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Syndicate for the New Arts: a septet from Atlanta & a duo from Cleveland

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by Jarrett Hoffman

faun-and-a-pan-fluteMaybe in the future, a barcode will be slapped on every piece of music, and you’ll just whip out your handy scanning device to identify any and all genres at play. Until then, listeners will have to settle for being delightedly mystified by the sounds of Atlanta-based septet Faun and a Pan Flute and Cleveland-based Duo Decibel System. That double-bill will give a concert this Tuesday, June 19 at 8:00 pm at St. John’s Ohio City, presented by Syndicate for the New Arts.

Faun and a Pan Flute is a band of cello, alto saxophone, guitar, bass guitar, marimba, percussion, and tuba (Benjamin Shirley, Peter Webb, David Gray, Dan Bailey, Chris Childs, John Gregg, and Julian Hinshaw). They draw on rock, impressionistic jazz, and modern classical music, and over the years have ranged in size from four to twelve members.

Collectively they lead, and collectively they compose.

I recently spoke with John Gregg, the group’s friendly, laid-back percussionist, who had just been watering some of his herbs when he picked up the phone. [Read more…]

Opinion:
The Cleveland Orchestra — Prometheus or Epimetheus?

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by David Kulma

Heinrich_fueger_1817_prometheus_brings_fire_to_mankindAs noted in The Cleveland Orchestra’s program book for The Prometheus Project, the  mythological Titan’s forgotten brother Epimetheus “spent much of his time thinking about yesterday, and last week, or looking at the history of a hundred years ago.”

The Orchestra ended its 100th season celebrating two revolutionaries: Prometheus and Ludwig van Beethoven. Music director Franz Welser-Möst’s goal for The Prometheus Project was to link the light-giving Titan to the powerful Enlightenment composer, and through them connect to “the idea of fighting for good.” This celebration of revolutions past is noble, but it also points out how the Cleveland institution appears more like his backward-looking sibling than Prometheus himself.

In a way, TCO’s festival of Beethoven symphonies and overtures makes all the sense in the world. [Read more…]

No Exit: a clarinet and five flutes at Appletree Books on June 15

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Gunnar Owen Hirthe and Hong-Da ChinClarinetist Gunnar Owen Hirthe + flutist Hong-Da Chin = quite the duo.

Combining Chinese traditional music with contemporary repertoire, their upcoming concert — presented by No Exit on Friday, June 15 at 7:00 pm at Appletree Books — will include three duets (one of them by Hong-Da), six solo works, and six instruments (the two likely suspects, in addition to four Chinese flutes).

Let’s start with the bookends of the program. Giacinto Scelsi’s Ko-Lho and David Liptak’s Duo meld together the sounds of the clarinet and Western flute to fascinating effect, treating the instruments almost like conjoined twins.

Hearing an all-Scelsi program at Bowling Green State University is what first drew Hirthe to that composer. “I was really struck by how simple and powerful his music is,” the No Exit clarinetist, Flint Institute of Music faculty member, and BGSU doctoral candidate said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera at 40: season preview, part one

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by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com

OLO Calendar 2018_previewUsually, the celebration of an anniversary results in gifts offered by the visitors to the host. But not this time! Ohio Light Opera is celebrating its 40th anniversary this summer, but they’re gifting the audiences with five OLO premieres! That’s correct – five productions that have never graced the stage of Freedlander Theatre, their home in Wooster, Ohio.

Four of the premieres — The Pajama Game, Babes in Arms, Fifty Million Frenchmen, and Candide — are from America’s Lyric Theater tradition, while the fifth — CloClo — is steeped in the Viennese operetta tradition. The season is rounded out with two old friends of OLO, Iolanthe and La Périchole.

Opening on Saturday, June 16 at 7:30 pm, The Pajama Game is known for wonderful tunes and sassy choreography by Bob Fosse (one of his dancers was Shirley MacLaine), debuted in New York in 1954. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Opera & Ballet to perform Moniuszko’s Straszny Dwór on June 16

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by Daniel Hathaway

CastTo mark the 100th anniversary of Polish independence, The Cleveland Opera and Cleveland Ballet will present Stanislaw Moniuszko’s 1865 opera, Straszny Dwór (“The Haunted Manor”), on Saturday, June 16 at 7:30 pm at the Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square.

“It was popular at its debut in the mid-19th century, but Poland was under partition between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, so there’s a patriotic undercurrent,” soprano, executive artistic director — and native Pole — Dorota Sobieska said in a telephone conversation. “It’s a Polish opera. We sing and I cry. It’s sentimental. It’s where my heart is.”

“The music is wonderful,” conductor Grzegorz Nowak said in a separate phone call. “It was all composed by Moniuszko, but it has a folk quality to it. The Mazur [Mazurka] has even been texted so it can be sung by a choir.”

Nowak, also Polish, is principal associate conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as music director of The Grand National Opera (Teatr Wielki) in Warsaw. He studied at Tanglewood, earned his doctorate at Eastman, then served on the faculty of Bowling Green State University. He’s quite familiar with Moniuszko’s piece, having first conducted it in Warsaw in what he describes as “quite a scandalous production.” [Read more…]

ContempOpera/Cleveland to premiere Steven Mark Kohn’s Mary Chesnut

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by Jarrett Hoffman

ContempOpera Mary Chesnut Art for Website_previewDuring the Civil War, writer Mary Chesnut — the wife of a senator and Confederate officer — kept a diary where she recorded significant moments in the conflict, wrote about the state of Southern society, and revealed secret feminist and abolitionist views.

She worked to revise the diary as a book, but died nineteen years before its eventual publication under the name A Diary from Dixie. Writers and historians continued to study the text as they discovered more of her papers, and the work’s staying power was affirmed when a 1981 annotated version won the Pulitzer Prize for History.

That woman’s perspective on the Civil War will now make its way to the opera stage. On Friday, June 15 at 7:00 pm at Cleveland Public Theatre’s James Levin Theatre, ContempOpera/ Cleveland will present the premiere of Mary Chesnut by Steven Mark Kohn, composition faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Soprano Andrea Anelli will take the title role in this production directed by Marla Berg and featuring Lorenzo Salvagni at the piano. [Read more…]

CIPC Announces 2018 Prizes in Young Artists Competition

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC YA FInalists 2018

Customarily, the Cleveland International Piano Competition announces its winner late in the evening of its final round, which this year featured concertos with the Canton Symphony Orchestra on Friday evening, June 8 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. But for the Young Artists Competition this time around, CIPC kept its competitors and followers in suspense until an awards ceremony the following evening at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Here are the results (L-R: Shuan Hern Lee, Hao Wei Lin, Eva Gevorgyan, Xiaoxuan Li, Yunchan Lim, JiWon Yang):

JUNIOR DIVISION
First Prize ($10,000): Eva Gevorgyan (13, Russia)
Second Prize ($5,000): Yunchan Lim (13, South Korea)
Third Prize ($2,500): Hao Wei Lin (13, Taiwan)

SENIOR DIVISION
First Prize ($25,000): Xiaoxuan Li (16, China)
Second Prize ($10,000): Shuan Hern Lee (15, Australia)
Third Prize ($5,000): JiWon Yang (16, South Korea) [Read more…]

Nicholas R. Jones Young Writer Fellows named for the summer of 2018

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by Daniel Hathaway

Meyers-KoeningerTwo talented young writers have joined the ClevelandClassical.com masthead as Nicholas R. Jones Young Writer Fellows for June and July. They will participate in all aspects of running a website devoted to classical music including conducting interviews, writing previews and reviews of events and posting them to the site, maintaining our concert listings, and managing social media.

The fellowships are named in honor of the long-time Oberlin Professor who lent his support and writing skills to the website from its founding in 2008 until his retirement in 2017. Major funding for the fellowships comes from the Mandel Foundation. [Read more…]

CIPC Announces Senior Finalists

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CIPCSeniorFinalists2018Following the senior semifinal rounds at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Wednesday, June 6, the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists announced the three pianists who will advance to the senior half of the final round with the Canton Symphony on Friday evening: JiWon Yang, 16 (South Korea), Xiaoxuan Li, 16 (China), and Shuan Hern Lee, 15 (Australia).

In performance order, here are the six finalists and their concertos (first movements only). Junior Division: Yunchan Lim (Chopin’s Concerto No. 1); Eva Gevorgyan (Grieg’s Concerto); Hao Wei Lin (Chopin’s Concerto No. 1). Senior Division: JiWon Yang (Grieg’s Concerto); Xiaoxuan Li (Chopin’s Concerto No 2); and Shuan Hern Lee (Grieg’s Concerto). The finals will be broadcast live over WCLV Ideastream, 104.9 FM and prizes will be announced and awarded at a ceremony in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday evening at 7:30 pm. More information here.

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: a conversation with Colin Davin and Estelí Gomez

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by Mike Telin

Davin-GomezIt’s a privilege to be asked to perform the closing concert of any festival. It also requires the artists to create a program that both celebrates the past and looks to the future. At this year’s Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, the honor of presenting the final concert has been bestowed upon guitarist Colin Davin and soprano Estelí Gomez. The Festival runs from Friday June 8 through Sunday June 10 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Tickets can be purchased online.

On Sunday, June 10 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, Davin and Gomez will present Nomads by Nature. The evening will include repertoire standards — some with a new twist — as well as two World Premieres which are grounded in 21st century cultural esthetics.

In a joint telephone conversation, Davin and Gomez said the program’s title is taken from a line in the text of Henri Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage which opens the concert. Davin first encountered Duparc’s setting of Charles Baudelaire’s poem when he was asked to play at the 90th birthday party for French painter, critic, and author, Françoise Gilot. “They requested some French music and we settled on this piece,” Davin said. [Read more…]

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