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Flutist Demarre McGill to make Cleveland debut with ChamberFest June 23

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by Jarrett Hoffman

McGill-DemarreDemarre McGill has guts.

“I enjoy challenging myself — I like to feel as hungry and energetic as I did before my first job, when I was a student,” he said in a recent conversation. “I grow from being in that particular zone. And because of that, I can do something a lot of people would question — resign from a wonderful orchestra like the Dallas Symphony to play a one-year contract with the Met.” McGill served as acting principal flute of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra this season.

“I knew that after having that experience, no matter what the result at the end of the year, I would be so much better. So leaving a great job to grow tremendously is something I would do — that I did — in a heartbeat.” [Read more…]

Pianist Zoltán Fejérvári to make Cleveland debut with ChamberFest June 22

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Screen Shot 2017-06-20 at 3.12.59 PMby Mike Telin

Fresh off his first-prize win at the 2017 Montreal International Musical Competition in May, Hungarian pianist Zoltán Fejérvári will return to North America this week to make his ChamberFest Cleveland debut on Thursday, June 22. “I’m excited about being part of the Festival,” the pianist said by telephone from Hungary. “I know a lot of people who have been, and will be there, and they all have had wonderful things to say about it.”

In addition to his success in Montreal, Zoltán Fejérvári is the 2016 recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. He has given recitals at Carnegie’s Weill Hall, the Kimmel Center, and venues across Europe. As a concerto soloist, the pianist has performed with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Hungarian National Orchestra, and at the Verbier Festival. An active chamber musician, he participated in the Marlboro Music Festival during the summers of 2014 through 2016. [Read more…]

Lauren Eberwein to make debut at ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Samantha Spaccasi

EberweinFrom the time she was able to speak, Lauren Eberwein sang. “I was the kid in the corner singing her thoughts to herself, or dancing around the playground writing my own musicals in my head, narrating my life through song,” the mezzo-soprano said in an email. Eberwein will be featured in Kurt Weill songs in the first of her three ChamberFest Cleveland programs tonight, June 16, at 6:30 and 8:30 at the Bop Stop. [Read more…]

Anderson & Roe to be guest artists for Kent State Piano Institute June 16

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by Mike Telin

22-AndersonRoe-by-Woodrow-LeungWhen pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe left their respective hometowns in the Midwest to pursue their undergraduate studies at the Juilliard School, the two found themselves by happenstance assigned to the same floor of the famed music school’s dormitory.

The two became fast friends and soon discovered that they had a shared mission for their musical lives: to make classical music a relevant and powerful force in society. And both had big dreams of how to do that — by presenting programs that represent the vast range of the human experience.

On Friday, June 16 at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall, Kent State Piano Institute will present a guest recital by the always entertaining piano duo Anderson & Roe. [Read more…]

Jupiter Quartet celebrates teaching and playing at ENCORE Chamber Music

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by Samantha Spaccasi

Jupiter-QuartetFor the Jupiter Quartet, returning to Northeast Ohio is like returning home. Cellist Dan McDonough and violinists Meg Freivogel and Nelson Lee attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, and violist Liz Freivogel attended the Oberlin Conservatory. “We all started our careers in the Cleveland area, in a way,” said McDonough in a recent phone conversation. “We got a solid education in chamber music at those schools.”

The Jupiters return to Cleveland for a performance at ENCORE Chamber Music at the Gilmour Academy on June 16 at 7:00 pm. The program includes Beethoven’s Quartets Op. 18, No. 2 and Op. 131, and György Ligeti’s Quartet No. 1, “Metamorphoses Nocturnes.” [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera launches 2017 season with The Music Man

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by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com

SteveSteven Daigle is the mixmaster-in-chief at Ohio Light Opera, which takes up residence each summer at the College of Wooster. Running a residential repertory company makes things both easier and, at times, more difficult for the Artistic Director, now in his 18th season in that position. He’s an expert at picking one show from column A, and maybe two from B, or three from C, and then building on those choices. Still, no matter how astutely he picks performance possibilities, in the end, the success of a season all comes down to the performers onstage — and in the orchestra pit.

For the vocal part of that process, Daigle primarily relies on associate artistic director Julie Wright Costa, who, in her other life is head of the voice area at the University of Utah School of Music. After winnowing through the myriad applications and videotapes, Julie travels the country holding auditions. This year she visited seven different regions in her ever-elusive search for that perfect candidate. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland’s Kafka Fragments to feature filmmaker Kasumi

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Kasumi-Web“I don’t know what my brain knows,” says filmmaker Kasumi in her 2015 TEDx talk Portrait of the Artist as a Young Meme. “One tiny stimulus fuels infinite branches, reactions, associations…if we were consciously aware of everything we came in contact with, we would explode, or go crazy. I became an artist…and technology is the hammer I use to open the universe of memory.”

On Tuesday, June 20 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm at Transformer Station, ChamberFest Cleveland will present a new perspective on Kafka Fragments, György Kurtág’s hour-long work for solo violin and voice. The piece draws on excerpts from the Prague-born author’s notebooks, diaries, and letters. Joining mezzo-soprano Lauren Eberwein and the tag-teaming duo of violinists Alexi Kenney and Yura Lee will be 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and Cleveland-based filmmaker Kasumi, whose digital imagery fragments were commissioned by the Festival.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: a chat with pianist & CIM grad Andrius Žlabys

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by Mike Telin

ZlabysOn Thursday, June 15 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Diana and Franklin Cohen’s always imaginative ChamberFest Cleveland kicks off its sixth season with a concert titled “Cycles — Phases” featuring Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Elgar’s Piano Quintet in a. The evening will also include John Adams’ playful Hallelujah Junction for two pianos. “This is quite a piece,” pianist Andrius Žlabys said during a telephone conversation. “It’s amazingly challenging, and I’m looking forward to working with Roman Rabinovich for the first time.”

Thursday’s concert marks Žlabys’ first-ever ChamberFest performance as well as a sort of homecoming — the Lithuanian-born pianist spent five years studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he was a student of Sergei Babayan. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: introducing bassist Xavier Foley

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Xavier-Foleyby Mike Telin

When asked, most musicians are able to pinpoint an event that led them to make the decision to pursue music as a career. For bassist Xavier Foley, it was in 2006 when at eleven years old and in the sixth grade, he shifted his attention away from his teacher Miss King’s discussion of nouns, adverbs, and clauses, in favor of making a bow and arrow out of a paper clip and a rubber band. Click here to watch a video where the Marietta, Georgia native explains all. And yes, it’s quite funny.

Since that fateful day, Foley has gone on to become a First Prize winner in 2014 at the Sphinx Competition and Astral Artists National Auditions, as well as a winner at the 2016 Young Concert Artists Auditions. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: a profile of cellist Oliver Herbert

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by Samantha Spaccasi

Herbert-OliverCellist Oliver Herbert has been busy this year. “I just got back from a three-week tour with the Curtis Orchestra,” he said in a phone interview. The tour spanned the globe, with stops in New York, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Austria. When he wasn’t touring, the San Francisco native was studying full-time at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Herbert also made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, playing Strauss’s Don Quixote.

“I was invited to play four family concerts with the Orchestra,” he said. “They wanted a young soloist because it was appropriate for the occasion. It was fantastic and really special to play with that group.” Oliver wasn’t the only Herbert in the orchestra that night, however: his father, David Herbert, is principal timpanist. “We played together in the same concert.” [Read more…]

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