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Poiesis Quartet return to Northeast Ohio for a Cleveland composing celebration

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by Stephanie Manning

The long, rich history of string quartet music leaves today’s ensembles with plenty of classic works to explore. The Poiesis Quartet knows such standard repertoire well — their performances of Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 5 helped earn them their win at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, which skyrocketed the group’s career in 2023.

But you’re more likely to find the Cincinnati-based ensemble playing something new. So when Poiesis was offered the opportunity to perform seven different string quartets by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild, of course they said yes.

That concert on Sunday, March 16  — which will be held in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Hall at 3:00 pm — features both premieres and other contemporary selections from the local composers. [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera embraces the fun and games in La finta giardiniera

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by Stephanie Manning

The Oberlin Opera students have recently been learning to see their stage as a playground — literally.

In Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, “ these characters are sort of playing games in regards to their romantic relationships,” director Stephanie Havey explained. “ So we’ve incorporated different children’s games and playground activities into the action, as a metaphor for how they’re manipulating each other.”

This comedic Mozart opera from 1775, which boasts enough mistaken-identity plotlines to set one’s head spinning, will be presented this weekend at Oberlin’s Hall Auditorium. Conducted by Christian Capocaccia, the Thursday, March 6, Friday, March 7, and Saturday, March 8 performances are at 8:00 pm, while the Sunday, March 9 performance is at 2:00 pm. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Symphony puts its annual spotlight on composing’s next generation

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by Stephanie Manning

The Cleveland Chamber Symphony has changed plenty since its founding more than 40 years ago. But some things are still the same.

In addition to the Symphony’s performing work, founder Edwin London “firmly believed that it could be an educational tool as well,” music director Steven Smith said. So in 1983, the Young & Emerging Composers Concert was born — an annual opportunity for the ensemble to play an entire program of new works by local student composers.

This tradition is set to continue on Saturday, March 8 during the Symphony’s “NEOSonicSpring” program, presented at 4:00 pm in Baldwin Wallace Conservatory’s Gamble Auditorium. [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra turns fifteen! (Part 1)

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by Mike Telin

Conductor Carlton Woods led the Midland, Michigan Symphony from 1997 to 2007 while teaching at Central Michigan University. When he and his wife Ladonna retired, they chose to relocate to Westlake, where they spent their first year soaking up all that Northeast Ohio’s classical music scene had to offer.

“We had season tickets to everything — The Cleveland Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire — and we went to concerts at CIM, Baldwin Wallace, Oberlin, and Cleveland State University,” Ladonna said during a Zoom conversation.

Describing her late husband as the quintessential promoter in the world of classical music, Ladonna Woods said that after spending a lifetime in music, during that first year of retirement she could see that her husband was getting bored. Then one day he asked her what she would think if he started a chamber orchestra.

“I thought, ‘Oh, no, here we go.’ I knew that he wasn’t asking my permission, he was telling me that he had already worked all out. So I told him, ‘I think you’re crazy, and I was really looking forward to us just going places and being a normal everyday couple.’ The interesting thing was that he had so much fun conducting. It was his love. And he kept saying, ‘Ladonna, someday they’re going to find out how much fun I’m having.’ When he said that, I thought, ‘Well, this is a done deal.’”  [Read more…]

Tuesday Musical presents the Isidore Quartet and pianist Jeremy Denk

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by Mike Telin

If something is meant to be, even a global pandemic can’t keep it from happening. Case in point: the Isidore String Quartet. “Technically we formed at Juilliard in 2019, but we were sent home shortly afterwards. We had not even played together for a full semester.” cellist Joshua McClendon recalled.

After reforming at Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival during the summer of 2021, McClendon and his colleagues — violinists Adrian Steele & Phoenix Avalon and violist Devin Moore — went on to win the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022. In 2023 the group was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Tuesday Musical will host the Isidore String Quartet and pianist Jeremy Denk on Tuesday, March 4 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron. The program includes Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F, Gabriella Smith’s Carrot Revolution, and Johannes Brahms’ Quintet for Piano and Strings in f. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Joshua McClendon via Zoom in Dallas, where the Quartet is the Peak Fellowship Ensemble-in-Residence at Southern Methodist University. I began our conversation by asking him about the program they’re bringing to Akron.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to feature works by Salamone Rossi

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland Chamber Choir will devote its midwinter concerts to the music of the prolific Italian Jewish composer and violinist Salamone Rossi, a transitional figure who bridged the Renaissance and Baroque periods and was equally at home in the worlds of Jewish liturgical and Italian secular music. Like his contemporary Claudio Monteverdi, he was employed at the court of the Gonzaga family in Mantua.

Artistic director Gregory Ristow will lead the Chamber Choir and youth choir HaZamir in “Synagogue and Salon” on Saturday, March 1 at 8:00 pm at Congregation Mishkan Or in Beachwood, and Sunday, March 2 at 4:00 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River. Admission is pay-what-you-can.

[Read more…]

“Voices from the Other Side:” a conversation with Margi Griebling-Haigh

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by Mike Telin

When composer Margi Griebling-Haigh was asked to write a companion piece for Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, for cello octet and soprano, little did she know that her 1999 work, Voices From the Other Side, a setting of three poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, would resurface years later as inspiration for a recording project.

The album, “Voices From the Other Side,” was released in September 2024 on Navona Records.

On Tuesday, February 25 at 7:00 pm at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, the album will be presented live when conductor Steven Smith leads soprano Gabrielle Haigh and the Erie Coast Cellists in Arvo Pärt’s Fratres and L’abbé Agathon, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, and Margi Griebling-Haigh’s Cantilena and Voices from the Other Side. Tickets are available online.

During a recent telephone conversation, Griebling-Haigh said that when she composed “Voices,” she had no idea that her daughter would go on to become a singer. “She was a little girl when I wrote that piece. She inherited my love for the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

[Read more…]

Les Délices unveils “The Mythology Project”

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By Mike Telin

When Debra Nagy asked Nicholas Phan to think about a non-Western, specifically non-European, myth that could be a fit for Les Délices’ The Mythology Project, he knew exactly where to turn.

“I had been spending a lot of time in Ann Arbor at my parents’ place because their health was starting to decline. And in my childhood bedroom was this very tattered book of Chinese myths that I had as a child,” the Grammy-winning tenor said on a recent Zoom call from Lisbon, Portugal.

“So I thumbed through the book and “The Loss of Memory Myth” jumped out at me. Probably because of what I had been experiencing with my parents’ decline in health and my needing to step up to take care of them. That role reversal really spoke to me.”

This weekend Les Délices will present A Moment’s Oblivion, the first instalment of “The Mythology Project,” a three-year initiative that will bring new life to the secular cantata that was popular in 17th and 18th-century France.

On Saturday at 4:00 pm at Heights Theater and Sunday at 4:00 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, tenor Nicholas Phan, oboist Debra Nagy, violinist Shelby Yamin, violist da gamba Rebecca Landell, and harpsichordist Mark Edwards will perform Michel de Montéclair’s La Bergère & Le Dépit généreux, Marin Marais’ “Le Labyrinthe” from Livre 4ème, and François Couperin’s “Barricades mistérieuses” and “Les Langueurs tendres” from Sixième Ordre. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Tenor Jonathan Pierce Rhodes makes Cleveland-area debut with Apollo’s Fire

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by Stephanie Manning

Jonathan Pierce Rhodes is a musician with many interests — so many, in fact, that he almost didn’t pursue a career in music at all.

“I was really close to being a lawyer,” the tenor explained in a recent interview. As an undergraduate, he earned degrees in both music and political science. “Then the pandemic hit, and I got into grad school for music.  So I was like, ‘Well, that door is opening, so let’s just keep going in that direction.’”

That direction is steadily heading upward, thanks in part to his work with the Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artists, multiple summers at the Glimmerglass Festival, and now an appearance with Apollo’s Fire.

Later this month, Rhodes will make his debut with the early music ensemble in “Classical Sparks,” singing arias by Mozart and Joseph Bologne. Rounding out the program is Haydn’s Symphony No. 8, “Le Soir,” Mozart’s Overture to La Finta semplice, and Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with soloist Alan Choo. The four performances will tour the area with appearances in Akron (February 27 at 7:30 pm), Bay Village (February 28 at 7:30 pm), Shaker Heights (March 1 at 7:30 pm), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (March 2 at 3:00 pm). [Read more…]

“Adès Conducts Adès” at Severance: a conversation with Sasha Cooke

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by Mike Telin

When Thomas Adès was commissioned to write a piece for Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic’s “Messages for the Millennium” program, he was asked to compose a “hopeful piece.” But what he delivered was a prophetic work about a country on the verge of crisis.

The two-part work for mezzo-soprano, orchestra, and optional chorus was premiered in New York on November 11, 1999.

On Thursday, February 20 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Adès will lead The Cleveland Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke in the U.S. premiere of the expanded version of his America: A Prophecy. The concert will also include Jean Sibelius’ The Oceanides, Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra Mar, and Charles Ives’ Orchestral Set No. 2. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

“It’s a powerful, prophetic work that has a lot of lyricism,” two-time Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke said during a telephone conversation. “But what first struck me about the piece was its beautiful poetry.”

[Read more…]

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