’ve known each other since we were nine years old. We met at a chamber music camp for kids in the U.K. — we used to go during the school holidays. Then, when we were fifteen or sixteen we were put into the quartet that we are still in today. It just really worked, so we kept going. There never was a moment where it was a decision to try and make it professionally — it just took us and we’ve always been doing it. It’s our life I suppose.” In 2018 the Quartet celebrated their twentieth anniversary.

On Friday, February 22 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel, the Doric String Quartet (Alex Redington and Ying Xue, violins, Hélène Clément, viola, and John Myerscough, cello) will make their Northeast Ohio debut with a concert on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series. Tickets are available online. Beginning at 9:30 am on Saturday, February 23 in the Conservatory, the Doric will give four master classes — each member will work with at least one student chamber music ensemble. [Read more…]

AGO prize-winning organist Aaron Tan to present recital at St. John’s Cathedral

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by Daniel Hathaway

Toronto-born organist Aaron Tan, who will play a recital at St. John’s Cathedral on Friday, February 8, is among the young concert artists that can make you distinctly feel like an underachiever.

After earning a PhD in Materials Science at the University of Michigan, and a five-year stint in postdoctoral research, last fall he embarked on a Master of Music degree at Yale. Along the way, he won first prize and audience prize in the American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance last July in Prairie Village, Kansas.

That win came with a cash award, as well as professional representation by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc., and guaranteed recital dates. “The prize has led to a busy but fulfilling fall,” Tan said in a phone call from Yale. “I probably did something like two concerts a month on top of starting a new school program and a new church job.” [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: diving into Stella Sung’s Oceana

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Asked to name a piece that uses sounds recorded from nature, many would think of Respighi’s Pines of Rome and the nightingales that end its third movement. Locals especially might remember the calls of the shore lark and whooper swan in Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus arcticus, which the Akron Symphony paired with Pines in a Planet Earth-themed concert last March.

Here’s another one that’s even more technologically ambitious. Stella Sung’s Oceana was premiered by Christopher Wilkins and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra last summer, and will receive its Northeast Ohio premiere in the hands of Wilkins and the ASO on Saturday, February 9 at 8:00 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall.

Oceana was inspired by the issue of ocean noise pollution — like from seismic testing and large ships — which disrupts the ability of many animals to communicate, navigate, and find food. Meshing orchestral sounds with those of whales, dolphins, seals, and other animals, Sung penned an ode to oceanic ecosystems and their importance to all forms of life.

[Read more…]

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