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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…]

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…]

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