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Zidur Guitar Duo to make Cleveland debut for Classical Guitar Society

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by Mike Telin

The relationship between Hermelindo Ruiz (left) and the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society dates back to 2020, when the guitarist/composer became an Artist in Residence for CCGS through a Creative Fusion grant from the Cleveland Foundation. A year later, Ruiz became a CCGS Composer in Residence, writing works for young guitar players that were premiered by the students.

This week Ruiz makes his third visit to Cleveland — this time joined by Samuel Diz in the Zidur Guitar Duo. On Saturday, February 24 at 7:30 pm, the duo will make its Cleveland debut at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. The program features music from their homelands of Puerto Rico and Spain. Tickets are available online.

Ruiz was in Chicago when I caught up with him by phone and began by asking how he and Diz came to form the duo.

Hermelindo Ruiz: Through friends of mine, Samuel discovered some scores of my work and started to play my music in Europe. I am from Puerto Rico and he’s from Spain, and he started telling people about this Puerto Rican classical music composer. And that opened a lot of doors to me, including getting to go to Spain. We started playing as a duo in 2009 when we were 20 or 21 years old at the time.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Opera to present William Grant Still’s Highway 1, U.S.A.

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by Mike Telin

Family dynamics have always been the source of inspiration for great literature. There’s Shakepeare’s Hamlet — which depicts the Prince of Denmark’s attempts to take revenge against his uncle, or the prime time television soap opera Dallas, which revolved around an affluent and feuding Texas family.

On Sunday, February 18 at 3:00 pm in The Tudor Arms Hotel Grand Ballroom, The Cleveland Opera in collaboration with the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra and Duffy Liturgical Ensemble, will present a full-scale production of William Grant Still’s Highway 1, USA.

[Read more…]

Daniel Singer: falling in love
with Fauré’s Requiem

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by Mike Telin

“The first time I heard the Fauré Requiem was during my freshman year in college,” Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus director Daniel Singer recalled in an interview, adding that he instantly fell in love with the work. “It’s just a beautiful piece of choral music. It’s so melodic, and Fauré knew how to spin a tuneful melody.”

On Sunday, February 18 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, the Chorus will join forces with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra for a performance of Fauré’s beloved work. The program, under the direction of Daniel Reith, also includes Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

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

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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

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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

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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.”

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

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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

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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

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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

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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…]

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