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“It felt like my secret weapon” — Robert Walters’ path to poetry and English horn

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Walters-(Tanya-Rosen-Jones)In a humanities class at the Curtis Institute of Music in the 1980s, professor Joan Landis asked a young Robert Walters to do something he had never done before: read a poem aloud. It was Wallace Stevens’ Sunday Morning, and it changed Walters’ life. “The texture, the language, the rhythm, the assonance, consonance, and rhyme — all the acoustical properties of poetry — I thought, ‘Oh my god, this feels like music.’”

Walters will be armed with his English horn and a stack of original poems this Sunday, January 21 at 3:00 pm at the Bop Stop for “Rhythms, Rhymes, and the Kitchen Sink,” part of the Heights Arts Close Encounters series.

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Les Délices inaugurates Lakewood venue with third foray into Medieval music

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by Daniel Hathaway & Mike Telin

Machaut-under-the-disco-ball2-1024x684Debra Nagy and her colleagues of Les Délices usually dedicate themselves to bringing the music of 17th- and 18th-century France alive for modern ears. But this weekend, the period instrument ensemble will push the clock back to the 14th century — not an era of powdered wigs and salons, but a time of knights, crusades, courtly love, and increasing secularization.

“This is our third venture into Medieval music,” Nagy said over coffee in a Hingetown café. “We visited the 14th-century avant-garde a couple of years ago, and last year we collaborated with Boston’s Blue Heron on Machaut’s Remede de Fortune. This program, ‘Intoxication,’ is a Les Délices project, but with many of the same wonderful collaborators. Scott Metcalfe is back. Charlie Weaver was the lute player and Jason McStoots the tenor for the Machaut programs. We’re also working with Elena Mullins, a former student of mine who received her doctorate at Case and now directs the early music singers. She’s a beautiful singer and communicator with a real passion for this kind of music.”

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The Cleveland Orchestra to host Martin Luther King Celebration Concert

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by Mike Telin

TCO MLKThe Cleveland Orchestra will present its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst on Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall. All of the free tickets to the event have been distributed, but the program will be broadcast live on WCLV, 104.9 FM and WCPN, 90.3 FM. The concert will also be broadcast on Cleveland Public Television WVIZ on January 26.

Sunday’s concert will feature bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, actor James Pickens Jr., and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus under the direction of William Henry Caldwell. The program includes Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont, Mendelssohn’s “Lord God of Abraham” from Elijah, George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, Verdi’s “Va pensiero” from Nabucco, Respighi’s “Pines of the Appian Way,” the fourth movement of Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony, Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic, and James Weldon Johnson’s and John Rosamond Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing.

“There are a lot of new things happening at the concert this year,” Chorus Director William Henry Caldwell said during a recent telephone conversation. “I’m especially excited about commissioned arrangements by Charles Floyd of Down by the Riverside and Precious Lord. To have the opportunity to present those to the Cleveland community for this celebration speaks volumes about how much The Cleveland Orchestra thinks of this choir.” [Read more…]

Preparing to hear a new work:
Staud’s Stromab at Severance Hall

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by Daniel Hathaway

StaudThis weekend, music director Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will precede their Thursday and Saturday performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the Cleveland premieres of Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud’s Stromab. The 15-minute work was co-commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra, who will take it to New York’s Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall on January 23. Staud was named by Welser-Möst as the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons.

Thanks to the resources of the internet, it’s possible to do a bit of prepping to hear such a new work before taking your seat in Severance Hall — when many patrons will have their first opportunity to read the notes in the program book. Here’s your opportunity to do a little homework before the downbeat.

Staud’s work, which translates as “Downstream,” is based on The Willows, a 1907 horror tale by the British author Algernon Blackwood. [Read more…]

No Exit and Zeitgeist continue their collaboration this weekend

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by Mike Telin

no exit_zeitgeist 2018 poster“We’re starting off the new year with a bang,” No Exit artistic director Tim Beyer said during a telephone conversation. This weekend No Exit will continue their collaboration with the St. Paul-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist. “The two ensembles will once again be sharing a stage in a series of concerts that is sure to be an unforgettable musical experience.” The series kicks off on Friday, January 12 with a 7:00 pm concert at Wolfs Gallery. The ensembles will perform at 8:00 pm on Saturday the 13th at Heights Arts and at 12:00 pm on Sunday the 14th at SPACES.

“This is our first time at Wolfs Gallery and they’re pulling out all the stops. Hors d’oeuvres will be served at 6:30 pm and there will also be valet parking,” Beyer said. “It will be nice to introduce people to Wolfs’ extraordinary space and exquisite collection of paintings and sculpture while enjoying an intimate evening of music. We love playing at Heights Arts and SPACES, so this is going to be an incredible series of concerts. As always, the performances are free and open to the public.”

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Save the dates for some January concert highlights

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by Daniel Hathaway

Westminster ChoirClassical music begins stirring from its long holiday nap during the first two weeks of January, revving up from adagio to allegro by mid-month.

The Westminster Choir — the flagship ensemble of Westminster Choir College, now part of New Jersey’s Rider University, will make a stop at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle on Saturday, January 6 at 7:30 pm during its winter tour. Joe Miller will conduct the ensemble in Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir (1926), György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna (1966), and music by Joel Phillips, Tim Brent, Edward C. Bairstow, Ailo Alcala and Randall Thompson.

Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will make a big splash the weekend of January 11 with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 and a new work by Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud. Stromab (“Downstream”) is inspired by what Staud calls “one of the finest horror stories of all time,” Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows, a tale of two young people who canoe down the Danube and discover a lonely island where weird things swirl around them. Mahler 9, the composer’s last symphony, has been described by Herbert von Karajan as “music coming from another world, from eternity.” There are performances on Thursday the 11th at 7:30 pm and on Friday and Saturday the 12th and 13th at 8:00 pm.

Another major work will be featured the following week when soprano Golda Schultz, tenor Maximilian Schmidt, and baritone Thomas Hampson join Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in Haydn’s The Seasons. Performances are scheduled for Thursday, January 18 at 7:30 and Saturday, January 20 at 8:00 pm. In between, Welser-Möst and the Orchestra will play all-Beethoven on Friday, January 19 at 8:00 pm — Symphonies 1 and 3 and the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus. [Read more…]

Countertenor Jay White appointed artistic director of Quire Cleveland

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by Daniel Hathaway

White-JayThe board of Quire Cleveland has announced that countertenor Jay White will succeed founder Ross W. Duffin as artistic director of the professional choir at the end of Quire’s tenth anniversary season in July 2018.

Duffin, who is Distinguished University Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve University, and Beverly Simmons, Quire’s executive director, will move on “to pursue new artistic and familial adventures in California and Washington, D.C.,” according to a December 19 press release.

White, who joined Quire Cleveland in 2012, serves as professor of voice at Kent State University, where he is also music director of Kent State Opera. He sang for eight seasons with Chanticleer, and during his more than 35-year career has performed with the Men and Boys Choir of Washington Cathedral, Grace Cathedral San Francisco, the Folger Consort, the Carmel Bach Festival, and Apollo’s Fire Singers. [Read more…]

Connor Bogart O’Brien rings in 2018 with the Cleveland POPS

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by Mike Telin

OBrien Severance New YearLife is never boring for vocalist Connor Bogart O’Brien. For the past several years he has split his career performing with symphony orchestras, recording jingles for American Greetings, and singing in Mandarin on cruise ships in Asia — he travels to Shanghai or Tokyo every two to three weeks. And he has recently added Home Renovator to his resumé. “My life is now a strange juxtaposition,” O’Brien said during a telephone conversation. “I’m either smashing out drywall at my house on the west side of Cleveland, or dressed in a tuxedo performing onstage for a couple thousand people.”

On Sunday, December 31 O’Brien returns to the Severance Hall stage, where he will join Carl Topilow to ring in 2018 during the Cleveland POPS 22nd Annual New Year’s Eve Celebration. The festivities begin at 9:00 pm with a two-hour concert titled “Legends of Rock-and-Roll.” Following the performance, the audience can dance their way into the new year to live music: Topilow and a Cleveland POPS ensemble will play in the Grand Foyer, while the No-Name Band will play rock music in the Smith Lobby. Click here to learn about hotel package discounts.

The evening’s playlist will feature music from the ‘50s to the present and will include songs by Elvis Presley, Billy Joel, Richard Harris, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, and Simon & Garfunkel. “Rock is a wide genre, and we’ve had a lot of sit-downs to choose the songs,” O’Brien said. “We’re opening the show with two full Elvis numbers. We’re also doing MacArthur Park, Mrs. Robinson, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Sweet Caroline, and we’re going to end the evening with some Beatles tunes. The arrangements we have are fantastic — a couple were made especially for this show. I am from Cleveland and Carl was my first mentor, so I’m thrilled to be back at Severance with the Cleveland POPS, which is where I began my symphony career.” [Read more…]

In “Carols IX: Carols of Yore,” Quire Cleveland pulls from past favorites and adds Hanukkah

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by Jarrett Hoffman

DuffinQuireTrinityQuire Cleveland’s latest holiday program spans from the 13th century up to this very decade. But that’s not the only way “Old & New” describes the ensemble’s ninth annual “Carols for Quire” concert, to be performed from December 15-17 in Cleveland and Rocky River. In honor of its tenth anniversary season, the choir will reach into its bag for some favorite carols from seasons past, and will close by celebrating the addition this year of Hanukkah music.

“A lot of what Quire does is Christian music, there’s no question about it,” Ross Duffin, founder and artistic director, said in a recent conversation. “That’s a large part of choral singing generally, just because the church has been such an important and ubiquitous patron for composers and singers throughout history.”

Duffin credited Executive Director Beverly Simmons — who also sings alto in the ensemble and is married to Duffin — for the idea to expand this year’s program to Hanukkah. “Her background is Jewish, and she sings every year for the High Holy Days,” he said.

[Read more…]

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