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Preview: BlueWater Chamber Orchestra — a conversation with guest harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper

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by Daniel Hathaway

COOPER-KennethThe celebrated American harpsichordist and conductor Kenneth Cooper will revisit Cleveland this weekend for the first time since he was featured in multiple concerts with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra several years ago. On Saturday, May 4 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church, Cooper will play Manuel de Falla’s Concerto for harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello and Handel’s Concerto No. 15 in d minor for harpsichord and strings with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra under the baton of its assistant conductor, Neil Mueller. Also on the program: Grieg’s Holberg Suite and J.S. Bach’s Orchestra Suite No. 3 in D.

Cooper began his harpsichord studies with Sylvia Marlowe, one of the modern champions of the instrument, who was attracted to the instrument through concerts given by Wanda Landowska when Marlowe was studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Cooper eventually succeeded her at the Mannes College of Music and now holds posts at Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music where he chairs the harpsichord department and directs the Baroque Aria Ensemble. He serves as music director of the Berkshire Bach Ensemble and appears regularly with Paula Robison at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as on such series as the Yale-Norfolk Summer Chamber Music Festival and Music at Menlo.

His forty-year career as a specialist in eighteenth-century music has yielded many recordings of the Baroque masterworks as well as a wide range of other music including ragtime, American music, documentary film soundtracks and even a video game.

We reached Kenneth Cooper at his home in New York after a busy week of opera conducting to ask about his forthcoming concert in Cleveland. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet to play formerly mechanized Mozart

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by Daniel Hathaway

BerlinPhilWWQWhen the excellent Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet plays the last regular season concert of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Plymouth Church on April 30 at 7:30, they’ll repeat the Pavel Haas Quintet they played here in 2010. The rest of the program will be devoted to music by Jean Françaix (Quintet No. 1), Czech composer Josef Bohuslav Foerster (Quintet in D, op. 95) and three curiosities by Mozart: the three Fantasies for mechanical organ, K. 594, K. 616 and K.608 as arranged by the quintet’s flutist, Michael Hasel, who studied the organ before he took up the flute.

Mankind has been fascinated with producing music by mechanical means since the middle ages, and a fine collection of its most clever inventions can be seen and heard at the Museum Spielklok (Musical Clock Museum) in the Dutch city of Utrecht, ranging from street organs to recording grand pianos to a device that cleverly plays multiple violins that lean into a circulating bow.

Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were all persuaded to write music for mechanical organs, Haydn for a real musical clock (thirty-two lovely miniatures), Beethoven (a potboiler, the Battle Symphony) for the “Panharmonium” built by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who invented the metronome. [Read more…]

Review: CMA VIVA! & Gala — Paris Combo (April 19)

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by Mike Telin

Paris-Combo-by-Philippe-KalmykowThe sounds of the streets of Paris filled Gartner Auditorium on Friday, April 19 when Paris Combo kicked off their 12-city US tour with a fun, musically intelligent and entertaining concert as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s VIVA! & Gala series.

The group’s engaging style, described as “a unique mélange of colorful cabaret, elegant jazz, multicultural world music and sassy alterna-pop,” was in evidence from the opening Ce que j’amie, c’est le debut (what I like is the beginning). From the first to the final song during the 70-minute set, vocalist Belle du Berry’s sultry tone combined with all the right facial expressions rendered the printed English translations nearly pointless. Du Berry’s colleagues, David Lewis, trumpet and piano, François Jeannin, drums and backup vocals, Potzi, guitar, and Emmanuel Chabbey, bass, expertly created colorful lines that were far more than accompaniment but truly part of each song’s musical fabric. [Read more…]

Preview: Apollo’s Fire: Mozart and Papa Haydn — fifteen minutes with soprano Amanda Forsythe

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by Daniel Hathaway

FORSYTHE-AmandaSoprano Amanda Forsythe returns to Northeast Ohio and Apollo’s Fire this weekend to sing Haydn and Mozart arias in concerts in Akron, Cleveland Heights and Oberlin, following appearances in Handel’s Messiah (including a recording) and an earlier concert set of excerpts from Mozart operas.

The New York native started out at Vassar College as a marine biology major, then switched to music and went on to pursue a graduate degree in vocal performance at the New England Conservatory. Turned down for NEC’s opera workshop, Forsythe went in search of other singing opportunities and found herself cast in a performance of a Cavalli opera at Harvard, where she met her husband-to-be, conductor and University Organist Edward Elwyn Jones, as well as Boston Baroque director Martin Pearlman.

That launched her extensive career in early music, but before long, she branched out into standard opera roles, making her European debut in Il viaggio a Reims at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, Italy and recently appearing in Robert Carsens’s new production of Falstaff at Covent Garden. “It’s fun to do the standard roles,” Forsythe told us phone from Boston. “With early music, you might learn a role and never see the piece again!” [Read more…]

Preview: Uno Stradivari per la Gente at Reinberger Chamber Hall

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By Mike Telin

FEDELI-Matteo“What is truly incredible to me is that violins built by Stradivari by the candlelight, today shine bright under the spotlights of venues around the world,” says renowned Italian violinist Matteo Fedeli.

On Sunday, April 28th beginning at 7:30 pm, Matteo Fedeli brings his Uno Stradivari per la Gente (A Stradivari for the People) project to Reinberger Chamber Music Hall at Severance Hall. The concert is presented by the Hon. Consulate of Italy in Cleveland and the Consulate of Italy in Detroit and is a special initiative that marks 2013 as the Year of Italian Culture in the USA. Although Sunday’s performance is sold out, a second concert has been scheduled for Saturday, June 15 in Cincinnati.

Sunday’s concert features the music of Saint-Saëns, Franck, Bartók, Kreisler and Rachmaninoff and will be performed on the “1726 Grand Stradivarius”, which belonged to the Adams collection, and was played by Fritz Kreisler and Pablo de Sarasate. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Women’s Orchestra brings Jinjoo Cho and Cicely Parnas together for the Brahms “Double”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cho-ParnasJohannes Brahms wrote his Double Concerto for violinist Joseph Joachim and cellist Robert Haussmann in 1887 with the intention of repairing a damaged friendship with the violinist (the two had fallen out when Brahms had taken Joachim’s wife’s side in a divorce). Joachim and Haussmann had been frequent collaborators during their long careers. By contrast, on Sunday, April 28 at 3:30 pm, the “Double” will bring together two young musicians who already have established distinguished track records but have never worked together before, as violinist Jinjoo Cho and cellist Cicely Parnas join Robert L. Cronquist and the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra for the ensemble’s 78th anniversary concert at Severance Hall. We spoke to both soloists by phone to catch up on their recent activities.

Jinjoo Cho is finishing up her master’s degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studies with Jaime Laredo and plans to stay on next year for a Professional Studies Degree. Her recent big news was winning first place in the Buenos Aires Competition, which earned her a concert tour in Argentina. This summer, she will join her regular pianist HyunSoo Kim for a three-week chamber music residency at the Banff Center in Canada. [Read more…]

Preview: Tri-C JazzFest: Michael Feinstein — a conversation about The Gershwins and Me

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by Mike Telin

FEINSTEIN-MichaelKnown as “The Ambassador of the Great American Songbook,” Columbus native Michael Feinstein will make his Tri-C JazzFest debut with his popular show The Gershwins and Me on Friday, April 26 at 8:00 pm in the Palace Theatre at Playhouse Square.

Feinstein, a multi-platinum-selling, two-time Emmy and five-time Grammy Award-nominated entertainer, performs more then 200 shows a year in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, Buckingham Palace and the White House as well as his Manhattan nightclub, Feinstein’s at Loews Regency.

In addition to serving on The Library of Congress’s National Sound Recording Advisory Board, Feinstein also hosts the popular NPR show Song Travels. He is the director of a new popular music series for Jazz at Lincoln Center and in 2007, he created the Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative, now headquartered in Carmel, Indiana. With its mission to bring the music of the Great American Songbook to young people today and to preserve it for future generations, The Great American Songbook Initiative’s activities include a high school vocal competition, The Great American Songbook Hall of Fame, numerous educational activities and an archive and gallery. [Read more…]

Preview: Tri-C JazzFest — a conversation with clarinetist & saxophonist Anat Cohen

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by Jarrett Hoffman

COHEN-AnatAs part of Cleveland’s 2013 Tri-C JazzFest, renowned jazz clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen will be performing with the Rimon Jazz Institute Ensemble from Tel Aviv as well as the Tri-C Jazz Studies Workshop Ensemble on April 24 beginning at 7:30 pm in the Tri-C Metro Campus Auditorium. Voted Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association six years and counting, last September Cohen released her sixth album as a bandleader, Claroscuro, which features her on both clarinet and saxophone. We reached her by telephone to talk about the album and her upcoming performance in Cleveland.

Jarrett Hoffman: Could you tell me a little about the title of your newest record, Claroscuro?

Anat Cohen: Well, when I was listening back on the album, I realized there’s quite a lot of contrast—dark pieces, dance pieces, bright pieces. I thought of the Italian painting technique of light and shade, chiaroscuro. So Claroscuro is like a Spanish, “clarinet-way” to say chiaroscuro. [Read more…]

Preview: New Amici Trio in Chagrin Valley Chamber Music finale — a conversation with pianist Cicilia Yudha

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by Daniel Hathaway

YUDHA-CiciliaAmong the chamber groups that have disbanded and successfully been revived is the Amici Trio, formed in Youngstown in 1980 with violinist John Wilcox, pianist Roman Rudnytsky and Michael Gelfand. The trio disbanded around 2005, but reappeared in 2008 as the New Amici Trio with Gelfand still at the cello position, plus violinist Hristo Popov and pianist Dror Biran. A series of pianists rotated into the trio until Cicilia Yudha joined the Youngstown State University Dana School of Music faculty last August. The trio will play the final concert in this season’s Chagrin Valley Chamber Music Series on Sunday, April 21 at 3:00 in Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls.

Cicilia Yudha enjoys playing in a piano trio again for musical as well as sentimental reasons. She grew up in a musical family in Indonesia, she told us by phone, “and my two brothers played violin and cello. I love chamber music and its an honor and a pleasure to play such great repertory.” [Read more…]

Cuyahoga Arts & Culture at work — Jazz at the Settlement program

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by Mike Telin

CAC-Settlement1Last week Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC) released new data demonstrating that public funding for arts and culture is having a positive impact on the residents of Cuyahoga County. The Report focuses on CAC’s work in strengthening community in Cuyahoga County, by Enriching community, Enhancing education and Contributing to our local economy. (A PDF of the Report to the Community is available here).

“Each year CAC publishes a report that helps to show the public how their investment is being spent, and that it’s a good investment,” says CAC’s executive director, Karen Gahl-Mills. “But what I take away from this particular report, is that [not only do] we have great statistics but now that we’ve been [funding organizations] since 2006, we also have some great stories to tell.” One story that is highlighted in the report is the Cleveland Music Settlement’s Jazz at the Settlement (JAMS) program.

Music Settlement President and CEO Charles Lawrence says that when CAC dollars first started coming to the Settlement, he had just joined the organization and was looking at ways to inject new energy into the school’s department of music. [Read more…]

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