ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Pre•Views

Apollo’s Fire: Alan Choo and colleagues to take on more of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire has recently been fascinated by 17th-century Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Rosary Sonatas — musical meditations on the five Joyful Mysteries, the five Sorrowful Mysteries, and the five Glorious Mysteries of the life of Christ.

Probably written in the 1670s, but unknown to modern ears until first published in 1905, the devotional work is preserved in a beautiful manuscript held in the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

Four Apollo’s Fire violinists presented eight of the sonatas on programs in January 2019. And Alan Choo soloed in a pair of them on a set of programs in January 2023 as part of a multi-season project to record all fifteen sonatas plus the Passacaglia that concludes the meditations. The resulting CD, Biber’s Sacred Mysteries, has just been released, and will be available for purchase at Apollo’s Fire’s four concerts this week, when Choo will be featured in seven of the sonatas. [Read more…]

George Benjamin’s Dream of the Song: a conversation with countertenor Tim Mead

by

by Mike Telin

This week’s program from The Cleveland Orchestra includes George Benjamin’s mesmerizing Dream of the Song, featuring British countertenor Tim Mead as soloist.

The program, conducted by Benjamin, also includes Dieter Ammann’s glut, Oliver Knussen’s The Way to Castle Yonder, and Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye (complete ballet). Performances take place on Thursday, February 15 at 7:30 pm and Saturday the 17th at 8:00 pm at Severance Music Center. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Mead over Zoom to discuss Benjamin’s song cycle, his passion for Purcell, and his quick transition from the choir to the opera stage. (Photo by Andy Staples) [Read more…]

CelloGayageum at Cleveland Museum of Art: uniting cultures, blending styles & experimenting with sound

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

“I grew up with the story of the separation of south and north in Korea,” cellist Sol Daniel Kim said during a recent interview. “And when I went to Berlin, of course I knew the history of the city, how it was separated into east and west.”

The parallel between German reunification and the hope for peaceful reunification of Korea took physical form in late 2015 with the construction of Berlin’s Pavillon der Einheit (Pavilion of Unity).

It was around that same time when Kim met Korean-born Dayoung Yoon, who plays the gayageum, a traditional Korean zither. They started talking at a concert organized by the Korean Cultural Center in Berlin, and hit it off over a shared interest in creating music.

“That was my first real encounter with a Korean traditional instrument,” said Kim, who was born in Austria, with Korean roots. “And actually she was having quite a hard time in Berlin, because it’s not easy for a Korean person to get used to the Berlin vibe. Then she met me, and everything turned around because we were making music together.”

[Read more…]

Jukka-Pekka Saraste returns to Cleveland with “Beethoven’s Fateful Fifth”

by

by Mike Telin

After presenting two concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall on the 20th and 21st of January, The Cleveland Orchestra then headed south for their Florida residency. And on Friday, February 9 at 7:30 pm, they will return to their home base of Severance Music Center to present the first of three performances of Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online. [ALL PERFORMANCES ARE SOLD OUT]

This week also marks the long-awaited return of Finnish conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste. “It’s a pleasure to come back to Cleveland. It’s been a while — my last time was when I was in Toronto [as music director of the Toronto Symphony] — so it must have been about 20 years ago,” he said during a Zoom conversation from his home in Helsinki.

[Read more…]

No Exit: Piano Dada at Cleveland Museum of Art

by

by Mike Telin 

This week No Exit will continue their season-long multifaceted exploration and celebration of Surrealism on February 9 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium with “Piano Dada.” The free concert takes an entertaining dive into the realm of dreams, the irrational, the unconscious and the inexplicable.

“We’re very excited about this concert because it is our Cleveland Museum of Art debut,” No Exit’s artistic director Timothy Beyer said during a telephone conversation.

The program will include five works for solo piano performed by Shuai Wang — Francis Picabia’s La Nourrice Américaine (fast) and La Nourrice Américaine (slow), Darius Milhaud’s Caramel Mou, Georges Auric’s Adieu, New York!, and E.L.T. Mesens’ Drie Composities Voor Klavier — as well as a video of Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist Anthem.

Beyer noted that with the exception of Milhaud, Picabia, Auric, Mesens and Tzara were not composers per se. “They were artists. But these are great pieces that represent the beginning of avant-garde conceptualized music, which is prevalent today — John Cage took his cues from the Dadist’s playbook.” [Read more…]

Fourth Year Soprano Elizabeth Hanje Wins Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition

by

The operatic singer emerged from 900 international applicants.

by Cathy Strauss

Reposted courtesy of Oberlin College and Conservatory

After an exhaustive international search and multi-round competition, Oberlin Conservatory fourth-year soprano Elizabeth Hanje has won first prize and $10,000 at the 36th Annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers. Hanje is a student of Professor Salvatore Champagne.

While this is a highly anticipated vocal competition, the event also serves as a job interview for the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio, one of the world’s most prestigious operatic training programs for young artists. Each of the young artists in the Studio has access to regular coaching sessions with industry professionals, roles in Houston Grand Opera (HGO) mainstage productions, recital performances, and other concert engagements. HGO is one of the largest, most innovative, and most highly acclaimed opera companies in the United States.

[Read more…]

Linking Legacies to perform at CMA, Oberlin & TMS: celebrating Black performers & composers with local ties

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Think of the people from the past who lived in your town, crossing the same crosswalks, pushing open the same doors as you. Or, as the thought occurred to violist Chris Jenkins and pianist Dianna White-Gould, performing in the same room as them.

Collaborating in a piece by H. Leslie Adams in January 2020 for a concert at The Music Settlement honoring Martin Luther King, they realized that White-Gould’s parents — composer-pianist Dolores White and cellist Donald White — had performed together as a duo decades earlier in the very same space.

More ties came to mind between past and present, time and place. “We thought, it’s so interesting to be here,” Jenkins (pictured) said during a recent interview over Zoom. “Leslie is here, and Dianna’s parents have played in this space, and we’re here now. Leslie and Dianna went to Oberlin, and her mother went to Oberlin and CIM, and I work at Oberlin.” (Jenkins is the Associate Dean for Academic Support, Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology, and Liaison to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion). “All those connections — it was so interesting.”

The thought of those connections led to the creation of Linking Legacies, a chamber collective headed up by Jenkins that features multiple generations of African American classical musicians performing classical works by African American composers — with a focus on deep ties to the area for both performers and composers.

[Read more…]

Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series Sets the Stage for a Gospel Experience

by

by Stephanie Manning
Reposted courtesy of Oberlin College and Conservatory

Trey McLaughlin & The Sounds of Zamar blur the boundaries of genre with contemporary gospel arrangements. Their latest tour, “The Zamar Experience,” arrives in Oberlin February 10 for a community workshop and concert on the Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel.

For Trey McLaughlin, each and every rehearsal is the creation of something special.

“It’s where  the magic first happens, you know,” says the vocalist and director. “It’s that moment where you’re starting a new piece and you’re starting to hear what it could be.”

For McLaughlin, who has been singing since age four, his love for rehearsing started early. “I would line up my mom’s perfume bottles on her dresser, or my toys, or anything that would stand, and I would have choir rehearsal,” he says. A CD recording would serve as the finished product. But that was almost an afterthought—his favorite part was the teaching.

The singer and arranger is leading plenty of rehearsals these days thanks in part to his touring group, Trey McLaughlin & The Sounds of Zamar. The contemporary gospel choir will take their latest show around the U.S. and Canada this February, stopping in Oberlin for the first time. Their February 10 performance in Finney Chapel is part of the 2023-24 Artist Recital Series. [Read more…]

Taking Up Serpents: Fire-and-brimstone at BW

by

by Mike Telin

In her 2023 article “The History of Snake Handling in Religion,” published in Grunge, Sarah Crocker writes, “According to National Geographic, [the practice] is now most often understood as a uniquely American religious observance, typically practiced in rural Appalachian churches that are associated with Pentecostal Christians and other charismatic Protestant denominations.”

On Friday, February 2 at 8:00 pm in the Kleist Center for Arts & Drama, Baldwin Wallace Opera will present Taking Up Serpents. With a score by Kamala Sankaram and an original story inspired by librettist Jerre Dye’s roots in the Deep South, the opera tells the story of 25-year-old Kayla, the estranged daughter of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who is dangerously bitten by one of his own snakes. Kayla’s journey home forces her to confront her troubled upbringing.

[Read more…]

CIM Opera Theater to present Glory Denied: a conversation with director Kathryn Frady

by

by Mike Telin

After serving their country, many veterans are faced with multiple challenges as they re-adjust to civilian life. At the top of that list is reconnecting with and re-establishing a role in the family and in society. These issues will be addressed this weekend when the Cleveland Institute of Music presents Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied on Saturday, January 27 at 3:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. The production will be repeated on Sunday, also at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.

Based on the book by Tom Philpott, the two-act, 80-minute chamber opera tells the true story of Jim Thompson, the longest-held prisoner of war in U.S. military history, as he tries to re-assimilate into American life after spending nine years behind enemy lines in Vietnam.

“Glory Denied is undeniably one of the most performed American operas of our time,” guest stage director Kathryn Frady said by telephone. “Companies everywhere are doing it.”

[Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us