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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.

[Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

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…]

Organist Todd Wilson to be featured in BW improvisation workshops & concert

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by Daniel Hathaway

Over his keys the musing organist, | Beginning doubtfully and far away, | First lets his fingers wander as they list, | And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay: | Then, as the touch of his loved instrument | Gives hopes and fervor, nearer draws his theme, | First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent | Along the wavering vista of his dream.

Thus begins James Russell Lowell’s The Vision of Sir Launfal (1867), a poetic description of an organist improvising at the keyboard — an act of instantaneous musical creation that had all but disappeared except from organ lofts, usually French, by the dawning of the 20th century.

Improvisation is now on the rise again, not only through the fingers of organists. “It’s now infecting other musicians as well,” Todd Wilson said in a recent telephone conversation. “Chamber music groups, orchestras, everybody’s doing it.”

Wilson, who is music director at Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, professor of organ at the Cleveland Institute of Music, curator of Severance Hall’s E.M. Skinner organ, and a well-known concert organist, is an enthusiastic improviser whose talents are expressed not only during church services. [Read more…]

Ramping up to Carnegie Hall: a conversation with Oberlin College Choir director Gregory Ristow

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by Daniel Hathaway

On January 19, the Oberlin College Choir and Oberlin Orchestra will share the iconic stage of Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium in New York for performances of works by Tarik O’Regan, Igor Stravinsky, Elizabeth Ogonek, and Claude Debussy led by Gregory Ristow and Raphael Jiménez. That event will be previewed in a free concert in the College’s Finney Chapel on Wednesday, January 16 at 7:30 pm.

Ristow’s choir will be spending most of this month — during Oberlin’s Winter Term, when classes give way to special projects — rehearsing for the New York engagement, but also revisiting a particularly challenging set of pieces they already presented on campus during the fall semester.

He’ll take faculty cellist Darrett Adkins, the Choir, and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Canticle of the Sun to the Cleveland Cello Society’s annual “i Cellisti” extravaganza at St. Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday, January 11 at 7:30 pm. And he and his singers will repeat a program they gave for the Oberlin Board of Trustees on the FIRST•Music series at First Lutheran Church in Lorain on Sunday, January 13 at 3:00 pm. [Read more…]

Interesting events on tap in January: here’s a selection of ‘Save the Dates’

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by Daniel Hathaway

The first event in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Creative Fusion project — a series of commissions by the Cleveland Foundation — brings jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist Henry Threadgill and his Zooid ensemble to Gartner Auditorium on Friday, January 11 at 7:30 pm. They’ll join Timothy Weiss and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble in the world premiere of an “expanded and improvising chamber ensemble” (click here for tickets).

Organist Todd Wilson mostly plays recitals and services in churches, but his alter ego is equally at home as a theater organist — accompanying silent movies in Severance Hall, Stambaugh Auditorium, and other venues. He’ll demonstrate those skills in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace on Saturday, January 12 at 7:00 pm when he improvises scores to Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid and Laurel & Hardy’s Big Business as part of BW’s Kulas Keyboard Series. Want to find out how he does it? Wilson will reveal some of his secrets in two workshops. Details and tickets here. [Read more…]

Ring in 2019 with the Cleveland POPS: a conversation with special guest Erich Bergen

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by Mike Telin

For the past 22 years, Carl Topilow and the Cleveland POPS Orchestra have hosted the best New Year’s Eve party in Cleveland. That tradition will continue on Monday, December 31 beginning at 9:00 pm in Severance Hall with “The Hollywood Songbook: Songs from the Big and Small Screen,” featuring singer Erich Bergen. Then at 11:00 pm you can party and dance into 2019 with the No-Name Band and the Cleveland POPS Jazz Ensemble. Enjoy cash bars, refreshments, and desserts for purchase, and a fabulous balloon drop at midnight. Tickets are available online.

Erich Bergen is a man of many talents. He starred in the Clint Eastwood film Jersey Boys, reprising his role as Bob Gaudio in the Tony Award-winning stage production. He made his Broadway debut starring opposite Katharine McPhee in the hit musical Waitress. He performed the role of Randy Kroll in the 2018 film Humor Me, and currently stars as Blake Moran on the hit CBS television drama Madam Secretary. A critically acclaimed singer/musician, he performs in concert venues around the world.

I got in touch with Erich Bergen by phone and began by asking him if he has worked with Carl Topilow in the past.

[Read more…]

Les Délices & Quire Cleveland: a conversation with guest conductor Eric Milnes

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by Daniel Hathaway

If you stop to think about it, most of our American Christmas traditions have their roots in British and German culture. Far fewer trace their origins to France, even though colonization brought French influence to a large portion of what is now the United States. Les Délices, Cleveland’s French Baroque ensemble, will join the singers of Quire Cleveland this weekend to explore this less-familiar, Gallic side of Christmas in three concerts of music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier led by guest conductor Eric Milnes.

The concerts, at Holy Trinity Lutheran in Akron on December 21 at 7:30 pm, at Lakewood Congregational on December 22 at 8:00 pm, and Our Lady of Peace on December 23 at 4:00 pm, will be anchored by Charpentier’s unique Midnight Mass on French Noëls. “There are eleven French Noëls incorporated into the Mass either in instrumental interludes or in ingenious interpolations throughout the text,” Milnes said in a telephone conversation. “Almost every main motive is derived from a carol tune. It’s hard for us in our Anglo-German culture to imagine a mass built on Silent Night or Joy to the World.”

Will all those tunes be as familiar to the audience as the carols he mentioned? “Maybe one or two of them have made their way into our holiday traditions, maybe not,” Milnes said. “I have the benefit of working a lot in Québec, so I get to experience more directly how that population relates to the tradition. But these carols are still far less known, far less performed, and far less familiar than their German or English counterparts, even in the Baroque community.” [Read more…]

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