by Daniel Hathaway
Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill will be featured in Hector Berlioz’s song cycle Les nuits d’été this weekend at Severance Hall with guest conductor Robin Ticciati and The Cleveland Orchestra. Cargill and Ticciati have recorded the Berlioz with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, an album that received critical acclaim when it was released in April 2013. We spoke with the affable mezzo by telephone in her dressing room at Severance Hall on Tuesday morning, where she was listening in on a rehearsal of Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony.
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“The first time I heard the Monteverdi Vespers, I was absolutely floored,” said tenor Oliver Mercer in a phone conversation. “It was unlike anything I had ever heard and I became obsessed with it. It wasn’t just a quirky piece of early music, but a work that belongs in the upper echelons along with Beethoven’s ninth symphony.”
On Saturday, November 1 at 8:00 pm in Finney Chapel, guest violinist Gregory Walker will join the Oberlin Orchestra under the direction of Raphael Jiménez in a performance of George Walker’s Poème for violin and orchestra. The concert also includes Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2.
It’s that time of year when jack-o-lanterns are seen illuminating front porches, and scary tales of ghosts and goblins are told. One of those tales is “The Headless Horseman,” which has been popularized in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” On Saturday, November 1 at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, Carlton R. Woods will lead the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra in Jon Deak’s Concerto for String Quartet, Narrator and Orchestra, The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, featuring violinists Kenneth Johnston and Charles Morey, violist Kirsten Docter, cellist Bryan Dumm and narrator Robert Conrad. 
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz will conduct The American Boychoir in a concert at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Wednesday, October 29 at 7:00 pm. The concert is part of the choir’s 75th Anniversary Tour of the Midwest from October 17 to November 1, which includes performances in Milwaukee and Madison in Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Faribault & Northfield in Minnesota, Napierville, Illinois, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Over the past five seasons, the Cleveland-based baroque ensemble Les Délices has often treated audiences to concerts that highlight the refined music from the Royal Court of King Louis XIV. This weekend the ensemble presents two concerts that feature another side of the music from that court with “The Musketeers,” a colorful program featuring baroque oboes, bassoon, baroque guitar, theorbo, and percussion inspired by Louis XIV’s oboe band, Les Mousquetaire. 
On Saturday, October 25 at 7:30 pm in the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Frank Jacobs will conduct the Masterworks Chorale of the Summit Choral Society in Johannes Brahms’s German Requiem. The performance marks twenty-five years to the day since the chorus sang that work on its first concert.
In his introduction to Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ’s January of 2014 
On Sunday, October 26, The Musical Theater Project will present its dynamic new production, Mary Martin: America’s Sweetheart, in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, in cooperation with CIM. Hosted by Bill Rudman under the musical direction of Nancy Maier, two identical programs at 2:00 and 7:00 pm will feature Ursula Cataan and Sandra Simon, each performing as Mary Martin during different stages of her career. (Note: the 2 pm performance is already sold out.) 
“The saxophone is a very versatile instrument. It’s powerful, it’s expressive, and very close to the human voice. Still, it’s not an instrument we’re used to hearing in concert halls,” composer and CityMusic artistic director Avner Dorman said during a telephone conversation. On Wednesday, October 15 at 7:30 in Lakewood Congregational Church, Dorman will conduct the Cleveland premiere of his Saxophone Concerto featuring Timothy McAllister as soloist. The concert, the first of five performances in different venues around Cleveland through October 19, will also include works by Mozart, Haydn and Dvořák. See our