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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…]

Quire Cleveland: fifteen minutes with new conductor Jay White

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by Daniel Hathaway

Conductor Jay White is leading Quire Cleveland into its second decade this season following the retirement of the professional choir’s founders, Ross W. Duffin and Beverly Simmons. His debut program at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, November 2 at 7:30 pm is a complex web of music celebrating All Saints and All Souls Days.

White, who toured as a countertenor for eight seasons with Chanticleer, and now serves as professor of voice at Kent State, has put together a program that interleaves Gregorian chants of the Requiem Mass with mass movements by several different Renaissance composers, and memorial motets written in honor of Machaut, Ockeghem, Josquin, and Tallis. The concert will be repeated on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at St. Sebastian Church in Akron.

In a telephone conversation from his office at the University, White noted that his long experience as a professional vocalist gave him a lot of repertory to choose from. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Kirill Gerstein talks about Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto  

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by Mike Telin

“I’ve been looking forward to this concert,” pianist Kirill Gerstein said by telephone from his home in Berlin. “This was the piece with which I met The Cleveland Orchestra for the first time at Blossom, and it’s very nice to return with this wonderful concerto and to play it in Severance Hall.”

On Thursday, November 1 at 7:30 pm, Gerstein will perform Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Matthias Pintscher. The concert also includes the complete ballet suite from Béla Bartók’s The Wooden Prince. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Gerstein called the concerto “amazing” and said that while it is famous for its melodic beauty and technical difficulty, its structural inventiveness is often overlooked. “It is incredibly virtuosic, beautiful for the ear, and exciting. But one of the difficulties is that the soloist plays the entire time. There’s also something about needing to play much of it wrapped in what I would call aristocratic elegance, so it’s not just brutal force. While you’re doing all of these challenging things, it still needs to sound elegant.”

[Read more…]

Gregg Kallor’s setting of The Tell-Tale Heart to open Tuesday Musical Fuze Series

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When Halloween is on a Wednesday, it’s only right to celebrate it all week, and on the two weekends that fall on either side. That applies to arts organizations as well: the schedule of the musically spooky continues on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron, when this year’s Tuesday Musical Fuze Series gets under way.

At the heart of the program is Gregg Kallor’s setting of a classic story which recently turned 175 years old: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. (Quick refresher for those with only vague memories of high school: the narrator hears the sound of a beating heart coming from under the floorboards…and it’s the heart of the person they’ve murdered under mysterious, grisly circumstances.)

Kallor will take the keyboard part in the Poe setting, joined by cellist Joshua Roman and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano. They’ll mix and match each other throughout the program, which also includes music by Brahms, Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and John Jacob Niles, in addition to further works by Kallor. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Fresh Perspectives launches November 2: a new approach to curating concerts

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by Mike Telin

When I called Devin Hinzo at our appointed time we exchanged hellos: “I was just working on staging a dance for next week’s concert,” he told me. The thing is, Devin Hinzo is an oboist. But he’s also a person who likes all kinds of artistic disciplines and enjoys discovering ways for those disciplines to work together.

On Friday, November 2 Hinzo will launch his Fresh Perspectives series with a program titled “Then & Now: the evolution of tradition, at Lab Studios by Glo, a 5,000-square foot warehouse space in Cleveland’s Superior Arts District. The Art Gallery opens at 6:30 pm with dj white rims. The program, “Then & Now: the evolution of tradition,” featuring music for solo instrument + electronics including a new collaborative work for oboe, hip-hop dancer, and laptop begins at 7:30 pm. For more information visit the Fresh Perspectives Facebook page. A donation of $5 is suggested. RSVP here.

The evening will feature works by composers Brian Raphael Nabors, Elizabeth Hoffman, Carolina Heredia, Ivonne Paredes and J.S. Bach. Performers include Hinzo, hip-hop dancer Ron’dale Simpson, flutist Brittany Trotter, cellist Kellen Degnan, percussionist Torrell Moss, and violinist Julian Maddox. [Read more…]

Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project announces CUSP Concert Series

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by Mike Telin

With the debut of its highly successful Re:Sound New & Experimental Music Festival behind them, the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project sets its sights on a new endeavor: the free CUSP Concert Series. The inaugural event will be held on Sunday, November 4 at 7:30 pm at the Bop Stop.

“From the beginning we wanted to produce a concert series,” CUSP artistic director Sophie Benn said during a telephone conversation. “The lineup of artists is great, and we are so excited to share this music with the Cleveland community. We want CUSP to engage the community in different ways and this series is another way to do that.”

The concert will feature Nebraska-based tubist, composer, and audio engineer Aaron Hynds, who will perform his own project, Transformer, a large-scale, evolving work for tuba and computer. The work is inspired by the composer’s love of science fiction, and by the realization of the computer as an equal creative entity. [Read more…]

Belgium’s Vox Luminis choir makes third visit to Cleveland

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by Daniel Hathaway

Having on earlier tours performed twice on the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Lionel Meunier and his Belgian choir Vox Luminis will open this season’s Cleveland Museum of Art Performing Arts Series at Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, October 24 at 7:30 pm with an all-Bach program.

ClevelandClassical.com’s Nicholas Jones wrote that on October 31, 2014, Vox Luminis “presented a beautifully crafted program that was at once passionate and serene.” This writer reported that the choir’s April 26, 2017 concert was “flawlessly sung,” “made dramatic use of the cathedral space,” and featured “meticulous tuning and vocal blend” in a program of “sober but exquisitely beautiful music.”

Those earlier programs featured laments (Domenico Scarlatti’s 10-voice Stabat Mater) and funeral music (including Purcell’s musical obsequies for Queen Mary). Sensing that the repertoire might be perceived as a bit dour, Meunier said to the audience in 2017, “I have to confess: we do have happier programs!”

The Belgians will prove that on Wednesday with their concert of five Motets by Johann Sebastian Bach, part of a tour which will include the ensemble’s first Bach performances in the United States (above, rehearsing in Kansas City). [Read more…]

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