ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Pre•Views

The Cleveland Orchestra MLK Celebration Concert: a conversation with violinist Amaryn Olmeda

by

by Mike Telin

It’s always fun to ask someone how it feels to be making their debut performance with The Cleveland Orchestra. And while all the responses come with excitement, there was a bit of extra enthusiasm in the voice of Amaryn Olmeda.

“I can’t wait,” the 15-year-old violinist said during a recent interview. “It’s just so crazy to me because I grew up listening to all their recordings — putting them on my playlist and playing along with them. Then all of a sudden I’m performing with them. So I’m very excited for this opportunity and I’m very honored that they chose me to play with them at their Martin Luther King concert.”

On Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Daniel Reith and William Henry Caldwell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus in a program that commemorates 60 years since the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. The concert will feature works by J. Rosamond Johnson, Adolphus Hailstork, Jame P. Johnson, and the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, Allison Loggins-Hull. Click here for free tickets.

The program will also include Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane with soloist Amaryn Olmeda, winner of first prize and the audience choice award at the 24th Annual Sphinx Competition. I reached the violinist by phone and began by asking her how she came to choose the piece.

[Read more…]

Les Délices: Noel, Noel from darkness into light

by

by Mike Telin

With the Winter Solstice and the conclusion of Advent upon us, the days grow shorter in the Northern Hemisphere — a quiet time for meditation, reflection, and anticipation that brightness will soon arrive.

On Wednesday, December 20 at 7:30 pm at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron, Les Délices will present Noel, Noel, performed by Amanda Powell (soprano), Debra Nagy (recorder and direction), Julie Andrijeski and Allison Monroe (violins), Rebecca Landell (viola da gamba), Mark Edwards (organ), and Daniel Swenberg (theorbo and Baroque guitar). The program will be repeated on Thursday at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church and Friday at the Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church, both at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: 
“Holidays from the Iberian Peninsula”

by

by Mike Telin

“I can’t count the number of holiday programs I have conducted in my life,” Greg Ristow said during a telephone conversation. “But I think I’m more excited about this one than any I’ve ever conducted because the music is all so fun — there’s no other way to put it.”

On Friday, December 15 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin’s Fairchild Chapel, Ristow will lead the Cleveland Chamber Choir in “Holidays from the Iberian Peninsula.” The program includes works by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Matteo Flecha el Viejo, Vicente Lusitano, and Salamone Rossi, as well as music from the Sephardic Jewish tradition. The free program will be repeated on Saturday the 16th at 7:00 pm at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland.

While the concert will feature many audience favorites, Ristow noted that it also includes a number of long-hidden gems, including Flecha’s La Bomba, which opens the program. “He wrote in a genre we call ensalada, the Spanish word for salad, because it is as if you take snippets of madrigals, snippets of church polyphony, and snippets of Renaissance dance, and put them all together in a giant salad bowl and shake them up. And the result is this delightful, constantly changing mix of styles.”

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas” — Tina Bergmann talks about the hammered dulcimer

by

by Mike Telin

Imagine that it’s Christmas night in Ireland, 1849. Families and friends gather for an evening of singing, storytelling, and due to the Potato Famine, tearful farewells. 

This setting serves as the inspiration for Apollo’s Fire’s “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas.” Written and designed by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, this theatrical concert follows the journey of the Irish immigrants who crossed the Atlantic to America through carols, reels, and stories.  

Led by Sorrell, the program features Irish singer Fiona Gillespie, vocalist Sam Kreindenweis, Kathie Stewart on wooden flutes, fiddlers Susanna Perry Gilmore, Emi Tanabe, and Caitlin Hedge, Tina Bergmann on hammered dulcimer, and Anna O’Connell on vocals and Celtic harp. Performances begin on Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30 at Bath Church UCC and run through December 17. Irish actress Derdriu Ring joins the company December 14-17. See our Concert Listings for times and locations. Tickets are available online.  

Bergmann, who is a regular on Apollo’s Fire crossover programs, first met Sorrell nearly 30 years ago while the conductor was looking for a hammered dulcimer player for an early American program. “She went to the Kent State Folk Festival, which is sort of my home festival, and came to one of the workshops where a good handful of hammered dulcimer players were presenting,” Bergmann recalled during a telephone conversation. “She approached me afterward and I invited her to my apartment. She had me play for her, and that’s how it started. I think it was in 1994, so it’s been an incredible journey.”

[Read more…]

No Exit & Zeitgeist delve into “The Unconscious”

by

by Mike Telin

No Exit continues their Year of Surreality this week with “The Unconscious.” The ensemble will be joined by longtime collaborators Zeitgeist for a program featuring four world premiere films — The Birdhouse, conceived and written by Timothy Beyer and filmed by James Praznik, breathing room by Luke Haaksmsa, In Fourteen Steps by James Praznik, and Between Here and There, a collaboration between Zeitgeist and composer and multimedia artist Philip Blackburn. The free, 7:00 pm performances will be held on Thursday, November 30 at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, Friday, December 1 at Waterloo Arts, and Saturday, December 2 at SPACES.

As part of “The Unconscious,” Cleveland-based artists Leila Khoury and Kristen Newell have created Revelations of the Unconscious Mind (a surrealist dreamscape), which will serve as an exhibit unto itself as well as a performance space. The exhibit is on display at SPACES through December 15.

[Read more…]

Jeremy Denk brings a celebration of women composers to Oberlin Artist Recital Series

by

by Mike Telin

Like many, Jeremy Denk’s time as an undergraduate at Oberlin was filled with emotion. “When I arrived I had so much growing up to do,” the celebrated pianist recalled. “So every place in Oberlin is kind of covered with those memories — emotional memories, discoveries, and stress, of course. I was trying to do a double degree — trying to be a pianist and a chemist, and in some ways I really wanted to be an English major. I wanted to be a lot of different things.”

As part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series, Jeremy Denk will perform a program that celebrates women composers from the 19th to 21st centuries along with works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms on Thursday, November 30 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

CelloBello Celebrates the Cleveland Quartet: a conversation with Paul Katz

by

by Mike Telin

Prior to embarking on a tour of the Soviet Union in 1988, the Cleveland Quartet — Donald Weilerstein and Peter Salaff (violins), James Dunham (viola), and Paul Katz (cello), received word from Goskino USSR, the State Committee on Cinematography, that they wanted to make documentary about the tour. “They wanted it to be an English-language film made for American television.” Paul Katz recalled during a Zoom conversation.

But with the abolishing of Goskino in November of 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December of that year, the film, although in its final edits, was never released. “I don’t know exactly how it resurfaced, but I noticed there was a video of Barber’s Adagio with the Cleveland Quartet on YouTube. It is footage from the film, so I thought that it had to live somewhere.”

On November 29 at 7:30 pm at Reinberger Chamber Hall in Severance Music Center, Notes From Behind the Iron Curtain: Cleveland Quartet’s 1988 Soviet Tour will finally receive its premiere. Following the screening, attendees will have the unique opportunity to engage in a Q&A session with Cleveland Quartet members.

[Read more…]

Pietari Inkinen to make Cleveland Orchestra debut

by

by Mike Telin

“I am thrilled to be making my debut with this wonderful orchestra,” Pietari Inkinen said. “The Cleveland Orchestra is one of the greatest in the world and for any conductor it is an honor to be invited to conduct in Cleveland.”

On Friday, November 24 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, the Finnish conductor will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Dvořák’s Othello Overture and Symphony No. 8, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Augustin Hadelich as soloist. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 and Sunday at 3:00. Tickets are available online.

Born in Kouvola, Finland, Inkinen began studying the violin and piano at the age of  four. He attended the Sibelius Academy, where he graduated with diplomas in violin in 2003 and conducting in 2005, and also studied violin at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. As a violinist, he has appeared as soloist with many orchestras including the Finnish Radio Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic, and as a chamber musician he has appeared with the Inkinen Trio at the Wigmore Hall and St. John’s Smith Square.

[Read more…]

Obituary: Mary Ann Griebling, 87

by

Mary Ann (Rimmel) Griebling, 87, of Akron, Ohio passed away peacefully on Tuesday, November 14, 2023. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Mendell Eugene Rimmel and Marthena W. (née Diver) Rimmel, on April 29, 1936. She is survived by daughters Karen Griebling (Robin Brown) and Margi Griebling-Haigh (Scott Haigh), and granddaughter Gabrielle Haigh (Mark Nelson). She was a curious, clever, and creative woman who was deeply ambitious on behalf of her family.

As the daughter of a Methodist circuit minister who would later become a professor of Calculus at Kent State University, Mary Ann moved many times throughout Northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania during her childhood. Her fondest memories from this time were of riding her tricycle in the attic of a church rectory in Greentree, Pennsylvania. She inherited her gift for music from her much adored paternal grandfather, Alfred Rimmel, who had worked as a child coal miner, but loved music, had absolute pitch, and reportedly built his own violin. Read the complete obituary here.

Apollo’s Fire presents Fire and Joy: Nicole Divall talks about the ‘Viola of Love’

by

by Mike Telin

“The first time I played the viola d’amore it was a bit of a rush job,” Apollo’s Fire principal viola Nicole Divall recalled. “It was for the St. John Passion and I borrowed an instrument and just fell in love with it. Its sound was just so sweet and beautiful I couldn’t stop practicing.”

On Thursday, November 16 at 7:30 pm at First United Methodist Church in Akron, Divall will be the featured soloist in Vivaldi’s Concerto in d for viola d’amore and orchestra.

Directed by Jeannette Sorrell, the program also includes Bach’s Oboe Concerto in F with Debra Nagy as soloist, Vivaldi’s Concerto in d for Two Violins & Cello, and three Bach Sinfonias as well as Brandenburg Concerto No. 4

The program will be repeated on Friday at 7:30 at Lakewood United Methodist, on Saturday at 8:00 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, and Sunday at 4:00 at University Circle United Methodist Church. Violinist Andrew Fouts will give a pre-concert talk one hour before each performance. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us