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Oberlin Artist Recital Series: a conversation with tenor Nicholas Phan

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by Mike Telin

Phan-NicholasWhat makes a great art song composer? “They need to have a strong appreciation for literature,” tenor Nicholas Phan answered without hesitation during a recent telephone conversation. “I know it sounds strange to say, but there is a literacy to their compositions — they have to be able to paint the words through music.” On Wednesday, February 3 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin College’s Finney Chapel, Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang will present a program of works by four great art song composers as part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.

Named one of National Public Radio’s Favorite New Artists of 2011, Phan has quickly garnered attention for his performances with many of the leading orchestras in North America and Europe. A rising star of the opera world, Phan is also a champion of vocal chamber music. As a recording artist, his 2011 debut solo album, Winter Words, was included on the “Best of 2011” lists of The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, TimeOut NY, and the Toronto Star. [Read more…]

Phan & Huang to replace Relyea & Jones on Oberlin Artist Recital Series

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Phan-NicholasTenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang will step in to replace bass-baritone John Relyea and pianist Warren Jones on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel on Wednesday, February 3 at 8:00 pm. Relea has withdrawn from his entire tour, citing family issues. Phan will sing works by Robert Schumann, Benjamin Britten, Ned Rorem, and Jake Heggie. Relyea tickets will be honored at the door.

CIM New Music:
a conversation with Shulamit Ran
(second of two articles)

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by Mike Telin

RAN-Shulamit2From the time she was eight years old, Shulamit Ran aspired to be one thing: a composer. In an interview with the Chicago Reader the Israeli-born Pulitzer Prize-Winner recalled that she began to write melodies at the encouragement of her piano teacher.

“My teacher sent some of those melodies to a local radio station,” she says,  “and they ended up being performed on the radio by a children’s choir. It is a vivid recollection — I was eight at the time and away at summer camp; there we all were, the kids and myself, all sitting around a large radio listening to my music coming out of it. That was a revelation for me, because it was the first time that I had the sense my music could live outside of me. What I had made up now had its own, separate existence. It gave me such pleasure and it was a very special feeling, and I knew that I wanted to keep doing this. Although all kinds of other things have always interested me, I’ve never wanted to do anything else but compose ever since.”  

Next week, the Cleveland Institute of Music will play host to the celebrated composer during a three-day residency. [Read more…]

CIM New Music:
Keith Fitch talks about Shulamit Ran
(first of two articles)

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by Mike Telin

Ran-ShulamitNortheast Ohio audiences are in for a treat next week when the Cleveland Institute of Music plays host to celebrated composer Shulamit Ran for a three-day residency. On Tuesday, January 26 at 4:30 pm, the Pulitzer Prize-Winner will discuss her music in Studio 113. The event is free and open to the public. The following evening at 8:00 pm in Kulas Hall, guest conductor Steven Smith will lead the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra in a concert that will include Ran’s Legends and Violin Concerto featuring Laurie Smukler as soloist. The program will also include Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question.

“Shulamit is fantastic in every way,” Keith Fitch, who heads the Composition Department and holds the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, said during a recent telephone conversation. “She’s had such a long and distinguished career as a composer, teacher, and advocate for new music. She’s so good with students, and she’s a great mentor and role model.” Ran recently retired from academia, having taught at the University of Chicago since 1973.

“I’ve always admired Shulamit’s music so much. Not only is it beautifully crafted, it’s also emotionally powerful, and so engaging. There’s this fearless quality to her music that I really love.” [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque to examine
the “colorful lives of composers”

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by Daniel Hathaway

BRB-RoomSinger and cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust will be featured in Burning River Baroque’s next pair of performances, entitled “Forces of Good and Evil: the colorful lives of composers” on Saturday, January 23 at 7:30 pm at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights, and Sunday, January 24 at 3:00 pm at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Old Brooklyn. (Note correct dates!)

The program centers around the idea that music transcends the personal traits of its creators — that whether composers were virtuous in their private lives like Henry Purcell (who was still capable of writing scatalogical rounds) or Tarquinio Merula, who was apparently a difficult employee and was censured for “indecency manifested towards several of his pupils,” their music “remains exquisite enough to stand the test of time,” as Maust writes in her program notes.

The program begins with the good guys: Purcell’s If music be the food of love, and French cello virtuoso Jean Barrière’s Sonata in c minor from his second book of sonatas, composed between 1733 and 1739. Barrière escapes close personal scrutiny because little is known about his life, which “seems to have been quite ordinary,” Maust says, adding that Barrière was the first to compose entirely idiomatic cello music during the first half of the 18th century. [Read more…]

Les Délices’ The Imaginary Orchestra:
a conversation with harpsichordists Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street

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by Mike Telin

Sponseller-Street“When you work in baroque opera, the job of a harpsichordist is to also be the Répétiteur,” Michael Sponseller explained during a recent conference call with fellow harpsichordist Jacob Street. “During the rehearsals, our job is to take the score and figure out how to make one harpsichord sound like an orchestra.”

This weekend, Les Délices will prove that two harpsichords are better than one when Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street combine their musical wizardry for two concerts entitled “The Imaginary Orchestra.”

The program, presented on Saturday, January 16 at 8:00 pm in The Galleries at Cleveland State University and on Sunday at 4:00 pm at Herr Chapel in Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, will feature arrangements from operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marin Marais, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Pancrace Royer, as well as the rarely heard symphony for two harpsichords by Armand-Louis Couperin. Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy and harpsichordist Lisa Goode Crawford will present a pre-concert talk at each performance. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: soprano Barbara Hannigan to sing U.S. premiere of Abrahamsen’s let me tell you

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by Christine Jay

Hannigan-performanceWhen critically acclaimed soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan’s surprise birthday plans for her friend and novelist Paul Griffiths fell through, she suggested a gift of even greater implications: a project of Griffiths’ words animated by Hannigan’s liquid sound. The end product will be heard on Thursday and Friday, January 14 and 15 in Severance Hall when Hannigan joins Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in the United States premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you.

This situation, indeed, is an example of collaboration at its finest; a soprano, librettist, and composer each separately became enthralled in telling a story. The bonding narrative is Griffiths’ 2008 novel let me tell you, a work utilizing the 481 words appropriated to Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Told from Ophelia’s point of view, Griffiths depicts her life’s maturation, as she is perpetually caught in a web of royalty and patriarchy until her father’s murder and her subsequent, aqueous suicide. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony:
Keep Calm and Play Bach —
a chat with violinist Olivier Brault

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by Christine Jay

BRAULT-OlivierHow do you follow a celebrated performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons? Christopher Wilkins, Music Director of the Akron Symphony, created this fabulous conundrum when he invited Olivier Brault, concertmaster of Apollo’s Fire (and other historically informed ensembles across the globe), to lead Vivaldi’s iconic work in January 2014. Brault excelled and left the audience with a Vivaldian fire in its veins — but what next after Brault’s maiden voyage with the Akron Symphony two years ago?

Keep calm and play Bach.

Both friends and lovers of Bach, Wilkins and Brault devised a program of their favorite repertoire — teeming with the usual hyper-caffeinated Vivaldi and fervent complexity of Bach — for a program entitled “Vivaldi and Bach: Inspired Connection” with the Akron Symphony on January 16, 2016 at 8:00 pm in the E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall. [Read more…]

Musical life after the holidays:
a cornucopia of January concerts

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by Daniel Hathaway

Bronfman-FWM-TCONow that winter has finally arrived and the excitement of the holidays has subsided, it’s tempting to burrow in and hibernate for a few weeks. But there’s plenty to do during January. Let’s have a look at some of what the month has to offer, beginning with orchestra concerts.

Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra are back at work early in the month with a round of all-Beethoven concerts from January 7-9 featuring pianist Yefim Bronfman (left) in the third piano concerto, and Bronfman and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in the Choral Fantasy. Soprano Barbara Hannigan will be featured in the U.S. premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you on January 14 and 15, sharing a program with Dmitri Shostakovich’s fourth symphony. On Saturday the 16th, Robert Porco will lead the annual Martin Luther King Jr Celebration, followed by a Severance Hall Open House on Monday the 17th from 12 Noon to 5 pm. Community ensemble performances will be bracketed by the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus (12:30) and Youth Orchestra (4:15). The Cleveland Philharmonic will host its own MLK Observance at Tri-C Metro Auditorium on Sunday, January 17. [Read more…]

CMA Performing Arts Series
brings home prestigious award

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by Mike Telin

WELSH-TomEach year, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series engages Northeast Ohio audiences with a roster of innovative performers and ensembles representing a myriad of musical genres. Last season, the Museum’s director of performing arts, Tom Welsh (left), presented a diverse lineup that included performances by the Calder Quartet, Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Ragamala Dance and Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mivos Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, and pipa virtuoso Wu Man.

On Sunday, January 10, at the Westin New York in Times Square during Chamber Music America’s National Conference, The Cleveland Museum of Art will be honored with the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming in the category of Large Presenter, Mixed Repertory. The award, which includes $500 plus a commemorative plaque, will be presented by Cia Toscanini, vice president of concert music, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Welsh will be receiving the award on behalf of the Museum. [Read more…]

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