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Akron Symphony’s
Carmina Burana:
a conversation with
David Shimotakahara

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by Mike Telin

Shimotakahara-DavidNext to the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, there is no work for chorus and orchestra more recognizable than Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The first and last movements, both titled Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World), begin with the popular “O Fortuna,” which has been used a countless number of times in commercials and cinema. But what served as inspiration for David Shimotakahara’s new choreography for Carmina Burana are the arias for solo soprano from the work. “She’s like the axis, she is Fortuna. She is the omniscient center of the universe.”

On Saturday, May 7 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Christopher Wilkins will lead the Akron Symphony in Orff’s powerful score, featuring Shimotakahara’s new choreography performed by GroundWorks Dance Theater. The program will also include Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront.   [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland announces its 2016 season

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by Daniel Hathaway

COHEN-Frank-&-DianaChamberFest Cleveland has announced its fifth season under the joint artistic direction of its founders, Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet emeritus Franklin Cohen and his daughter, Diana Cohen, concertmaster of Canada’s Calgary Symphony. Eleven concerts over fourteen days will be held at venues throughout metropolitan Cleveland from June 16 through July 2.
The theme for 2016 is “Tales and Legends.” Concerts will center around stories ranging from the profane to the divine, including the fantastical, mystical, and obsessive.

Performers who will join Franklin Cohen and Diana Cohen include (to name just a few) pianists Orion Weiss and Roman Rabinovich, violinist/violist Yura Lee, violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, and accordionist Merima Ključo, who is composing a piece to be premiered at the festival. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theatre: La bohème — soprano Marian Vogel talks about Musetta

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by Mike Telin

VOGEL-MarianOn Friday, April 29 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, May 1 at 3:00 pm at Masonic Auditorium Performing Arts Center, Cleveland Opera Theater will present Giacomo Puccini’s  La bohème, directed by Scott Skiba. Conducted by Domenico Boyagian, the opera will be sung in Italian with English subtitles.

Puccini’s opera centers around the writer Rodolfo, the painter Marcello, the musician Schaunard, and the philosopher Colline, who are roommates in an attic apartment in Paris’s Latin Quarter. On Christmas Eve, Schaunard decides to treat his three friends to a night out at Café Momus.

Rodolfo stays behind, and is surprised a few minutes later by a knock at the door. It is the charming seamstress Mimì who lives in a neighboring apartment. Rodolfo later joins his friends with Mimì in tow, but things heat up when Marcello’s on-again, off-again flame Musetta arrives to cause a scene. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater’s La bohème: second of three articles

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by Mike Telin

Boheme-PosterOn Friday, April 29 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, May 1 at 3:00 pm at Masonic Auditorium Performing Arts Center, Cleveland Opera Theater will present Giacomo Puccini’s  La bohème, directed by Scott Skiba. Conducted by Domenico Boyagian, the opera will be sung in Italian with English subtitles.

“It’s going to be an exciting production,” Skiba said during a recent conversation. “It’s easy to take it for granted and say, yeah, it’s La bohème, but when you’re working on it and discovering new things in it, it just strikes you how rich it is at every turn. And Puccini’s music is so wonderful. At every rehearsal I look over at Domenico and say ‘This music is so good!’” [Read more…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra: catching up with Jinjoo Cho

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by Daniel Hathaway

CHO-JinjooOn Sunday, May 1 at 3:30 pm, Robert Cronquist will lead the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra in its 81st anniversary concert at Severance Hall. The program will include Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, Zoltán Kodály’s “Intermezzo” from Háry Janós, Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G, and Henri Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in d.

Not for the first time, the concert will feature violinist Jinjoo Cho, who first performed with CWO when she was in her teens. We caught up with the busy violinist on her cell phone while she was enjoying “a wonderful and rare morning off” walking her dog. We began by asking her how many times she’s appeared with the Women’s Orchestra. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra at the Movies:
a chat with Bride of Frankenstein conductor Richard Kaufman

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by Daniel Hathaway

Brideoffrankenstein“The score is really a character in the film — horrific when it’s supposed to be horrific, and when it’s supposed to be romantic, it’s really romantic,” said Richard Kaufman, who will conduct The Cleveland Orchestra in Franz Waxman’s score to Bride of Frankenstein on Tuesday, April 26 at 7:30 pm in Severance Hall. Meanwhile, James Whale’s 1935 sci-fi horror film will play on a big screen above their heads. “I only wish Waxman could be here to hear it — he would be in tears!”

Bride of Frankenstein is the sequel to Universal Pictures’ 1931 silent film Frankenstein, further developing a subplot in Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic novel. As legend has it, Waxman, who had fled Europe in the wake of Hitler and ended up in Hollywood, met Whales at a party where the director proposed that he write a score for the sequel. [Read more…]

CMA to present Egyptian music of the Golden Age on April 27

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by Mike Telin

13-Tarek-Abdallah-Adel-Shams-El-DinNearly every culture has gone through a period of time when art, literature, and music have flourished,  periods which are often referred to as a Golden Age. Egyptian music experienced its Golden Age during the last third of the nineteenth century through the 1940s. Today this period is known as the Nahda era.

On Wednesday, April 27 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium, the Cleveland Museum of Art will present Tarek Abdallah (oud and compositions) and Adel Shams El-Din (riqq) in a concert featuring music from the duo’s recent recording titled Wasla. The performance is presented in conjunction with CMA’s centennial exhibition Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt.

During a telephone interview Tarek Abdallah explained that wasla is a type of Egyptian musical suite that combines different Arab traditions like North African nuba and Syrian fasl that were popular during Egypt’s Golden Age. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater: La bohème (first of three articles)

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by Mike Telin

COT-Orchestra-&-Set“La bohème is just a winner,” Cleveland Opera Theatre founder Andrea Anelli said during a rehearsal break at Masonic Auditorium. “It was the first opera the company ever put on. We did it at the Beachwood Middle School Auditorium — semi-staged, no chorus, and just with a piano,” Anelli recalled. “It’s really exciting to see the growth of the past ten years in circling back to that opera, but now doing it with full chorus and full orchestra. It’s a fantastic feeling.”

On Friday, April 29 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, May 1 at 3:00 pm at Masonic Auditorium Performing Arts Center, Cleveland Opera Theater will present Giacomo Puccini’s beloved La bohème, directed by Scott Skiba and conducted by Domenico Boyagian. Lisa Yanofsky is the assistant director. The opera will be sung in Italian with English subtitles. [Read more…]

Cleveland POPS: pianist Richard Glazier talks about the music of George & Ira Gershwin

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by Mike Telin

Caricature“George Gershwin was able to do things that nobody else could do,” pianist Richard Glazier said during a telephone conversation. “He was able to meld many different styles of music together, and that’s why all of the great composers that followed him adored him.” On Friday, April 29 at 8:00 pm in Severance Hall, Carl Topilow will lead the Cleveland POPS orchestra in An Evening of Gershwin. The program will include Rhapsody in Blue and the final movement from the Concerto in F.

Born in Indianapolis, Glazier began studying piano when he was 6 years old. After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Indiana University, he went on to earn a doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1993. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire announces Countryside Concerts and overview of its 25th anniversary season

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by Daniel Hathaway

AF-Countryside-SorrellApollo’s Fire has released details of its summer Countryside Concerts for June and July of 2016, which will include two shows.

June 16-20 — My Island Home: songs and stories of Newfoundland will feature Meredith Hall, soprano, Sylvain Bergeron, lute, and members of Apollo’s Fire and La Nef of Montréal. A rustic celebration of the music of Hall’s homeland with fiddles, flutes, harp, gamba, percussion, and hammered dulcimer. [Read more…]

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