by Daniel Hathaway
UPDATE: Due to weather conditions, this concert will move indoors at 7:00 pm at the Solon Center for the Arts. 6315 SOM Center Road, Solon.
Almost a year to the day, the Callisto Quartet, formed in 2016 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, will return to the scene of their 2020 concert in Solon Community Park for a second al fresco performance. On Friday, July 16 at 7:00 pm, violinists Paul Aguilar and Rachel Stenzel, violist Eva Kennedy, and cellist Hannah Moses will play Haydn and Beethoven in a free, open air concert.
The event, presented again this year by Chagrin Arts in cooperation with the City of Solon, will relax most of the COVID protocols that were in place last year, but audience members should still bring their own lawn chairs or blankets and refreshments.
The Callisto have just completed a two-year appointment as graduate quartet in residence at the Shepherd School of Music at Houston’s Rice University, and will take up a similar position at Yale in September. I reached them via Zoom to catch up on their activities and plans. [Read more…]
“The first thing I do is find music that I love, that I’m emotionally connected to, and that I believe the listener will enjoy,” flutist Demarre McGill said by telephone last week, explaining how he put together his upcoming program for the Kent Blossom Music Festival.
Almost a decade after violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang first performed together, their collaborative spirit is still going strong. The two acclaimed artists are eager to perform as a duo again this year, starting with their upcoming appearance as Kulas Visiting Artists on the Kent Blossom Music Festival’s Faculty Concert Series.
Provided that everything clicks in today’s complicated puzzle of international travel, British conductor Dame Jane Glover will make her Blossom debut with The Cleveland Orchestra in an all-Mozart program on Sunday evening, July 11. And if no visa or transportation difficulties intervene for him as well, she’ll be joined by British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor in the composer’s d-minor concerto. The evening will begin with the K. 136 Divertimento for strings, and conclude with Symphony No. 40 [see update below].
Now that in-person concerts are becoming the rule rather than the exception, Apollo’s Fire is scheduling three local performances of “Bach, Vivaldi, and Friends!” from July 10-14, and taking shows on the road to four summer festivals: Tanglewood, Chautauqua, Caramoor, and Ravinia.
When programming concerts like her July 9th performance for ENCORE, guitarist Jiji Kim aims to show the evolution of music while also highlighting the throughlines that connect music across the ages. She tends to start her performances with Baroque material, then moves through the 1800s to the modern era and her own compositions, demonstrating “how music has changed, transitioned throughout the centuries — but also has the same feeling of connection, or emotional relevance.” 
As has been the case throughout this season, on July 4, the ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival will once again try something new. In a celebration of American music, classical and bluegrass will share the stage at the Dodero Center for Performing Arts in Gates Mills. The 4:30 pm concert will begin with Copland’s Appalachian Spring performed by ENCORE artists, before shifting to Michael Cleveland and his band Flamekeeper, who will deliver what is certain to be a high energy performance.
“What a year!” Kent Blossom Music Festival director Ricardo Sepúlveda said in a recent telephone conversation. “But we’ve been fortunate. The challenges of the pandemic provided us with opportunities to learn, to explore, to be creative and innovative, and how to adapt to rapid change.”
After a year’s absence, The Cleveland Orchestra will return to the stage of Blossom Music on Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4 at 8:00 pm. Under the direction of Brett Mitchell, the concerts will also mark the first time the full orchestra has performed in front of an in-person audience since March of 2020.
“A lot of people have preconceived ideas about what free improv is, and that it means everything is totally random,” violinist Leah Asher said in a recent interview, speaking from her home in New York City. “But there is a total spectrum of the amount of determinacy in music, and I like to think about where I am on that spectrum.” Also a violist, composer, and visual artist, Asher recently recorded a series of improvisations for the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s 2021 Re:Sound Festival.