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Tuesday Musical: a conversation with tenor Lawrence Brownlee

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by Daniel Hathaway

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee will join bass-baritone Eric Owens in a wide-ranging duo recital with pianist Craig Terry on the Tuesday Musical series at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall on February 12 at 7:30 pm. The program includes opera arias and duets, traditional Spirituals, American popular songs, and Gospel favorites.

Born in Youngstown, Brownlee has established a distinguished international career as a bel canto tenor. We caught up with him on the road in Dallas, where he was returning from an appearance in Bizet’s Pearl Fishers with Houston Grand Opera.

Daniel Hathaway: We were sorry to miss hearing you in January when you were in Cleveland to sing a Rossini aria for the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration with The Cleveland Orchestra.

Lawrence Brownlee: I told somebody I wasn’t sure if I was in Siberia or Cleveland, but it was good to be back in Northeast Ohio, my neck of the woods. My parents would have come, but the weather was a little bit too bad. I hope things will clear up next week so I can get a chance to see some of my people and they can support me.

DH: You have a long tour ahead with Eric Owens and this duo recital. I count eleven performances between now and summer. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater {NOW} Festival: Griffin Candey’s The House of Bernarda Alba

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by Mike Telin  

When Griffin Candey first read an English translation of Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba, he knew the play had the makings for an opera. “My wife suggested that I read it,” the composer said by telephone from his home in Marquette, Michigan. “She went to school for musical theater as did I, and in one of her classes they read the play and thought it was fantastic. I’m always scouring material for things to do in the future, so when I read it, I immediately leapt on it.”

On Friday, February 8 at 8:00 pm in Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium, Cleveland Opera Theater’s {NOW} Festival will present a workshop reading of scenes with piano accompaniment from Acts I and II of Candey’s The House of Bernarda Alba with libretto by Obie Award-winner Caridad Svich. The opera is a co-commission between Cleveland Opera Theater and the BW Conservatory.

[Read more…]

Garrick Ohlsson returns to Severance for Busoni’s Piano Concerto

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by Mike Telin

When was the last time you attended a performance of Ferruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto? If your answer is never, you’re not alone. The five-movement work lasts around 70 minutes and is scored for full orchestra and male chorus, making it one of the largest works in the piano concerto canon.

On Thursday, February 7 at 7:30 pm, Garrick Ohlsson will return to the Severance Hall stage for a performance of Busoni’s monumental Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Alan Gilbert. The evening will also include Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 (“Military”). The program will be repeated on Saturday, February 9 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Ohlsson has a long history with this Concerto and with The Cleveland Orchestra — he toured and recorded the piece with Christoph von Dohnányi — but his first introduction to Busoni’s music can be traced back to his teenage years in White Plains, New York. “My first teacher was a student of a Busoni student,” the pianist said by telephone from Boston. “So I grew up knowing about Busoni and his music. By the time I was eleven I was playing some of his pieces.” [Read more…]

A mime speaks: getting to know Magic Circle Mime Co. before they perform with Cleveland Orchestra

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by Jarrett Hoffman

In the music business, we’ve all heard and rolled our eyes at music jokes. Mime jokes might be the breath of fresh air we need.

“I can tell you my favorite one,” Douglas MacIntyre, co-founder of Magic Circle Mime Co., said over the phone. “It was a cartoon in The New Yorker — a drawing of a very high-end suite in a high-rise looking out over Central Park. Right in the center of it is a mime sitting in an imaginary chair. And it just says, ‘Executive Mime.’”

Maybe that kind of thing is common mime banter that makes them roll their eyes (very theatrically, of course). But here’s something that should be fresh for all the mimes, musicians, and fans on either side: mime + orchestra.

That’s what Magic Circle and The Cleveland Orchestra have in store this Friday, February 8 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall. Vinay Parameswaran will lead the Orchestra in a Family Concert titled “The Mozart Experience,” which brings together the visual theater of Magic Circle with excerpts from Eine kleine Nachtmusik, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, the “Jupiter” Symphony, and other famous works by Mozart.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater {NOW} Festival: a celebration of new opera

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by Daniel Hathaway

The creation of new operas is a passion of Scott Skiba, Cleveland Opera Theater’s executive artistic director. The company will host the third annual {NOW} Festival at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory beginning on Monday, February 4 and running through Sunday, February 9. All Festival activities are free and open to the public.

This year’s Festival will include partnerships between Baldwin Wallace, Bowling Green State University, the Cleveland Composers Guild, Hiram College, and Oberlin. “Every year we try to make the institutional collaborations and student engagement more rich,” Skiba said during a telephone conversation. “And this year we’ve got great energy around everything that’s happening.”

The Festival will also include an American Futures Residency by composers Jake Heggie and Griffin Candey, and soprano Ann Moss. “We started putting the plans for this together during the first {NOW} Festival,” Skiba noted. “The residency will allow us to bring these three exceptional artists to the BW campus to work and collaborate with Conservatory students.” [Read more…]

Oberlin Winter Term Opera:
Proving Up — a quest for the American Dream

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by Mike Telin

The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged people seeking the dream of owning their own land to move west — the only cost was a filing fee of $18. Would-be homesteaders had to be at least 21 years of age or the head of a household in order to claim 160 acres of “free land.” (That included women and African-Americans after the 14th Amendment.) In exchange, homesteaders agreed to live on and farm the land, build a home, and make improvements for a period of five years, after which they would be eligible to “prove up.”

The sacrifices made in one family’s pursuit of the American Dream in the shadow of Civil War Nebraska is the subject for the most recent collaboration between composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek. On Thursday, January 31 at 7:30 pm in Wilder Main Lounge, Oberlin Winter Term Opera will present Proving Up, directed by Christopher Mirto. Performances continue through February 5 with free admission, but tickets are required. Cleveland Opera Theater will sponsor a talk-back and reception with the composer and librettist following the February 4 performance as part of the company’s {NOW} Fest ‘19.

“Rehearsals are going great,” Mirto said during a recent telephone conversation. “I think we’re in very good shape. I’m really excited because the opera is only a year old, and these are the first performances since it finished its commission cycle.” [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: fifteen minutes with Daniel Meyer

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by Daniel Hathaway

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra will present music by Osvaldo Golijov, Anton Bruckner, Antonio Vivaldi, and Franz Schubert in concerts this weekend at Rocky River Presbyterian Church (Friday, February 1) and Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights (Saturday, February 2), both at 7:30 pm.

I reached conductor Daniel Meyer on the road between his home in Pittsburgh and one of his regular podium positions in Erie, where he was rehearsing for a concert last weekend with the Erie Philharmonic. I started by congratulating him on his recent appointment as conductor of the Lakeside Symphony.

Daniel Meyer: I’ve been looking for a summer home for a while. My family loves Lakeside, and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work there. One promising thing is its collaborative possibilities. We’re looking to expand what we do.

DH: Besides Erie, what other conducting positions do you hold down at the moment?

DM: I also conduct the Westmoreland Symphony just outside of Pittsburgh. I just got back from a guest appearance in Silicon Valley with the former San José Symphony. [Read more…]

Four Apollo’s Fire violinists take on Biber’s Mystery Sonatas

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by Daniel Hathaway

Tell your friends you’re headed to a Biber concert and their thoughts will immediately turn to a certain Canadian pop star. There’s another Biber, of course, probably famous only in early music circles, and Apollo’s Fire will treat its audiences to a good chunk of one of his violin masterworks this weekend.

Violinists Carrie Krause, Johanna Novom, Adriane Post, and Karina Schmitz will take turns playing nine of the fifteen virtuosic pieces that make up Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s “Rosary” Sonatas — musical meditations on the five Joyful Mysteries, the five Sorrowful Mysteries, and the five Glorious Mysteries of the life of Christ. Probably written in the 1670s, but unknown to modern ears until first published in 1905, the devotional work is preserved in a beautiful manuscript held in the Bavarian State Library.

The sonatas are pictorial and expressive, but a special feature of the collection is Biber’s requirement that the violin strings be re-tuned for most of the pieces after the first sonata. This practice is called scordatura. “What I love about it is that it changes the resonance of the instrument so much,” Karina Schmitz said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project presents violist Ammie Brod and flutist Kenneth Cox

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Violist Ammie Brod embarked on a commissioning project after an almost miraculous encounter with a work of art. Flutist Kenneth Cox is a strong believer in programming music by minority composers.

Those two musicians will split the bill in a recital of solo music on Saturday, February 2 at 5:00 pm at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland. The event is part of the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s free concert series, and includes a pre-concert chat at 4:00 pm.

There’s no more textbook “eureka” moment than when Brod, a member of Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente, happened upon Beth Lipman’s Laid Table (Still Life with Metal Pitcher) at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

During a recent phone call, Brod said it was “like getting hit in the head with something.” She had been thinking about a potential project and was trying to put it into words. “I turned the corner, and I was like, ‘Oh, everything makes sense now.’”

[Read more…]

Carl Topilow and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra play “John Williams: Cinema’s Greatest Music”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The music of the prolific film composer John Williams was a staple of Carl Topilow’s programming long before he launched the Cleveland Pops Orchestra. “We were doing Star Wars medleys in the late ‘70s with the Denver Symphony — now the Colorado Symphony,” the conductor told us during an interview in January of 2016.

On Saturday, February 2 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, Topilow and the Cleveland Pops will honor Williams “and his incredible contributions to the world of music,” as the conductor told us recently over email. Tickets are available here.

“In the span of six decades, John Williams has composed some of the most popular, inspiring, and recognizable film scores in cinematic history,” Topilow said. “Whether drama, science fiction, patriotism, action, adventure, comedy, or despair, he always finds the perfect mood. It is a great joy to perform his music, and we look forward to a wonderful concert.”

[Read more…]

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