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ENCORE Chamber Music announces 2018 season

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by Alice Koeninger

ENCOREThis Friday, ENCORE Chamber Music begins its 2018 summer season, titled “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” ENCORE will present concerts every Friday and Sunday from June 8 to July 15.

Performances will take place in the Tudor House at the Gilmour Academy through July 6, after which they move to Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Tickets can be purchased here.

The season starts with the Miró Quartet on Friday evening, June 8 at 7:00 pm. This Austin-based group, renowned for its thoughtful programming and musical interpretation, will play Haydn’s Quartet in E-flat, Op. 71, No. 3, Kevin Puts’ Credo, and Beethoven’s Quartet in a, Op. 132. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: a conversation with Antonis Hatzinikolaou

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by Mike Telin

Hatzinikolaou-AntonisFor the past seventeen years, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival has provided a stage for many guitarists to make their United States debuts. One of those artists is Antonis Hatzinikolaou.

“This is my second time at the Festival,” he said by telephone from his home in Greece. “It’s one of the best. It’s not only high-quality in terms of music — the organization is amazing and all the people are very nice. There’s so much happening: concerts, master classes, and demonstrations. And there are instruments to try as well.” Click here to view the full Festival schedule.

On Sunday, June 10 at 2:30 pm in CIM’s Mixon Hall, CICGF will present Antonis Hatzinikolaou in a solo program of works by Britten, Paganini, Pujol, Torroba, and Weiss. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

AHA! Festival concert to feature ChamberFest Cleveland piano trio

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by Hannah Schoepe

Rabinovich-Herbert-BowlinWhisking the listener away on a diverse journey of sounds, the AHA! Festival will present a piano trio from a fellow local summer series, ChamberFest Cleveland. Pianist Roman Rabinovich, cellist Oliver Herbert, and violinist David Bowlin will come together to play gems of the chamber music repertoire by Brahms, Kodály, and Janáček on Friday, June 8 at 2:00 pm in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University.

Friday’s program will feature Brahms’ effervescent Piano Trio No. 1 in B, completed in 1854 and revised throughout the composer’s life. One of the most popular trios of all time, it reflects both the vivaciousness of Brahms’ youth and the emotional depth of his maturity. We recently spoke with David Bowlin, who admitted that the work is his favorite on the program. “I love the whole B-major trio,” he said. “Everyone loves the B-major trio!”

The concert also includes a modern twist: the Kodály Duo for Violin and Cello, and Janáček’s Pohádka (“Fairytale”) for piano and cello.

[Read more…]

CIPC to present duo pianists Ran Dank and Soyeon Lee

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by Mike Telin

DANK-SOYENLife has been good for Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee since they won medals at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2007 and 2003, respectively. Since those wins, both pianists have enjoyed successful careers as solo artists, as well as holding positions as Assistant Professors of Piano at the Cincinnati College- Conservatory of Music.

This week Dank and Lee will showcase their skills as duo pianists when they return to Cleveland for a performance on Thursday, June 7 at 8:00 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The concert is presented as part of the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists, which began last week and runs through Saturday, June 9.

The Duo’s program will include works by Mozart, Scriabin, Janáček, and Liszt as well as a four-hands version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. “It’s a special piece for us because we played it at our wedding concert in New York City,” Lee said during a joint telephone call with Dank. “A wedding is sort of a rite,” he added with a laugh. “But you can’t quite call the piece an arrangement because parts of it were originally conceived for four hands. So in some ways, the orchestrated version is the arrangement in the same way Ravel would orchestrate his piano works.”

[Read more…]

Vieaux and Labro to open the 2018 Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival

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by Mike Telin

Vieaux-LabroFor the past seventeen years, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival has brought some of the world’s finest classical guitarists, lutenists, lecturers, composers, teachers, and guitar makers to the Cleveland Institute of Music for three days of concerts, masterclasses, lectures, and demonstrations.

“It’s got to be one of the very best festivals in the world for our instrument,” guitarist Jason Vieaux said during a telephone interview. Vieaux, who heads the guitar department at CIM, credits CICGF founder and artistic director Armin Kelly for the Festival’s success. “For Armin it’s all about quality. Year in and year out, the players that he brings in are incredible, and the Festival is a tremendous gift to the City of Cleveland.”

Beginning on Friday, June 8 and continuing through Sunday, June 10, the 2018 edition of CICGF will feature thirteen artists and ensembles, five concerts, nine master classes, and three lectures. Click here to view the full schedule. Tickets are available online.

On Friday, June 8 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, the Grammy-winning Vieaux will team up with his duo partner, accordionist Julien Labro, for this year’s opening concert. [Read more…]

Tigue to return to Ohio as they tour Strange Paradise

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Tigue1Around a decade ago, three Ohio-born musicians met through their studies in the percussion program at Ohio State University, and they just clicked.

After heading to the Eastman School of Music for their masters’ degrees, Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody found themselves drawn six hours southeast — past Syracuse, Scranton, and Newark, through the Holland Tunnel, and over the Manhattan Bridge.

There, in Brooklyn, they set up a home base for their genre-fluid trio Tigue, whose influences include minimalism and indie rock. Now the group is hitting the road for a two-week tour — including a performance at the Bop Stop on Sunday, June 3 at 7:00 pm — to play music from their recent sophomore album, Strange Paradise. (Tickets are available online.)

Built around Evans’ synthesizer, Garapic’s vibraphone, and Moody’s drum set, the album explores long arcs and slow gradations of change in its 3 tracks over 41 minutes. As a comparison, Tigue’s first album, Peaks, comprised 8 tracks over 34 minutes. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland — Season Seven: In Search of Freedom

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by Mike Telin

Chamberfest LogoSince ChamberFest Cleveland’s inaugural season in 2012, Festival co-artist directors Diana and Franklin Cohen have taken the concept of thematic programming to new heights. (It’s) About Time (2013) explored elements of time as related to the musical experience. Last season’s theme, Cycles: Phases! reflected on the complexity of the human experience at each stage of life.

This season ChamberFest will consider the concept of freedom — an essential ingredient to the creative process. Beginning of June 14 and continuing through June 30, In Search of Freedom will explore the range of freedom in music, with nine concerts in a variety of venues.

In addition to violinist Diana Cohen and clarinetist Franklin Cohen, this year’s roster of returning artists will include violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley, Alexi Kenney, and Amy Schwartz-Moretti, violinist/violist Yura Lee, cellists Julie Albers, Clive Greensmith, and Oliver Herbert, bassist Nathan Farrington, and pianists Zoltán Fejérvári, Roman Rabinovich, and Orion Weiss. Making their ChamberFest debuts are violinist Noah Geller, violists Matthew Lipman and Tanner Menees, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, flutist Lorna McGhee, and singer Amanda Powell.

[Read more…]

CIPC’s second Young Artist Competition to run from May 30 through June 9

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC-Young-ArtistsTwenty-two young pianists from eleven countries will flock to the Cleveland Institute of Music next week to compete in both junior and senior divisions of the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists. (Meet the contestants here.)

The competition — verging on a festival with the inclusion of several extra events — will be set in motion on Wednesday evening, May 30 with a 7:30 pm opening ceremony in Kulas Hall featuring Canadian pianist Leonid Nediak. Only 12 when he took home second prize in CIPC’s junior division in 2015, Nediak will play solo works before joining Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra in the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto. WCLV’s Robert Conrad will introduce all of the contestants from the stage, and a reception will follow.

Competition rounds begin on Thursday afternoon, May 31 in Kulas Hall and continue daily through the semifinal rounds on June 6, when three pianists in each of the junior (ages 12-14) and senior divisions (ages 15-17) will advance to the final round. That event, on Friday, June 8 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, will feature concerto performances with Gerhardt Zimmermann and the Canton Symphony Orchestra. [Read more…]

Re:Sound Festival of New Music kicks off inaugural season on June 7

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by Mike Telin

ReSoundlogo(color)A year and a half ago, saxophonist Noa Even and cellist Sophie Benn got together to discuss ways to promote new music in Cleveland. They soon brought drummer Stephen Klunk and Bop Stop manager Gabe Pollack into the conversation, and the idea of starting a new music festival in the city was born. Beginning on June 7 and running through June 10, the inaugural Re:Sound Festival of new music will feature twenty-seven musical acts across seven concerts at five venues.

“An aspect of the festival we like to emphasize is just how new the music is,” Noa Even said during a telephone conversation. “All of it is from 2000 or later, so it’s truly a showcase of what people are creating today, improvised and composed. ‘New music’ encompasses so many styles and influences, and hopefully the Festival will capture that diversity.”  

The performers were chosen from a pool of over 100 applicants who responded to the organizing committee’s call for proposals. Those included soloists and existing chamber music ensembles ranging from duos to sextets, as well as composer/performers and experimental artists.

[Read more…]

Sultans of String to return to Nighttown: a three-way call with the violinist and guitarist

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by Jarrett Hoffman

sultans of stringSomeday, somewhere, a genre will be coined that sums up the sound of the Sultans of String. The Toronto-based group frequently blends Spanish Flamenco, Arabic folk music, Cuban rhythms, and jazz. In the meantime, as bandleader and violinist Chris McKhool told us in a 2013 interview, “We just make the music we like to make.”

Three-time Juno Award nominees, the Sultans’ lineup ranges from two to five members, sometimes topped off with guest artists. But at their core is the pairing of violin and guitar — McKhool and Kevin Laliberté, founders of the ensemble. They’ll bring the duo form of Sultans of String to Nighttown on Wednesday, May 30 at 7:00 pm. The concert celebrates the group’s tenth anniversary, and will raise funds for displaced families in Syria and Lebanon through the Outreach Foundation.

McKhool picked up the phone in Burlington, Ontario for our recent conversation, then worked some modern magic — a three-way call — to bring in Laliberté from his kitchen in Toronto. They began by looking back on the beginning of their collaboration.

[Read more…]

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