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Fresh Perspectives to present Ohio premiere of Contralto

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by Mike Telin

What is a percussionist? What is a woman? These two questions will be examined on Friday, January 25 at Glo Cleveland, when Fresh Perspectives presents “I Am,” a celebration of identity through art and music. The evening will feature the music of percussionist/composer Sarah Hennies, including the Ohio premiere of her groundbreaking work Contralto, for video, strings, and percussion. The work features a cast of transgender women vocalizing over a live musical score.

The program will also include Hennies’ Everything Else for four or more performers and Settle for vibraphone (two players), performed by Hennies and Justin Gunter. Attendees can enjoy a new generative video installation by Brooklyn-based Natalie Braginsky and a poetry bar hosted by Cleveland-based poets, offering made-to-order poems you get to take home. Food and drinks are available. Tickets are available at the door on a sliding scale of $5 to $15. Doors open at 6:30 pm — 2460 Lakeside Avenue, Cleveland.

On her website, Hennies writes that Contralto — “defined in musical terms as ‘the lowest female singing voice’ — uses the sound of trans women’s voices to explore transfeminine identity from the inside and examines the intimate and peculiar relationship between gender and sound.” Click here to view a four-minute trailer.

[Read more…]

Les Délices & Newberry Consort to bring diminutive 15th-century songbook to life

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by Daniel Hathaway

Note: the Saturday evening concert in Lakewood has been cancelled due to the severe weather forecast. It’s always fun when musical scores suddenly emerge from wherever they’ve been hiding for decades or centuries. In 2014, a physically tiny collection of 15th-century songs came into the hands of an art dealer in Brussels and caused quite a stir in the early music world. It brought the total of such books that survive to 6, and its beautifully notated pages contain 50 pieces, 12 of which were previously unknown.

“Unbelievable. It’s like suddenly finding a dozen new drawings by Rubens!” said a researcher at the Alamire Foundation of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, which owns what is now known as the Leuven Chansonnier. “We hope that we’ll be able to find out who created the songs. The 38 known works are very interesting as well, because they’re often different versions from the ones we already know.”

When Les Délices and its Chicago counterpart, The Newberry Consort, were casting about for a collaborative project, the Leuven Songbook came immediately to mind for both directors, Debra Nagy and Ellen Hargis. “I told Debra we’d love to do something with that,” Hargis said in a telephone conversation, “and she said, ‘So would we. It doesn’t make any sense to do two programs, so why not do it together?’” [Read more…]

The Harlem Quartet in Youngstown: an ensemble for the 21st Century

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by Mike Telin

It’s no secret that today’s young musicians easily travel between musical genres. Take the Harlem Quartet, for example, who regularly present programs that combine standard string quartet literature with jazz, Latin, and contemporary works. They have a collaborative approach that broadens their repertoire and audience reach, as well as a commitment to residency activity and educational outreach. That combination makes them a prime example of a model 21st-century chamber music ensemble.   

On Thursday, January 17 at 7:30 pm at the Ford Family Recital Hall in Youngstown, the Harlem Quartet (Ilmar Gavilán and Melissa White, violins, Jaime Amador, viola, and Felix Umansky, cello) will perform works by Beethoven, Bolcom, Gillespie, Gavilán, and Debussy. The concert is presented as part of the inaugural Donald P. Pipino Concert Series. Tickets are available online.

The program will open with Beethoven’s Quartet No. 11, Op. 95 (“Serioso”). “It’s beautiful, concise, and compact, and makes a great program opener,” first violinist Ilmar Gavilán said during a recent telephone conversation.  

[Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition kicks off 2019 Concert Series with Jeremy Denk

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by Mike Telin

If you’ve ever wondered what the Cleveland International Piano Competition does during the gap years between its signature event, the answer is a lot. Last spring CIPC hosted its Young Artist Competition, and from January through May will present five free concerts at the Beachwood Community Center. And on Saturday, January 19 the Competition will kick off the 2019 Concert Series with an 8:00 pm recital by Jeremy Denk at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Denk, an Oberlin alum and winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will perform Beethoven’s Five Variations on “Rule Britannia” in D and An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98/S. 469 (transc. Liszt), Adams’ I Still Play, Bizet’s Variations chromatiques, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses in d, Op. 54, and Schumann’s Fantasy in C, Op. 1. Tickets are available online.

“We’re very happy Jeremy is coming,” CIPC President & CEO Yaron Kohlberg said during a telephone conversation. “He’s one of the major pianists in the United States right now. He’ll be presenting a wonderful program and I look forward to a beautiful concert.”

This Saturday’s concert also marks one of Kohlberg’s first public events since he began his tenure with the Competition this past fall. Kohlberg, the second prize winner at the 2007 CIPC, is uniquely qualified for the job. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: a conversation with Alexander Korsantia

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by Mike Telin

Note: this concert has been cancelled due to the severe weather forecast. There are certain pieces of music that, no matter when they were written, always sound new. And in the eyes and ears of Alexander Korsantia, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is one that holds that distinction. “It is an eternally fun concerto,” the pianist said during a recent interview. “It was written almost one hundred years ago but it still feels like it is aiming to the future.”

On Saturday, January 19 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Georgian-born pianist will perform that concerto with the Akron Symphony under the direction of guest conductor Benjamin Zander. The all-Russian program will also include Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Tickets are available online.

When asked what he finds so attractive about the Prokofiev Concerto, the 1995 Gold Medal winner at the Rubinstein Competition quickly answered, “Its diversity. This concerto, probably more than any other by Prokofiev or any great composer, just covers a colossal amount of space in history. He is using an array of techniques from earlier music, like the polyphonic music of the Baroque, and the minuets and gavottes of the Classical era. Haydn is the champion of those dances in the 18th century, but in the 20th century that is Prokofiev.”  

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Art Song Festival: a conversation with baritone Benjamin Appl

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by Daniel Hathaway

As a stop on his first United States tour, Benjamin Appl will visit Cleveland for a recital in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Friday, January 18 at 8:00 pm. The German-born baritone, 36, said in a telephone conversation from his New York hotel that he’s delighted to be sponsored by the Cleveland Art Song Festival. “Especially in the United States, art song recitals are quite rare and it’s very difficult to find promoters who trust there will be enough of an audience,” he said. “My agency in New York told me that it’s absolutely wonderful because the Cleveland organization is a real flagship for this art form.”

Appl, who began his singing career as a treble in the Regensburger Domspatzen — the “Sparrows” of the famous Bavarian cathedral choir of boys and men — spent his early adult years in finance and business administration. Then he became Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s last student, and his life changed.

Since then, Appl has etched out distinguished international credentials in opera and concert music, but he has specialized in Lieder, a subject he now teaches at the Guildhall School in London. It’s music dear to his heart, but he knows it’s often a hard sell in the 21st century. “When I decided to do a lot of song recitals, I knew this would not be an easy step,” he said. [Read more…]

Oberlin Orchestra at Carnegie Hall: a conversation with conductor Raphael Jiménez

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by Mike Telin

As a music journalist, I have had many opportunities to have aside conversations with artists about their favorite concert halls. While everyone mentions the acoustic of places like Severance Hall, for example, most add that they can also feel the ghosts that inhabit these storied venues.

Without question one of the most iconic halls in the United States is Carnegie Hall, and on Saturday, January 19 the Oberlin Orchestra and College Choir will perform among the ghosts of Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Mahler, Bartók, George Gershwin, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Judy Garland, and The Beatles, to name only a few. To view the full roster of Carnegie Hall ghosts, click here.

You can hear a preview concert by these Oberlin ensembles on Wednesday, January 16 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel. Gregory Ristow will lead the Choir in Tarik O’Regan’s Triptych and Stravinsky’s Les noces, and Raphael Jiménez will lead the orchestra in Elizabeth Ogonek’s All These Lighted Things (three little dances for orchestra) and Debussy’s La Mer. Click here for the live webcast.

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Tuesday Musical: pianist Inon Barnatan and the Calidore String Quartet

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“This was fun, let’s do it again sometime” — what we all say after any gathering. And sometimes, we really do mean it.

That was the case after pianist Inon Barnatan and the Calidore String Quartet collaborated for the first time a few years ago, exploring Bach’s keyboard concerti. As Barnatan told me during a recent phone call, “It was such a joy to make this music together that we decided we have to do it again. So here we are.”

On January 22 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Barnatan and the Calidore will revisit Bach during a concert on Akron’s Tuesday Musical series. The program begins with selections from The Art of Fugue, then turns to the keyboard concertos No. 1 in d, No. 7 in g, No. 4 in A, and No. 5 in f. A pre-concert conversation with the musicians takes place at 6:30 pm, and tickets are available online.

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CMA’s Creative Fusion Series begins with Henry Threadgill, Zooid, & Oberlin CME

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Foundation, which has brought more than eighty international artists to Cleveland since 2008 under the auspices of its Creative Fusion program, has partnered with the Cleveland Museum of Art to commission six new works to be premiered over the next two seasons.

Launching the series, composer and multi-instrumentalist Henry Threadgill will bring his Zooid ensemble to the Museum’s Performing Arts Series on Friday, January 11 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium to join Tim Weiss’s Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble in the world premiere of Threadgill’s Pathways, a partly improvisatory, partly pre-determined work.

Threadgill, now 74, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his recording In for a Penny, In for a Pound, which the awards jury described as a “highly original work, in which notated music and improvisation mesh in a sonic tapestry that seems the very expression of modern American life.”

Although he has been been characterized as a jazz musician, Threadgill objects to being hedged in by that branding. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra to present Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos

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by Mike Telin

In the words of Irving Berlin, “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” While that song is a subtly sarcastic tribute to an alluring life in the theater, it’s spirit is also the premise for Richard Strauss’ 1916 opera Ariadne auf Naxos which will receive three performances at Severance Hall beginning this weekend.

Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst says in a video that Ariadne is “an opera about a young composer writing an opera, and the rich man who commissioned him decides that this hot blooded young man who is just writing a tragic, profound opera, should write a comedy as well.”

Director Frederic Wake-Walker describes it as “an opera about opera. The highs and lows, the artistic dreams, and the harsh realities. It’s about a theater full of egos and eccentrics. Divine divas and clumsy clowns. Backstage intrigue and last minute rehearsals. Yet ultimately it’s about how opera is able to transcend politics and practicalities and transport us to the land of the Gods.” Click here to listen to more from Wake-Walker as well as insights from Video Content Designer Dominic Robertson. [Read more…]

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