by Mike Telin
When Jahja Ling returns to the Blossom Music Center podium on Sunday, August 22 at 7:00 pm, the concert will mark the continuation of a relationship between Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra which began in 1984.
“My first concert was at Severance in January of ‘85 and my first Blossom concert was in July of ‘85,” Ling said during a recent telephone conversation. “Aside from last year, which was cancelled due to the pandemic, if you count from ‘85 until now, this is the 36th consecutive season. I think it is a record.”
The all-Brahms program will feature the Violin Concerto with Sayaka Shoji as soloist and Symphony No. 3. Tickets are available online.
The past year and a half has been difficult for many people, including the 69-year-old conductor. “I got COVID,” he said. “It was last July, so over a year ago. I was taken to L.A. because my son works at Cedars-Sinai, and was hospitalized for five days. I received very good treatment and have had no issues after that, thank God.”
Ling’s experience with COVID played an important part in his programming choices for Sunday’s concert. [Read more…]
Having performed on three occasions with CityMusic Cleveland, Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji is no stranger to Northeast Ohio audiences. But when she returns to Cleveland this Sunday, August 22, it will be to make her debut with The Cleveland Orchestra, performing Brahms’ sublime Violin Concerto.
“At the Fine Arts Association, we like to say that we’ve got all the arts under one roof,” conductor Michael Lund Ziegler (pictured) remarked in a recent Zoom interview. It’s a statement that succinctly sums up the Willoughby-based organization, known for its community theatre performances and robust education programs in dance, visual arts, music, and more.
When Chanticleer sings a concert on the Tuesday Musical series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on July 27, it won’t just be business as usual for the twelve male singers of San Francisco’s “orchestra of voices.”
It’s fascinating how many people can recall the event that planted a career bug inside of them. For Rafael Payare, that event occurred while on tour in Italy as a member of the horn section of the National Children’s Orchestra of Venezuela. “This Italian maestro, Giuseppe Sinopoli, came. He spoke no Spanish and communicated only with his energy,” Payare recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “But he changed the sound of the orchestra in the first minute of rehearsal and that really impressed me. I thought, wow, when I am old and my hair is all white, I would love to be a conductor. So that is how the conducting bug got into me.”
“They are iconic,” Capathia Jenkins says of the pop and jazz standards that make up the 
“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.