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Preview: Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble returns to Nighttown on March 13

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by Mike Telin

BROUWER-Margaret“We’ve played at Nighttown before and I really love playing there. It’s sort of like the way chamber music was originally conceived,” composer and Blue Streak Ensemble founder Margaret Brouwer said in a recent telephone conversation. “In the days before television and Internet, people would go to each other’s homes and entertain each other with a meal and musicians would play the latest music. I think Nightttown is like that. The people are enjoying a meal and a glass of wine. I just really like it for chamber music so I look forward to performing there again.”

On Thursday, March 13 beginning at 8:00 pm at Nighttown, Brouwer and her Blue Streak Ensemble will present a concert featuring the music of J.S. Bach, Brouwer, Bond, Ravel, Debussy and Desmond.

Formed in 2011 to launch a concert series along the shores of Lake Erie, Brouwer named the ensemble after The Blue Streak, Cedar Point’s famed roller coaster. Brouwer is dedicated to presenting concerts with an eclectic array of the latest, most interesting and expressive, and most exciting new music. Her mission is to show the connection between the rich music of the past and recently written new music. [Read more…]

Preview: CityMusic Cleveland to premiere Dan Visconti’s Roots to Branches

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by Mike Telin

VISCONTI-DanEach season, CityMusic Cleveland dedicates one of its programs to highlighting a social issue that impacts Greater Cleveland. Past programs have addressed such topics as bullying and genocide. For this year’s project, CityMusic has chosen to explore a population of Cleveland that is invisible to many — the world of Cleveland’s refugees. CityMusic principal oboist and VP for Community Engagement Rebecca Schweigert Mayhew says the goal of the project is twofold: to increase awareness of Cleveland’s refugees, and to highlight the positive cultural and economic contributions refugees make to the city.

A highlight of the project will take place on Wednesday, March 12 in Fairmount Presbyterian Church, when CityMusic under the direction of James Feddeck presents the premiere of Dan Visconti’s percussion concerto, Roots to Branches. The work was commissioned by CityMusic especially for this project and features Grammy-winning percussionist Shane Shanahan and narrator Ali Alhaddad. The program also includes Chinary Ung’s Khse Buon for solo cello with James Jaffee as soloist, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.” Performances continue through Sunday at area churches. [Read more…]

Preview: Tuesday Musical to present A Far Cry with Matt Haimovitz on March 11

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by Mike Telin

HAIMOVITZ-MattCellist Matt Haimovitz will be the featured soloist with the Boston-based chamber orchestra, A Far Cry, on the Tuesday Musical Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on March 11 at 7:30 pm.

Haimovitz, who made his debut at the age of 13 with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, and his first recording four years later with James Levine and the Chicago Symphony, first appeared on the Tuesday Musical series in 1991. A Far Cry, a self-conducted ensemble, was founded in 2007 by “The Criers,” a collective of 17 young professional musicians who intended to develop an innovative, rotating leadership both on and off stage.

The Akron concert will include two works by Luigi Boccherini, his Quintet in C, subtitled “Night Music on the Streets of Madrid,” and his Cello Concerto in C. Haimovitz will also be featured in the first performance of Luna Pearl Woolf’s arrangement of Bloch’s Prayer from Jewish Life, and the orchestra will complete the program with Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and Janáček’s Idyll. [Read more…]

Preview: A/B Duo to visit Kent State and Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

AB_DuoCreating your niche in today’s crowded chamber music world is not an easy task. However with talent, hard work and a bit of creative ingenuity many young chamber music ensembles are finding their place in that world and winning over skeptical presenters and audiences.

On Monday, March 10 at Kent State University and Thursday, March 13 at the Oberlin Conservatory, the bi-coastal A/B Duo, comprised of percussionist Christopher G. Jones (Rochester, NY) and flutist Meerenai Shim (Campbell, CA), will present concerts that feature a variety of fun, intense and thought-provoking new works, most of which have been written for A/B Duo. The concerts will include Matthew Joseph Payne’s Echoloquacious for flute, percussion and Gameboy/LSDJ, Ivan Trevino’s Things We Dream About for flute, bass flute, vibraphone and drums, Carolyn O’Brien’s Nocturne for contrabass flute and djembe and the premiere of Zack Browning’s Sol Moon Rocker for flute and vibraphone. If seeing is believing, check out A/B’s video of “Fun” from Things We Dream About. [Read more…]

Preview: Rudolf Buchbinder returns to Severance Hall this weekend

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by Mike Telin

BuchbinderThis week at Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus & Children’s Chorus in concerts featuring Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen’s Return (Legends) Wigglesworth’s Locke’s Theatre and Britten’s Spring Symphony. Soloists include Kate Royal, soprano, Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano and John Tessier, tenor.

The concerts also include Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and mark the return of famed Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder to Severance Hall for the first time since 1998. We spoke to the fascinating pianist by telephone at his home in Vienna.

We talked about a few of his hobbies like collecting movie DVDs and scores of Beethoven, and his recent release of the five Beethoven concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic on DVD/Blu-ray as well as his secret to a well balanced life. We began by asking him why he thinks Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody is so wildly popular?

Rudolf Buchbinder: First of all for me, this piece is one of the greatest variation compositions. You have the Goldberg, the Diabelli, and Paganini by Rachmaninoff. It’s a really great piece. It was one of the first piano concertos I studied at age 14 and the amazing thing is all of the Russian conductors that I work with all want to play Rachmaninoff with me. Not Beethoven or Brahms. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony to mount full production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on March 8

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by Mike Telin

ASO-MND-Dancers“It’s a big production with a lot of artistic components. And it’s unique in that the play is extremely famous and so is the orchestral score,” said Akron Symphony Music Director Christopher Wilkins. “Almost everybody in the world would recognize the Wedding March. They may not know where it comes from but it is universally recognized.”

On Saturday, March 8 beginning at 8:00 pm in EJ Thomas Hall,Christopher Wilkins will lead the Akron Symphony, Summit Children’s Choir, Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet and Akron Symphony Shakespeare Players in a fully-staged production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with music by Felix Mendelssohn.

In a recent telephone conversation Wilkins said he finds Mendelssohn’s music to be awe-inspiring. He also pointed out that Mendelssohn knew every word of the play (in German). While he was growing up it was common for the Mendelssohn family to stage many plays at their home. “They would invite guests to what they called Tableaux Vivants during which they would reproduce a historical theme or painting and people would come dressed as characters. Members of the family would write poetry. They had a little orchestra and Felix would write music. So when he wrote the overture at the age of 17 in the family garden, it’s pretty clear he already knew the play inside and out. [Read more…]

Preview: CityMusic Cleveland to Celebrate Cleveland’s Refugees

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by Donald Rosenberg
Special to ClevelandClassical

RefugeesCityMusic Cleveland savors the opportunity to share classical music with listeners who may have no other access to the arts. The professional chamber orchestra does so by giving free concerts throughout Northeast Ohio.

Once a year, CityMusic devotes a program to a social issue that heightens community awareness. In recent seasons, the ensemble has explored genocide and bullying.

This year’s project, “Fleeing,” focuses on refugees who have journeyed to Cleveland to begin new lives after years of displacement and suffering. CityMusic is bringing attention to the topic through a series of concerts in March, some of which will include performances by refugees.

To celebrate refugees in Cleveland, CityMusic has commissioned a percussion concerto featuring instruments from many countries. The piece will have its world premiere at concerts March 12 through 16 at churches in Cleveland, Lakewood and Willoughby Hills led by James Feddeck, former assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

Preview: Cantores becomes Contrapunctus, and makes its debut in music of the era of Mary, Queen of Scots on March 2

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by Daniel Hathaway

Mary-Q-ScotsIn 2004, Barbara Margolis gathered five of her professional singer colleagues and launched the one-on-a-part vocal ensemble Cantores Ecclesiae to explore church music written before 1650. By 2011, the group — now called Cantores Cleveland — had expanded into a non-profit organization, increased its numbers and embarked on the new mission of performing themed, multi-media concerts designed to bring old music back to life by placing it in its historical context.

Margolis having decided to step down, Cantores has entered a new era under a new name: Contrapunctus Cleveland. The mission remains the same, but the artistic leadership has passed on to British countertenor David Acres and soprano Judith Overcash, and Contrapunctus is now in residence at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland. The newly reconstituted, 19-voice ensemble will make its debut at Trinity on Sunday, March 2 at 3:00 pm in a program entitled “The Life and Times of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587). [Read more…]

Preview: CityMusic Cleveland launches “Journeys of Hope” concerts

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by Mike Telin

RefugeesCityMusic Cleveland will present the first three free public concerts titled Journeys of Hope on Sunday, March 2 beginning at 2:00 pm at the Lakewood Public Library. The concerts are part of CityMusic’s Roots to Branches – Music Celebrating Refugees project. This is the first in a series of four articles.

“We actually started the project because of a conversation Eugenia Strauss had with Father Bob Begin from St. Coleman’s Church,” said CityMusic Principal oboist and VP for Community Engagement Rebecca Schweigert Mayhew.

Through the help of the Refugee Services Collaborative with whom Mayhew, Strauss and CityMusic board member Sawsan Alhaddad started working with early on in the project, they discovered that every year 70,000 refugees come to the United States with over 500 settling in Cleveland, primarily from Bhutan/Nepal, Burma, Somalia, and Iraq.

Some come from once-prosperous but now war-torn countries, and many highly educated people find themselves working in unskilled jobs in a place where their credentials and experience are meaningless. [Read more…]

Preview: Fred Frith to perform both at Oberlin and Transformer Station

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by Mike Telin

FRITH-Fred“Fred Frith is unique among improvisers in his ability to draw so effortlessly on such a wide variety of styles,” Oberlin Conservatory Assistant Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts Peter Swendsen said during a recent telephone conversation. “His styles range from the purely sonic abstract worlds that we might think of as electro-acoustic, to things that draw extensively on popular forms, on jazz, on music for film and dance. His comfort zone is everything and everywhere.”

This week Northeast Ohio audiences will have two opportunities to hear the acclaimed songwriter, composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist when Fred Frith performs concerts on Wednesday, February 26 at 8:00 pm in Fairchild Chapel (Bosworth Hall) at Oberlin College and Friday, February 28 at 7:30 pm as part of the CMA Concerts at Transformer Station series.

Swendsen, who studied with Frith while doing graduate work at Mills College, remembers him as a wonderful teacher who was very supportive. [Read more…]

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