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Robert Walters to give U.S. premiere of Geoffrey Gordon’s Mad Song

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by Mike Telin

“This is a great piece of music that just happens to be an English horn concerto,” Robert Walters said during an interview. “I’m excited about playing it because I think the audience will like it as much as I do.”

On Thursday, November 13 at ​​7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Robert Walters, Cleveland Orchestra solo English horn, will give the U.S premiere of Geoffrey Gordon’s Mad Song. Under the direction of Tugan Sokhiev, the concert also includes Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 7:30. Tickets are available online.

Written in 2020, Gordon’s Mad Song was commissioned for Dimitri Mestdag, the solo English horn of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. When the composer contacted Walters about giving the U.S. premiere of the concerto, Walters paused. “I’d heard Geoffrey Gordon’s name — he’s the guy who writes a lot of concertos. He told me that everyone says that I’m the guy to talk to about that. And I said, I’m flattered. I’ll give it a listen.”

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Singer-songwriter Becca Stevens at Cleveland Museum of Art

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by Max Newman

“As somebody who’s used to touring with a band, this was kind of a big move for me, but I was like, ‘No, it feels right,’” Becca Stevens said during a recent interview.

On Wednesday, November 12, at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, the multi-genre singer-songwriter will meet the challenge of going solo in a concert that will feature songs from her recent release, Maple to Paper. Tickets are available online.

Stevens’ musical journey has been a long one. She grew up in a musical family, and was performing in her family’s band by the age of two. She said that her upbringing “definitely dealt me a full deck that I could choose whether or not I wanted to use, but it wasn’t until I was 16 or 17 that I really committed to going full throttle in the musical direction. But once I applied my focus there, it just felt very grounding. I was like, oh gosh, this feels like home to me. It really feels like a language that I’ve always known, and a language that has always been encouraged and accepted.”

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CIM Opera Theater presents Suor Angelica & Gianni Schicchi

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by Mike Telin

When Giacomo Puccini composed the three one-act operas that make up Il trittico (The Triptych), he intended for them to be presented as a set. But not long after the work was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on December 14, 1918, the composer’s publisher began to receive requests for them to be performed separately. Nowadays, it is common for one or two of the operas to be presented in an evening.

On Friday, November 7 at 7:30 pm and Sunday November 9 at 3:00 pm in Kulas Hall, CIM Opera Theater will present Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. Dean Southern directs and Harry Davidson leads the CIM Orchestra. Tickets are available online.

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Apollo’s Fire to premiere Mozart’s Requiem: A Tapestry

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by Mike Telin

For 234 years musicians have struggled with the question of how to perform Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Requiem, a piece that he left unfinished at the time of his death in 1791. Although his widow arranged for his student Franz Xavier Süssmayr to complete the work, many have found that version to be unsatisfactory.

In a press release Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said, “As I pondered how to honor the legacy of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, I found myself reflecting on voices that were silenced or overshadowed by the culture of that time. These voices speak to us profoundly today, as the world teeters on a precipice in so many ways. So, to complete the Requiem, I chose eight movements from sacred-inspired works by living Black composers. In this way, we pay homage to Mozart by honoring the humanity within us all.”

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Poiesis Quartet returns to Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

Since forming at Oberlin Conservatory in the fall of 2022, The Poiesis Quartet have enjoyed a meteoric rise in the ranks of professional string quartets.

In 2023, the Quartet won the Gold Medal and BIPOC Prize at the St. Paul String Quartet Competition and the Grand Prize and Lift Every Voice Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

In May 2024, they joined the roster of Concert Artists Guild and last August were named First Prize and Commission Prize winners at the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The Poiesis are currently the Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

On Friday, October 31, violinists Sarah Ying Ma and Max Ball, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby will return to their alma mater to be featured in John Adams’ Absolute Jest with the Oberlin Orchestra. Directed by Raphael Jiménez, the program at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel also includes Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers, Angelica Negrón’s Campos Flotantes, and Zhou Tian’s Transcend. The concert is free.

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Garrick Ohlsson returns to the Severance Music Center stage

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by Mike Telin

“The thing about playing Mozart concertos, especially with a great orchestra like Cleveland, is that when it goes well, it will leave me on such an adrenaline high I may not be able to sleep,” pianist Garrick Ohlsson said during a recent telephone conversation.

On Thursday, October 30 at 7:30 pm, Garrick Ohlsson will join Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center for a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23.

“Like Shakespeare, Mozart can find the appropriate way to express the full range of human emotions. He can write the saddest music and the happiest music. He can write an aria for a servant who’s upset because she’s lost a pin. But unlike a 19th century composer, he doesn’t lay it on thick, he doesn’t do what the English call making heavy weather of it.”

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A Little Bit of Everything with VOCES8

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by Stephanie Manning

Reposted with the permission of Oberlin Conservatory

For Barnaby Smith, putting a concert program together is like cooking a three-course meal.

“You want the audience to come and have the starter, the main, and the dessert,” the countertenor says. “It’s like they’re having a nice dinner party while meeting the eight people on stage.”

As the Artistic Director of VOCES8, Smith curates those “dinner parties” for the renowned British vocal ensemble. And he has plenty of music choices to pick from. The a capella group is known for their genre-spanning repertoire — and they’re also celebrating their 20th anniversary this year. Both of those ideas come to the forefront in the program that they’ll bring to Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on October 28 as part of the Artist Recital Series.

“It’s got everything from Renaissance polyphony to jazz and pop songs,” Smith says. “There’s a little bit of something for everyone — Simon and Garfunkel, a few madrigals, and a bit of Bach and Elgar.” [Read more…]

No Exit opens season with “American Descent”

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by Mike Telin

The adventurous ensemble No Exit begins their 17th season this week with a variety of works that reflect on the unprecedented times in which we are living.

On October 23 at 7:00 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State University, No Exit will present “American Descent.” The set list includes Garth Knox’s Viola Spaces, Geoffrey Burleson’s Cryptic Locomotion (premiere of 2025 version), June Young Will Kim’s After days of rain, construction fills the air, and Andrew Rindfleisch’s American Descent (world premiere).

The program will be repeated on Saturday, October 25 at 7:00 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop. Both performances are free.

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Cleveland Chamber Choir: music to mark the hours and seasons

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by Mike Telin

This week, Cleveland Chamber Choir invites you to join them by candlelight for a concert of two works that take listeners on a musical journey from sunset to sunrise, and winter to spring.

On Friday October 24 at 7:30 pm at Trinity Cathedral, Gregory Ristow will lead the Cleveland Chamber Choir in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil and Reena Esmail’s A Winter Breviary.

The program will be repeated on Saturday at 7:00 in Fairchild Chapel in Oberlin. Charles Edward McGuire, PhD, from Oberlin College & Conservatory, will present a pre-concert talk 45 minutes prior to each performance. Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available online.

“In the traditional Eastern Orthodox All-Night Vigil service, prayers and chants would have been spaced through the entire night from just before sunset to just before the rising of the sun,” CCC artistic director Gregory Ristow said during a Zoom conversation. “But the service that Rachmaninoff would have had in mind combines all the prayers that would have been said through the night into one service.”

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The Cleveland Orchestra & Beethoven Nine: a conversation with tenor Miles Mykkanen

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by Mike Telin

“I think that Beethoven Nine is the ultimate piece about unity and human brotherhood,” tenor Miles Mykkanen said during a Zoom conversation from his home in Ironwood, Michigan. “Every time I sing it, I think about the millions of people who have either performed it or heard it over the last two centuries and how it reminds us of the goodness in all of us — that’s what life is all about.”

On Thursday, October 23 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, Mykkanen will join soprano Joélle Harvey, mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven, and bass-baritone Dashon Burton, The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Conducted by music director Franz Welser-Möst, the performance also includes Jean Sibelius’ Tapiola. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Mykkanen made his Cleveland Orchestra debut as Brighella in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in 2019 and he returned last spring to sing the role of Steva in Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa. “I’m just thrilled to be back to sing a piece that is 200 years old and still brings the audiences to their feet. And to perform it in Severance with The Cleveland Orchestra, my great quartet colleagues, and Franz Welser-Möst on the podium — that’s very special for any singer.”

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