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The Cleveland Orchestra: Joshua Smith rediscovers Goethe via Pintscher

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by Mike Telin

Last week, the conductor Matthias Pintscher led The Cleveland Orchestra in works by Rachmaninoff and Bartók. This week, music by the composer Matthias Pintscher will be featured when principal flute Joshua Smith gives the U.S. premiere of Pintscher’s Transir for flute and orchestra.

The program, under the direction of Alain Altinoglu, will also include a Suite drawn by the conductor from Debussy’s opera Pelléas and Mélisande, and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, Pavane for a Dead Princess, and Boléro.

The concerts take place on Thursday, November 8 at 7:30 pm, Friday the 9th at 11:00 am (no Pintscher), and Saturday the 10th at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Pintscher wrote the concerto for Emmanuel Pahud, principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic, who described the piece as “the most avant-garde work I have played so far, in terms of all the special effects required and how to synchronize them with the orchestra.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society to welcome the Ehnes Quartet

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by Mike Telin

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society will continue its season on Tuesday, November 13 when they welcome the Ehnes Quartet — James Ehnes and Amy Schwartz Moretti, violins, Richard O’Neill, viola, and Edward Arron, cello.

The 7:30 pm concert at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights will include Haydn’s Quartet in G, Op. 76, No. 1, Elgar’s Quartet in e, and Bartók’s Quartet No. 5. A pre-concert lecture by Richard Rodda will begin at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

During an email exchange, Amy Schwartz Moretti said that as a proud graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, to be able to bring her colleagues to the place that was so formative in her life means a lot to her. She fondly remembers the “wonderful teaching and influence of the Weilersteins, Cavani Quartet, Peter Salaff, and all the amazing teachers who were there during that time. I love every opportunity to come back to Cleveland! It has been especially meaningful to come back for ChamberFest Cleveland each summer and I’m so thankful to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society for inviting my quartet.”  

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Apollo’s Fire: “O Jerusalem” — a conversation with Sorab Wadia

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by Daniel Hathaway

In his bio, Bombay-born Sorab Wadia writes of himself, “He relishes resisting the clutches of typecasting.” No kidding. His musical repertoire ranges from Medieval to pop and rock, with oratorio and opera along the way.

As a singing actor, he has appeared in Mira Nair’s new musical, Monsoon Wedding. As an actor, he’s played Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, been featured in a one-man play based on Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, and appeared on Law & Order, merely to skim the surface of his extensive brag sheet. His classical credentials include piano study at Peabody, where he earned the first of his two masters’ degrees.

Wadia, who will join Apollo’s Fire this weekend as a vocalist for its “O Jerusalem” shows, winds up his narrative noting that he’s now based back in Bombay, “but will jump on a plane for a gig at the drop of a hat.” I reached the hyper-versatile performer on his cell phone to ask how Jeannette Sorrell found him in order to drop that hat. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera Theater presents
“A Salute to Leonard Bernstein”

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by Mike Telin

When Leonard Bernstein wrote his one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti in 1951, Harry Truman was president, unemployment was at 3.3%, and new roads were built to accommodate the increasing numbers of cars. A gallon of gas cost 19 cents, a loaf of bread 16 cents, and a dozen eggs 24 cents. I Love Lucy debuted on television, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was released in movie theaters, and, the American Dream could only be achieved by moving to the suburbs.

This week, Oberlin Opera Theater will celebrate the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein with a tribute that includes Trouble in Tahiti along with music from his hit Broadway shows West Side Story, Candide, On the Town, and Wonderful Town. Performances take place in Hall Auditorium at 8:00 pm on Wednesday, November 7, Friday, November 9, and Saturday, November 10, and at 2:00 pm on Sunday, November 11. Raphael Jiménez leads the Oberlin Orchestra. Tickets are available online.

“The opera is a social commentary on life in suburbia,” Oberlin Opera Theater Director Jonathon Field said during an interview. Trouble in Tahiti opens with a jazz vocal trio espousing the virtues of living in a little white house in places such as Scarsdale, Highland Park, and Shaker Heights. “They’re singing about what was supposed to be the good life and all the things you were supposed to strive for. But Sam and Dinah discover that in reality, the idyllic 1950s suburban life in America is not all it’s cracked up to be.” [Read more…]

CIM Opera Theater: Chatting with Dean Southern about two short operas

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The template for a good opera, according to Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges: fewer humans, more furniture.

The character list begins with a mischievous child and his mom, but soon branches out to include armchairs, a bench, a couch, a stool, a wicker chair, and a grandfather clock. Then the kitchenware, plants, and animals enter the fray.

But are singers okay with being cast as armchairs? That’s one of many questions I recently got to ask Dean Southern, head of the voice and opera division at the Cleveland Institute of Music. We spoke by phone about CIM Opera Theater’s upcoming double-bill, L’Enfant and Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol — a fascinating work in its own right, and more rarely heard than the already uncommon Ravel.

Performances will take place in CIM’s Kulas Hall from Wednesday through Friday, November 7-9 at 7:30 pm, and on Saturday, November 10 at 3:00 pm. Harry Davidson will lead the CIM Orchestra, which will appear in size XL, thanks to the extensive instrumental colors called for by Ravel and Stravinsky.

[Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: 15 minutes with oboist Martin Neubert

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If you’ve been to an orchestra concert in the area over the last 26 years, you’ve probably heard Martin Neubert’s playing.

Since receiving his master’s from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1992, the oboist has become a mainstay of the region’s music scene. He’s principal of the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, Warren Philharmonic, and Opera Western Reserve, and second in the Cleveland Pops Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Symphony. On top of that, he’s substituted with The Cleveland Orchestra, and performed with the symphonies of Akron, Canton, and Youngstown.

In short, he’s been around.

This weekend, Neubert will step out from the BlueWater ranks to perform as soloist, joining guest conductor Tiffany Chang for her debut with the Orchestra. The program is titled “Opulent Oboe and Scintillating Symphony” — the opulence coming from German-American composer Lukas Foss’s Concerto, the scintillation from Haydn’s Symphony No. 103 in E-flat, “Drumroll.” Apologies to Beethoven for missing out on the fun adjectives, but his Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 should make for a strong opener.

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Singers’ Club Mather Competition: a conversation with Sherrill Milnes

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by Daniel Hathaway

Following the Singers’ Club of Cleveland’s 29th Annual S. Livingston Mather Scholarship Competition for Male Voice Students on November 3, veteran Metropolitan Opera baritone Sherrill Milnes will give a free, public master class for the five winners on Sunday, November 4 at 1:00 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

With over 650 Met performances to his credit — he and the late Montserrat Caballé both made their house debuts in Gounod’s Faust on December 22, 1965 — Milnes continues to be a popular mentor for young singers. Together with his wife, Maria Zouves, he co-founded and runs the Sherrill Milnes VOICE Programs: VOICExperience Foundation and the Savannah VOICE Festival, which “provide training for aspiring young artists while fostering new audiences for the arts.”

I reached Sherrill Milnes by telephone only a day or so after he returned from a trip to China. [Read more…]

Memorial for Walter Holtkamp, Jr. scheduled for Saturday, November 10

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by Daniel Hathaway

Walter Henry “Chick” Holtkamp, Jr. joined the Holtkamp Organ Company in 1956 after serving in the Navy, becoming president of Cleveland’s oldest continuously operating manufacturing company in 1962 when his father died unexpectedly. In 1996, thirty-four years later, he retired from what was also the oldest continuously operating pipe organ firm in the U.S. — founded in 1855. Holtkamp died on August 27 at the age of 89. His life and career will be celebrated in a memorial event in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday, November 10 at 11:00 am.

That event will include musical tributes by organists John Ferguson (emeritus professor at St. Olaf College) and David Higgs (professor at the Eastman School of Music), and eulogies by Chris Holtkamp, Eric Kisch, and Sarah McFarlane Polly, as well as by Ferguson and Higgs. Gartner Auditorium houses one of Holtkamp’s flagship instruments, the McMyler Memorial Organ, built in 1971. [Read more…]

Good Company: “Weekend with Composer Ola Gjeilo”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When a composer-pianist like Ola Gjeilo lists people who have inspired them, names like Keith Jarrett, Philip Glass, and Howard Shore — all Gjeilo favorites — aren’t surprising to hear.

But Dale Chihuly and Frank Gehry — a glass artist and an architect?

“I’m always inspired by artists that have an improvisational approach, which they both do,” Gjeilo said during a recent telephone conversation. “Their process seems very intuitive — kind of feeling its way through what works and what doesn’t. And that’s similar to my approach as a composer. It’s not necessarily very cerebral or intellectual with a lot of pre-planned parameters. It usually comes out of improvising ideas and building on them — I like the fluidity of that process.”

This weekend, Good Company: A Vocal Ensemble will welcome the Norwegian-born, New York City-based Gjeilo for two events at Lakewood Presbyterian Church. First, a choral workshop on Saturday, November 3 at 3:00 pm that’s free and open to anyone with an interest in choral singing techniques, Gjeilo’s music, and his creative process.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society welcomes the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet

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by Mike Telin

When the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet last appeared in Cleveland in March of 2015, that occasion coincided with the release of their CD New Renaissance. When John Dearman, Matthew Greif, William Kanengiser, and Scott Tennant return to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, there won’t be a new album, but you can hear the new work that Pat Metheny wrote for them. Tickets are available online.

“We met Pat at a guitar festival in Montana about four years ago,” Kanengiser said during a recent telephone conversation. “Unbeknownst to us, he was a closet LAGQ fan, which was a shock and an honor because we idolize him. He said, ‘Hey, I might write a piece for you guys,’ and we said that would be awesome.”  

As it is with busy people, Kanengiser said the Quartet did not hear from Metheny for a while — until an email arrived from him saying that he was indeed going to write that piece. Although the LAGQ members expected to receive a 10- to 12-minute work, a month later the composer/guitarist contacted them saying he had sketched out a 6-movement, 25-minute piece.  

[Read more…]

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