by Mike Telin
Fourteenth century avant-garde? “It’s one of the most exciting moments in music history for me,” Les Délices founder and artistic director Debra Nagy said during an enlightening telephone conversation. “To our ears, the music may not sound modern, yet in many respects it is some of the most rhythmically complex music that we have until the 20th century.”
On Saturday, January 17 at 8:00 pm in William Busta Gallery, and on Sunday, January 18 at 4:00 pm in Plymouth Church, Les Délices, in collaboration with Blue Heron Ensemble, Scott Metcalfe, director, will present a fascinating concert entitled Fourteenth Century Avant-Garde. The performances will feature Les Délices regulars Scott Metcalfe (vielle & gothic harp) and Debra Nagy (recorders & douçaines) with special guest artists Martin Near, countertenor, and Jason McStoots, tenor. On Sunday Metcalfe will give a pre-concert lecture beginning at 3:00 pm. [Read more…]
It appears that Northeast Ohio’s classical music organizations are going to be wasting no time getting back into full swing after the holidays. A quick check of our Concert Listings page reveals that almost as soon as 2015 is upon us, audiences will have plenty of concerts to choose from. However, the prize for being first out of the blocks goes to the Oberlin Conservatory.
For its sixth annual round of Christmas concerts on December 19, 20 and 21, Quire Cleveland under the direction of its founder, Ross W. Duffin, will feature music from a single national tradition. French Christmas carols, or Noëls, have a long, folk-based history both in their country of origin and wherever French culture has been spread — including by Jesuit missionaries in what is now French-speaking Canada.
Opera Per Tutti, founded in 2006, announced last Friday that they were “rebranding” themselves as Cleveland Opera Theater. In a brief press release the company stated that:
It’s all about the holidays this week at Severance Hall. On Wednesday, December 17 at 7:30 pm, Brett Mitchell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and renowned Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster in “Christmas in Cape Breton,” a special show that mixes folk and Celtic styles with Holiday favorites and Nova-Scotian jigs.
Most pre-concert lectures are delivered by musicologists or feature interviews with conductors. But when Apollo’s Fire gives five local performances of Handel’s Messiah beginning on Thursday, timpanist Matthew Bassett will talk about that most famous of oratorios from the point of view of the musician who has the least to do during the 2-1/2 hour work. “I don’t have that many notes to think about, but I think about them a lot,” he said in a phone conversation from Buffalo, where he serves as principal timpani with the Buffalo Philharmonic.