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Ohio Light Opera Tools Up For Its 44th season at the College of Wooster

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by Daniel Hathaway

In mid-May, the annual influx of a special summer population brought more than 120 singing actors and instrumentalists to Wooster for the 44th season of Ohio Light Opera. Between the opening downbeat of Lerner &  Loewe’s Camelot (1960) on June 10 and its final curtain call on July 30, OLO will have presented 50 performances of six shows from the lyric theater repertoire in Freedlander Theater at The College of Wooster.

The launching of Camelot will be followed by opening performances of Frank Loesser’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961) on June 15, Vincent Youmans’ No, No, Nanette (1925) on June 22, Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) on June 29, Emmerich Kálmán’s Arizona Lady (1954) on July 6, and Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (1858) on July 13 — all on Thursdays at 2pm.

Once each title has been rolled out, all six shows will be running “in repertory” during the last three weeks in July. That means you could spend a week at the Festival and see all of them in rotation — a type of binge watching to which some OLO devotees are addicted, and for which Wooster lodging and restaurant packages are available.

I caught up with artistic director Steven Daigle by phone to ask him what personally excites him about the coming season, which will be his 33rd with the company. [Read more…]

A Conversation with James Stroud About His Youth Guitar Competition

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Sunday, June 4, after all the professional classical guitarists have played their recitals at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, the next generation of artists will take over Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

The semi-final rounds of the James Stroud Youth Competition are scheduled for Saturday morning and afternoon, June 3m and the final round will close the Festival on Sunday evening, June 4. Fifteen young musicians will play on Saturday, and the remaining four will perform in the final round on Sunday evening at 6:30. The final round is free, and will be available on a live stream. Click here for the list of contestants and their performance schedule.

On Wednesday, I spoke to James Stroud, the generous founder of the Stroud Competition as he was packing to travel to Cleveland, to ask how arrangements were shaping up for the Youth Competition this weekend.

James Stroud: I live in Montana now and so I’m getting ready to fly into Cleveland tonight for the festival, but taking care of a lot of logistics, so it’s been a little busier than normal, but all in all, very good. [Read more…]

Click, Click, Click: ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Mike Telin

(This article was originally posted on April 12, 2023)

ChamberFest Cleveland is looking for metronomes! If you have a wind-up metronome, ChamberFest would love to borrow it for this performance of Ligeti’s Poème symphonique on Friday, June 30. Please contact the office at 216-471-8887 or info@chamberfestcleveland.com to arrange a pick-up. All metronomes will be returned to their owners after the festival ends.

There are a few works in the classical repertoire that leave you wondering what is going on. One example that comes to mind is John Cage’s 4’33” where the performers are instructed not to play for the duration of the work’s three movements.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest 2023:
Lightness of Being

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by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s programming has centered around creative themes such as The Big Bang (2012), Crossing Borders (2015), and most recently X (2022). For season eleven, which runs from June 14 through July 1, the Festival takes on a literary slant with Lightness of Being.

During a Zoom conversation with Roman Rabinovich and Diana Cohen — two of the Festival’s three artistic directors — Rabinovich said that he has been a fan of Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being for many years. “Last summer I reread it, I think for the third time, and it really pulled me in. It’s rich in ideas that are very deep but also entertaining and timeless. And Kundera is also an amazing writer about music — you can tell he has a deep knowledge of classical music.”

Cohen added that like music, that novel explores every aspect of the human condition with its archetypes of personalities, relationships, politics, war, and culture. “It explores so many different multitudes that we decided to see what we could do with it.”

[Read more…]

23rd Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival Opens at CIM Next Weekend (June 1-4)

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by Daniel Hathaway

When I telephoned Armin Kelly, founder and artistic director of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, to hear details of their 23rd trip around the Sun from June 1-4 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he was deep into proofreading the 40-page festival program — and worrying as all presenters of international artists do about what could possibly happen to his best-laid plans this year.

A sudden resurgence of COVID? A visa snafu? “The volcanic eruption in Mexico scares me — could that disrupt international flights? Ah, the joys and white knuckles of presenting live concerts,” Kelly mused. He added one of the recurring nightmares of an English literature major to the list: he’s just sure there’s a typo or misspelling lurking somewhere undetected in a corner of the program book, only to reveal itself once hundreds of copies have been printed.

Casting those cares aside, Kelly said he’s very proud of that book and its “amazing” program notes by Tom Poore. “His musical insights and human interest comments have been an important part of the festival since the beginning.”

Another thing he’s proud of is the inclusion of the James Stroud International Youth Competition in the Festival for the fourth time. The final round will be held live for the first time on Sunday evening of the festival weekend. [Read more…]

Local 4 Music Fund’s She Scores: Round Three

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by Mike Telin

When the Institute for Composer Diversity analyzed the 2019-20 seasons of 120 American orchestras, it found that just eight percent of all pieces performed were composed by women. For Amber Rogers, artistic director of the Local 4 Music Fund, that statistic was a call for action. “The idea of concerts featuring female composers isn’t new, but I didn’t see anything quite like this in Cleveland,” Rogers told ClevelandClassical.com’s Stephanie Manning in June of 2021.

On June 2 and 3 at 7:00 pm and June 4 at 4:00 pm at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Hall, She Scores 2023 will feature nineteen compositions by fourteen composers. Emily Laurance will present a pre-concert lecture 45 minutes prior to each free performance. Visit our Concert Listings page for composer names, composition titles, and performers.

“We are adding one piece to the June 3rd concert to honor the late composer Dolores White,” Rogers said during a recent telephone conversation. “Eric Charnofsky met with Dolores’s daughter Dianna and she gave him a couple of scores to pick from. We talked about them and looked at our instrumentation, and Eric and Drew Hosler are doing a piece for saxophone and piano.”

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society goes all-Stravinsky for season closer

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Clarinetist Daniel McKelway and trumpeter Amanda Bekeny are familiar collaborators in a sense. Both are on the board of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society and both are frequent performers on the series — although it has never actually brought them face-to-face, instrument-to-instrument, bell-to-bell, onstage together at the same time for the same piece. Something they decided they ought to change.

To be fair, there isn’t a whole lot of music that could bring them together. But there is a pair of beloved pieces with unusual, colorful instrumentations, both by the same composer. “I don’t know which of us thought of it first, but there was an immediate idea of, ‘Wait a minute — Stravinsky,’” McKelway said during a recent interview.

They were thinking in particular of the Octet, which combines woodwinds and brass, and L’Histoire du Soldat (“Soldier’s Tale”), which brings together woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion — plus narrator, telling the story of a soldier who strikes an ill-advised bargain with the devil.

Those two pieces and those two people — L’Histoire, the Octet, McKelway, and Bekeny — form the nucleus of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season-ending concert, which will take place on Monday, May 15 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Attendance is free, and the concert will also be livestreamed. [Read more…]

No Exit presents andPlay

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This article is posted with the permission of No Exit

andPlay is the New York City-based duo of Maya Bennardo (violin) and Hannah Levinson (viola), who first met as students at Oberlin Conservatory. The two musician-educators are committed to expanding the existing violin/viola repertoire by commissioning new works (over 40 to date) and actively collaborating with living artists. On Thursday, May 11 at 7:00 pm the duo will present their latest project Translucent Harmonies at SPACES. Th concert is free

We caught up with andPlay to discuss past and present projects, including Translucent Harmonies, their immersive No Exit Presents concert program of two complementary works composed in just intonation. [Read more…]

Orlando Watson to host United in Song at Severance

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by Mike Telin

“I’m working in Pittsburgh now, but I will forever be a Clevelander,” spoken word poet Orlando Watson said in a telephone conversation. “And coming home to partner with The Cleveland Orchestra and to be able to create in that glorious hall that has been around since 1931, is quite an honor.”

On Saturday, May 13 at 2:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Watson will host United In Song. The afternoon of vocal performances celebrates the rich diversity of the Greater Cleveland community. Performing ensembles include the  Humbly Submitted Gospel Chorus, Andy Andino and Voces Hispanas, Tri-C Vocal Arts Academy, The Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus, and ensembles from Cleveland’s immigrant community. The event is free.

[Read more…]

The Girl of the Golden West: A conversation with tenor Limmie Pulliam

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by Mike Telin

Perhaps no seven-year period in history epitomizes the American dream more than that of the California Gold Rush. Between 1848 and 1855 approximately 300,000 people made their way west in search of the fortunes that were there for the taking in the California goldfields.

Giacomo Puccini immortalized that period of U.S. history in his three-act opera, La Fanciulla del West. Based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco, the opera centers around Minnie, the owner of the Polka saloon, her love interest, the bandit Dick Johnson, and the jealous suitor, sheriff Jack Rance.

On Sunday, May 14 at 3:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Franz Welser-Möst will lead the first of three performances of Puccini’s Girl of the Golden West. Sung in Italian with English subtitles, the cast features soprano Emily Magee as Minnie, bass Roman Burdenko as Jack, and tenor Limmie Pulliam as Dick, along with a horde of gold miners. Performances continue at 7:30 pm on Wednesday May 17 and Saturday May 20. Tickets are available online. The opera is presented as part of The Orchestra’s American Dream Festival.

[Read more…]

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