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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Celil Refik Kaya returns with Sketches

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When Turkish-American guitarist Celil Refik Kaya returns to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society for a recital at Plymouth Church on Saturday, October 23 at 7:30 pm, there will be one important overlap with his program from four years ago: it will include a piece by Celil Refik Kaya.

“Celil, every concert you do for us, you have to play one of your own compositions,” Guitar Society executive director Erik Mann once said to him. Mann laughed as he recalled that line last month in an interview. It was a friendly request, not a stern one, but there was a seriousness behind it born out of respect for Kaya’s music.

Speaking from New Jersey, where he teaches at New Jersey City University, Kaya described the gestation of the work he’ll bring to Cleveland this weekend. “I was planning to compose this piece for a long time — since I was a teenager, actually. My father had a bunch of these surreal, fantastic sketches, and I wanted to write pieces based on them, but I never had a chance to do it.”

Finally, in the pandemic, he found time to return to his old drafts, and Sketches became a reality.

[Read more…]

Piano Cleveland to debut video contest PianoFlicks

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by Mike Telin

If you ask a musician what new skill they learned during the past eighteen months, more often than not, the answer is video editing. And, in a relatively short amount of time, many became quite good at it.   

“Everyone we knew learned how to video-edit,” Marissa Glynias Moore, executive director at Piano Cleveland, said via Zoom. “So we thought, what would be a cool way for us to tap into that creativity?”

On Wednesday, October 27 at 7:00 pm, Piano Cleveland will debut PianoFlicks, a new video contest showcasing pianists as they creatively re-imagine how classical music is presented and enjoyed by audiences. Throughout the broadcast — which will air on the Piano Cleveland website — viewers will have the opportunity to cast their vote for the Audience Prize. They can also cast their votes over the course of the next week — details below. All participants will receive prize money for their participation in the contest.  

“Everything we do is about making classical music more accessible, not only for the audience, but for young pianists as well — making yourself and what you do accessible is an important part of being an artist in today’s world,” Moore said.

[Read more…]

SalonEra: “The Phoenix of Mexico” premieres Monday, Oct. 18

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by Mike Telin

In Greek mythology the nine Muses were the source of knowledge and inspiration for poets, musicians, and philosophers. “They inspired everybody,” bassoonist Catalina Guevara Víquez Klein, said during a telephone interview. “That’s the reason Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is called the 10th Muse, because she too inspired everybody.”

In the next episode of Les Délices’ SalonEra, Catalina Klein will be joined by violinist Karin Cuellar Rendon, and mezzo-soprano Raquel Winnica Young, who delve into their personal connections to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and explore her legacy as a poet, composer, and protofeminist. “The Phoenix of Mexico,” premieres on Monday, October 18 at 7:30 pm, and will be available on-demand afterwards. Click here to register.

Born Doña Inés de Asuaje y Ramírez de Santillana in 1648 in San Miguel Nepantla, Mexico, she was an enthusiastic reader as a child. She composed her first poem at eight years old and by age thirteen had studied Greek logic, and taught Latin to young children. She also spoke and wrote in the Aztec language of Nahuatl. As a young woman who was not interested in marriage, only in furthering her studies, she entered the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of St. Joseph, but soon moved to the more liberal Convent of the Order of St. Jérôme, where she would remain until her death. [Read more…]

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein to give Cleveland premiere 
of Joan Tower’s A New Day

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by Mike Telin

There are a few reasons why this week’s program from Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra is particularly special. One, it marks the first time that the ensemble will return in full force to Severance Music Center since March 2020.

Two, the concerts will mark the final performances of Joela Jones as the Orchestra’s principal keyboard, finishing up a 54-season tenure. Click here to read an interview.

And three, the program will feature Alisa Weilerstein in the Cleveland premiere of Joan Tower’s A New Day for cello and orchestra.

The concerts, titled “New Beginnings,” take place on Thursday, October 14 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, October 17 at 3:00 pm, and will also include Richard Strauss’ Macbeth and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. Click here for ticket information.

[Read more…]

Joela Jones reflects on 54 years with The Cleveland Orchestra

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by Mike Telin 

With a program titled “New Beginnings,” Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will return in full force to Severance Music Center on Thursday, October 14 at 7:30 pm, for the first time since March 2020. The evening will feature Richard Strauss’ Macbeth, Joan Tower’s A New Day (for cello and orchestra) with Alisa Weilerstein, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. The program will be repeated on Sunday, October 17 at 3:00 pm. Click here for ticket information.

The concerts will also be bittersweet as they mark the final performances of Joela Jones as the Orchestra’s principal keyboard. Jones, whose tenure has spanned 54 seasons, will be presented with the Orchestra’s 25th Distinguished Service Award on Thursday evening. Click here to watch a special video about Jones and listen to a playlist of her most memorable performances.

Joela Jones made her first appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra as a concerto soloist for a Summer Pops concert in 1966. The following year she gave the world premiere of a new concerto under the direction of George Szell, who asked her to join the ensemble soon after. Her name first appeared on the printed roster with the opening season of Blossom Music Center in 1968, and in 1972 she was officially designated as the Orchestra’s principal keyboard player. She has held the Rudolf Serkin Endowed Chair since its creation in 1977.

I spoke to Jones via Zoom and began by asking her about being tapped as a prodigy by Ernst von Dohnányi.

[Read more…]

VOCES8 returns to Northeast Ohio for Akron performance on October 19

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by Daniel Hathaway

Last heard in a brilliant concert at Old Brooklyn’s Mary Queen of Peace Church in 2016, the British a cappella double quartet VOCES8 will return to our area on Tuesday, October 19 for a concert in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall co-sponsored by Tuesday Musical and the University of Akron.

Their appearance is part of an eleven-performance tour, the first the ensemble has been able to organize since the novel coronavirus called a halt to nearly everyone’s travel plans a year and a half ago.

“We were on tour in the U.S. just before the lockdown,” founder, artistic director, and countertenor Barnaby Smith told me in a recent Zoom conversation from his studio in London. “I was on one of the last planes bound for Europe after taking a small holiday in Vancouver — I can think of worse places to be marooned!”

After weathering the forced sabbatical of the pandemic, during which VOCES8 launched a series of intriguing online events, things are gradually returning to something approaching normal for the ensemble. “We’re about twenty live concerts into the season now, with a smattering of performances this summer in the U.K. Of course, we’re taking all the extra precautions and testing like crazy, but it’s a joy to be back,” Smith said. [Read more…]

Les Délices to premiere Jonathan Woody’s Much Love Betray’d on Orpheus program

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by Mike Telin

No mythological character has inspired musicians more than Orpheus. Legend has it that his music was so powerful that trees and mountains bowed in his presence — his song so beautiful that he convinced the ruler of the underworld to allow him to bring his love Eurydice back from the underworld.  

The legend will be brought to life on Thursday, October 7, when Les Délices debuts “Song of Orpheus” on Marquee TV. The program features rarely-heard cantatas by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Philippe Courbois performed by Hannah De Priest, soprano, Jonathan Woody, baritone, Shelby Yamin, violin, Debra Nagy, oboe, Rebecca Reed, gamba and cello, and Mark Edwards, harpsichord. The program will also include the premiere of Woody’s cantata Much Love Betray’d. The online-only event will remain available on demand through November 6. Click here for tickets.

Woody’s performance resumé includes two national tours with Apollo’s Fire, and appearances as soloist with period groups including the Boston Early Music Festival, Tafelmusik, Trinity Wall Street, New York Polyphony, Bach Collegium San Diego, and New York Baroque Incorporated. But he is also a leader in the historical performance performer/composer movement.

During a recent telephone conversation, Woody said that his dedication to keeping the early music canon alive can be traced back to when he was a student of musicologist and historical performance pioneer Bruce Haynes. “I was lucky enough to have him as a professor at McGill University, and he definitely engendered the mentality that the canon of early music could remain alive, and that we had the power to continue to add to it and make it something that wasn’t just stuck in the past.”

[Read more…]

Dana Ensemble launches second season with 20th-century theatrical works

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Sunday, October 3 at Youngstown’s DeYor Performing Arts Center, the Dana School of Music’s Dana Ensemble will return for its second season to perform two brilliant 20th-century pieces that straddle the worlds of chamber and theater music. The 3:00 program will feature Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale (L’Histoire du Soldat) and William Walton’s Façade: An Entertainment.

In a press release, faculty cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman writes, “This is a pair of incredibly fun pieces, both of them early experiments in classical music with spoken-word theatrical elements. The Walton is a rarity, and the Stravinsky has come to be considered one of the great works of the early 20th century. It’s a program not to be missed.”

The Walton piece is the result of a 1921 collaboration between the 19-year-old composer and the eccentric British poet Edith Sitwell, who had been writing nonsense verse since 1918. [Read more…]

Trinity Cathedral resumes Wednesday Brownbag Concerts & Choral Evensongs

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by Daniel Hathaway

Trinity Cathedral will resume its Wednesday programming on October 6, including the Noontime Brownbag Concerts and 6:00 pm Choral Evensong services, with some modifications that reflect the current state of the pandemic.

“It’s a different chapter of unusualness,” music director Todd Wilson said in a telephone conversation. Rather than offering the popular lunchtime concerts every week, Trinity will host the performances twice a month.

“We settled into the every-other-week Brownbag Concert format last year, and I’m guessing that live audiences are going to be coming back rather slowly. It seemed to make sense to continue that pattern for the foreseeable future. My hope is that a year from now we’ll be in a much more normal and easy-to-predict place,” Wilson said.

Patrons who attend the Wednesday noon programs in person will find some new protocols in place. “We’ll be doing low-key check-ins with proof of vaccination, and no lunches will be permitted. Sad stuff, but we’re not even allowed to serve coffee after church right now.” The alternative is to attend online, and all of Trinity’s programs will be live streamed. [Read more…]

MusiCLE Yours to present social justice-themed “Porchestra Concert” at Cozad-Bates House

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Last summer, according to Cleveland Orchestra violinist Isabel Trautwein, musicians from the Orchestra played 90-100 outdoor events. “These were driveway concerts and porch concerts with friends and students,” Trautwein said by telephone from her farm in Geneva (where she recently put on a program called Barnegie Hall.) “We thought, why don’t we give that a name, so that it has more of an impact, and so we all know we’re part of something larger.”

That something larger has become MusiCLE Yours, an initiative by a group of Orchestra members to share solo and chamber music — particularly but not exclusively by under-represented composers — with a range of communities throughout the area.

They started with recordings posted on YouTube, including a few that were filmed at the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum at the Cleveland History Center, with vintage cars visible in the background.

The next undertaking from MusiCLE Yours takes place at another venue off the beaten path, this time live, outdoors, and themed around social justice. “I can’t help with all the woes in our world, but I think we musicians — we must tackle the social justice issues surrounding our art form, especially classical music,” Trautwein said.

[Read more…]

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