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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: a conversation with An Tran

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by Mike Telin

“I’m so honored to be making my Cleveland debut — I love the city,” Guitarist An Tran said during a Zoom conversation. “I’ve been there twice. The first time was to go to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The second time was for the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival in the summer — not to play, just for fun. And now, I finally get to play there.”

On Saturday, March 7 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society continues its International Series with program by Chicago-based, Vietnamese guitarist An Tran. Tickets are available online.

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Apollo’s Fire: a celebration of music from the Palace of Versailles

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by Mike Telin

This week, Apollo’s Fire takes audiences on an excursion to 17th and 18th century France with a program celebrating the music created for the Palace of Versailles under the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Led by Associate Artistic Director Alan Choo, the program features works by Charpentier, Leclair, Lully, Rameau, and Rebel.

Performances begin on Thursday, March 5 at 7:30 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron. The program will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights and Sunday at 4:00 pm at Rocky River Presbyterian Church. Tickets are available online.

We caught up with oboist Gaia Saetermoe-Howard by Zoom, who will be giving a pre-concert lecture one hour before each performance. I began by asking her what the earliest piece on the program will be.

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Tuesday Musical: a conversation with saxophonists Timothy McAllister and Branford Marsalis – Part 2

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By Mike Telin

On Tuesday, March 3 at 7:30 pm at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical continues its season with the Marsalis-McAllister-Ames Trio — Branford Marsalis and Timothy McAllister, saxophones, and Liz Ames, piano. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with Branford Marsalis by phone in Durham, North Carolina. I began by asking him to share his recollection of how the trio met.

Branford Marsalis: I met Liz through her former husband who is a saxophonist. I went to a saxophone conference after I’d met her, and was just amazed at the volume of music that she could learn on the fly. If you’ve ever been to something like the North American Saxophone Alliance, you know that the pianists have to play something like twenty-five pieces in three days. And Liz had this massive volume of music that she walked around with, going from rehearsal room to rehearsal room, rehearsing with saxophonists from all over the country. I was just amazed by that. It left an impression on my mind. Wow, she’s amazing.

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Tuesday Musical: a conversation with saxophonists Timothy McAllister and Branford Marsalis – Part 1

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By Mike Telin

“We’re all excited about what this combination brings forward,” saxophonist Timothy McAllister said during a Zoom conversation. “I think there’s a mutual love and the three of us are providing a safe space for each of us to be who we are. It’s just a celebration of music and friendship.”

On Tuesday, March 3 at 7:30 pm at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical continues its season with the Marsalis-McAllister-Ames Trio. Branford Marsalis and Timothy McAllister, saxophones, and Liz Ames, piano. Tickets are available online.

Mike Telin: How did you and Liz and Branford come together as a trio?

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Leonkoro Quartet to bring lion-hearted strength to its CCMS debut on March

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By Mike Telin

Founded in Berlin in 2019, the Leonkoro Quartet adopted its brave-sounding name from the Esperanto words for “lion” and “heart” and from Astrid Lindgren’s children’s book, The Brothers Lionheart. Two brothers, Jonathan and Lukas Schwarz, man the first violin and cello positions. Second violinist Emiri Kakiuchi and violist Mayu Konoe fill out the roster of a relatively new ensemble that impressed the chamber music demimonde in April of 2022 by winning a total of ten prizes at London’s Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition.

On Tuesday evening, March 3 at 7:30, the Leonkoro Quartet will make its Cleveland debut on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Disciples Church, performing standard repertoire by Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Felix Mendelssohn.

I spoke with violist Mayu Konce in Columbus before the quartet’s recent engagement there, and posed questions about their repertory choices and some of the issues they’ve addressed as a new ensemble on the international concert circuit.

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Pittsburgh’s Chatham Baroque to visit Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

Chatham Baroque, Pittsburgh’s long-standing period instrument ensemble, will be featured on the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series on Monday, March 2 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Violinist Andrew Fouts, violist da gamba Patricia Halverson, and theorboist and Baroque guitarist Scott Pauley will offer a program that Fouts said might be titled “Bach and Before.”

I recently caught up with Andrew Fouts for a telephone conversation about the group and their program.

Mike Telin: Is this going to be the group’s Cleveland debut?

Andrew Fouts: I’m in my eighteenth year with Chatham Baroque, and this will be the first time we’ve played in the Cleveland area.

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Arts Renaissance Tremont celebrates “The Art of Influence”

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By Mike Telin

On Sunday, March 1 at 3:00 pm, Arts Renaissance Tremont continues its season with The ART of Influence. The program features four dynamic pairs of musicians — once teachers and students, now artistic peers — who will take the stage for an engaging afternoon of music and stories. The free concert will be held at Pilgrim Congregational UCC in Tremont.

“Rich King joined the Cleveland Orchestra horn section in 1988 and he’s taught at CIM all these years,” ART artistic director Feza Zweifel said during an interview. “One of his students, Megan Guegold, is now a member of the horn section.”

King and Guegold will join pianist Joanna Huang in Johannes Brahms’ So Lass uns Wandern, Es Rauschet Das Wasser, and Walpurgisnacht, as well as playing Gunther Schuller’s Duet #1 for Unaccompanied Horns and Chanson (Homage a Darius Milhaud).

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Music@Main presents pianist Theron Brown

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by Max Newman

Pianist Theron Brown wants you to be able to hear his own personality in his music. “I try not to think about it too much. My music is part of me, and I try to be authentic and true to myself within it. I want people to listen and be like, ‘Oh, that’s Theron.’ It’s real, it’s honest.”

This heart-on-sleeve philosophy will come to the fore on Saturday, February 28 at 1:00 pm as Brown’s jazz trio performs at the downtown Cleveland Public Library. The show, organized in celebration of Black History Month, is part of the CPL’s “Music at Main” series, a genre-bending concert series held in the Library’s third flood lobby.

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Soprano Estelí Gomez and composer Gilda Lyons collaborate on Les Délices’ “La Diosa”

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by Stephanie Manning

The Venn diagram of performers who love early music and those who love new music is closer to a circle than one might think. Take soprano Estelí Gomez, who is as likely to appear on a Baroque program as she is on a contemporary one.

“One of the reasons people love doing both is that the composer has a lot of excitement for and trust in the performer,” Gomez said in a recent interview.

From the composer’s perspective, that idea of artistic freedom is “wonderfully liberating,” Gilda Lyons said in that same Zoom call. While research is important, “I’m never going to know as much as the performers do about their specific instrument. So I’m going to leave space for them to be the artists that they are.”

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Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) Semi-Finalist Jonathan Mamora in residency at The University of Akron

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by Mike Telin

When the Cleveland International Piano Competition set out to plan its 50th anniversary in 2024, CIPC president Yaron Kohlberg knew that some changes needed to be made.

“A lot has changed in the classical music world during the past 50 years,” Kohlberg said in an interview prior to that year’s competition. He added that the changes that were made were designed to create more and better ways for CIPC to serve the contestants, the audience, and the community at large.

One of the many alterations that Kohlberg and his team implemented was in the Competition’s prize structure, which featured a new artist development program that was open to all contestants. The program offers mentorship opportunities with leading pianists, faculty, and innovators in the classical music world, and short courses in personal branding and social media, fundraising, artist finances, and similar topics, offered in partnership with Young Concert Artists. It also included residencies at Northeast Ohio universities.

From February 18 through 28, pianist Jonathan Mamora will serve as artist-in-residence at The University of Akron School of Performing Arts. During his residency, he will present workshops, deliver lectures, and give a free public recital. These events are made possible through a partnership with Piano Cleveland and The Kulas Foundation.

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