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Syndicate for the New Arts: a conversation with Tyler Damon

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by Mike Telin

default_tashi_damin_170914_milwaukeFrom the first time electric guitarist Tashi Dorji and drummer/ percussionist Tyler Damon worked together, everything clicked. “Tashi and I grew up about 8,000 miles from each other, but when I met him, he felt like an old friend. We never needed to talk about anything,” Damon said during a telephone conversation. “And our music has developed over time from playing together as often as we do, which has been several times a year since early 2015.”  

On Friday, March 16 at 8:00 pm at Historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City, the Syndicate for the New Arts will present Tashi Dorji and Tyler Damon in a concert of improvised music. Presented in cooperation with New Ghosts, the evening will also feature Danish saxophonist Liberty, New York City bassist Frank Meadows, and Oberlin-based electronic musician Judy Jackson. The concert is free with a $10-$15 suggested donation.

[Read more…]

Galbraith returns — with extra strings — to Cleveland Classical Guitar Society

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by Daniel Hathaway

Galbraith@PlymouthScottish guitarist Paul Galbraith will return to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday, March 17 at 7:30 pm with a program of his own transcriptions of music by J.S. Bach (French Suite No. 2), Alexander Scriabin (Four Preludes), Isaac Albéniz (Sevilla, Mallorca, and Torre Bermeja), and Joseph Haydn (Keyboard Sonatas in c# and E). He’ll perform on his unique 8-string “Brahms” guitar made by David Rubio that inevitably causes audiences to do a second or third take when they first see it.

Galbraith explained the origins of the instrument in an interview with this publication in 2012.

I was aware of some of the limitations that the 6-string guitar imposes early on, in fact as early as when I was twelve, when learning my first Bach lute suite. When facing that material on guitar, you’re confronted with having to make decisions and compromises: you don’t have the necessary range to play what Bach writes, so you have to rearrange things to fit. And it struck me even then: why don’t we have a wider-ranging instrument to play this great repertoire? Soon after, the same questions arose when playing the lute music of Dowland. Meanwhile, there were one or two prominent players who used instruments with a wider range. [Read more…]

Tri-C Classical Piano Series: a conversation with Lise de la Salle

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by Mike Telin

De La Salle-LiseLife is busy for Lise de la Salle. The French pianist is currently on a six-week North American tour which has included stops at New York’s Town Hall, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., and the Detroit Institute of Arts. “It’s a long tour,” the 29-year-old said by telephone from Dallas, where she was performing Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto with Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony. “But concerts like these more than make up for it.”

On Sunday, March 18 at 2:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series will present Lise de la Salle in a free program that is all about love.

“I call it my transcendental love program,” the pianist said. “It’s a selection of diverse pieces that reflect the many stages of love, from the happy life and the peaceful love that you find in Schumann’s Widmung and Frühlingsnacht, to the dramatic and dark death in Wagner’s Isoldes Liebestod. And Schumann’s Fantasie in C, especially the first movement, is a ‘love scream’ from Robert to Clara — how deep the emotions are, but this is impossible, tortured love because of Clara’s father.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir joins March Madness — with Madrigals

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by Daniel Hathaway

ScottMacPhersonClevelandChamberChoirMaybe you’ve already begun filling out your 2018 NCAA March Madness bracket. But if making predictions about basketball isn’t your passion, why not turn to madrigals instead? Cleveland Chamber Choir director Scott MacPherson will join a reduced contingent of his singers in “March Madrigal Madness” in the Recital Hall of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, March 18 at 3:00 pm to present his own “Sweet Sixteen.”

“At the end of last season, we decided to expand slowly and offer a third program in 2017-2018,” MacPherson said in a telephone conversation. “We thought it would be fun to tie a March program into the NCAA tournament. We can’t really set up a 64-composer draw, but we want the concert to be interactive, so we’ll print the program in the form of a 16-song tournament bracket.”

MacPherson will invite the audience to vote on their favorite madrigal or part song by composers in four national categories — three of them from the 16th century and one from the 19th. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Opera presents three performances of La traviata

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by Mike Telin

TraviataIn their upcoming production of Verdi’s masterpiece La traviata or “The Fallen Woman,” The Cleveland Opera celebrates the city’s Golden Age with sets and costuming inspired by Art Deco from the Great Gatsby Era of the Roaring Twenties. “Cleveland made such a big statement in the arts during that time period,” the company’s executive artistic director Dorota Sobieska said by telephone. “When you think about the momentum that the city had at that time, it’s phenomenal.”

Sobieska said that the venues they have selected also reflect Cleveland circa 1920s. Performances will take place on Wednesday, March 14 at 7:00 pm at the Polish-American Cultural Center, Friday, March 16 at 7:30 pm at First Baptist Church, and Sunday, March 18 at 3:30 pm at The Tudor Arms Hotel Grand Ballroom. The cast includes Dorota Sobieska as the courtesan Violetta Valéry, Timothy Culver as Alfredo Germont, and Brian Keith Johnson as Giorgio Germont. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: a conversation with Merima Ključo

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by Mike Telin

Kljuco“I have always been fascinated by the Sarajevo Haggadah, with its story and amazing history,” Bosnian-born accordionist and composer Merima Ključo told ClevelandClassical.com in a 2015 interview. “After reading Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book, I became obsessed with the idea of a project that would musically and visually follow the Haggadah’s journey from Spain to Sarajevo.”

Dating from 14th-century Spain, the Jewish prayer book that became known as the Sarajevo Haggadah went through many hands before ending up in Bosnia, having been rescued from destruction by such unlikely figures as a Jesuit priest in Venice and a Muslim imam in Sarajevo — who hid it from the Nazis in the library of his mosque during World War II after it was smuggled out of the Bosnian National Museum by its chief librarian.

That project was presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art in its original scoring for accordion and piano in November of 2015. This week Merima Ključo will return to Cleveland for six free performances of her orchestrated version of the work with Avner Dorman and CityMusic Cleveland as part of the orchestra’s “Two Faiths: One Spirit” project. [Read more…]

“Two Faiths, One Spirit” — fifteen minutes with Avner Dorman

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by Jarrett Hoffman

dorman-avnerA native of Israel, Avner Dorman recognizes the conflict between the Jewish and Arab communities of the world, and the suffering they have felt. “And yet,” the music director of CityMusic Cleveland said in a recent interview, “I very much like all the people I know who are Muslim. Whenever we get into discussions, you really notice the commonalities more than the differences. We can’t forget that.”

This week, CityMusic Cleveland will present a series of concerts aiming to unite the Jewish and Arab communities, promote togetherness in Greater Cleveland, and emphasize the value of preserving the arts, regardless of culture. Titled “Two Faiths: One Spirit,” the series was inspired by stories of priceless religious texts that were rescued by people of other faiths.

Six free performances run from March 14-18 in Beachwood, Cleveland, Parma, Lakewood, and Elyria (see our Concert Listings for times and locations).

Needless to say, the series’ goal of unity means a lot to Dorman. [Read more…]

Pipa virtuoso Wu Man and the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band to visit Cleveland Museum of Art

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Wu-ManDeep in the Huayin County in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, in a rural village at the foot of Mount Hua — it was there that pipa player Wu Man first heard the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, a family of farmers with an artistic tradition over 300 years old, passed down through generations.

On Wednesday, March 21 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, Wu Man will combine her virtuosity on the pipa with the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band’s unique blend of sounds — shouting vocals, lutes, fiddles, traditional instruments like the yueqin, banhu, and erhu, clappers, small and large gongs, and the battering of a wooden bench. Together they’ll sing and play about life in remote China through old-tune traditional music with shadow puppetry.

Wu Man described the music of the Shaanxi Province as a far cry from the elegant, urban, tea-house style that is popular where she grew up, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, near Shanghai.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical to present pianist Andreas Haefliger

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by Mike Telin

Haefliger-AndreasAlthough Andreas Haefliger’s repertoire list spans centuries, there is one composer who particularly fascinates him. “I have spent a tremendous amount of time with Beethoven,” the pianist said during a recent telephone conversation. “I also spend time putting him into programs that illuminate and bring out a different perspective on the sonatas that we know so well.”

On Thursday, March 8 at 7:30 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Andreas Haefliger will perform Beethoven’s Sonatas No. 28, Op. 101, and No. 29, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”). The program will also include Mozart’s Fantasy in c, K. 475, and Adagio in b, K. 450. A pre-concert talk will begin at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

“With a shift in tonality, Mozart has the ability to put you into a completely different psychological state, and that state means something different for every person,” Haefliger said. “And Beethoven does that as well in these two sonatas — especially in 106 where you have such a powerful slow movement that lasts twenty minutes. The shifts of tonality produce a calmness and induce a meditative state.”

[Read more…]

Akron Baroque to feature
“The Class of 1685” on Sunday

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by Daniel Hathaway

Bach Handel ScarlattiHow did the planets align so that Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Domenico Scarlatti — three of the most eminent and prolific composers of the Baroque period — all came to be born in the same year? That defies explanation, but it makes for interesting concert programming. On Sunday, March 11 at 4:00 pm at Faith Lutheran Church in Fairlawn, Akron Baroque will raise a glass to “The Class of 1685” with a free concert devoted to music by these three luminaries.

The performance will include J.S. Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in f featuring Robert Mollard, Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonata in G in an arrangement for orchestra by Amy Barlowe, and Handel’s Concerti Grossi in F and G from his Op. 6. We spoke with concertmaster Alan Bodman to ask how Akron Baroque narrowed down their choice of repertoire for Sunday’s concert.

“We were pretty sure we wanted to do a Handel concerto grosso, so we listened to all of the Op. 6 pieces and really liked No. 1 in G.” Bodman said. “They’re so imaginative, and offer a lot of variety in their movements. We needed something very lively and upbeat to conclude the program, and No. 9 stood out for us.”

[Read more…]

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