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Bop Stop to present harpist Stephan Haluska

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by Jarrett Hoffman

As musicians’ tastes change over time, it can be frustrating for them to realize that the instrument they’ve spent years mastering now confines their stylistic breadth. Or does it? In some cases, all that’s needed is a new mindset.

Years ago, composer, improviser, and harpist Stephan Haluska decided he’d had enough of the stereotypes about his instrument in Western culture — the angels, the magic, the dream sequences. He’s since re-imagined what the instrument can do, using extended techniques, electronic processing, and preparing the strings like John Cage would a piano.

All that and more can be heard during an hour-long improvisation that Haluska will present at the Bop Stop on Thursday, January 28 at 7:00 pm. The live stream is accessible for free, but donations are accepted here.

[Read more…]

Bennewitz Quartet replaces its CCMS concert with splendid video

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by Daniel Hathaway

When the pandemic kicked the Bennewitz Quartet’s performance off the Cleveland Chamber Music Society calendar in November, the presenter and the ensemble arrived at a clever alternative to simply cancelling or postponing the event.

The musicians agreed to record a full concert in Prague exclusively for CCMS. That video is available for free beginning today on the “Safe With Sound” page of the Society’s website. In addition to luminous performances of works by Haydn, Schulhoff, and Beethoven, the recording includes insightful questions from Safe With Sound artistic director Eric Charnofsky and astute responses by second violinist Štěpán Ježek.

Ježek greets viewers at the beginning from the chamber music hall of the Prague Spring Festival, before joining his colleagues Jakub Fišer (first violin), Jiří Pinkas (viola), and Štěpán Doležal (cello) in Haydn’s Quartet in G, Op. 17/5. That delightful work, largely dominated by the loquacious first violin, immediately introduces the special skills of the players: graceful accents, chains of subtleties, and perfect ensemble even in tricky rhythmic situations. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland schedules hybrid chamber music concerts

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by Daniel Hathaway

Pivoting from its customary chamber orchestra concerts, last September CityMusic Cleveland announced a series of chamber music programs curated by members of the ensemble celebrating the centenary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which decreed that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Initially offered as live, in-person events for a reduced audience of 100 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, the series went online after the first two programs due to the progress of the pandemic. Subsequent concerts have been streamed from the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

Beginning this week, CityMusic will present pairs of performances — one in-person concert at St. Stan’s, followed by a second performance of the same program streamed from the Maltz.

Executive director Eugenia Strauss noted in a press release that the chamber music format will be continued in 2021-2022, when seven groups will be invited to build programs around the themes of peace, equality, and justice, drawing largely on works by female composers and including commissioned pieces. “We hope to return to present orchestral programs in the 22-23 season,” Strauss wrote. [Read more…]

Rob Kovacs brings video game music
to Tuning In and Silver Hall Series

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by Jarrett Hoffman

At one point during our recent conversation on Zoom, pianist/composer and Cleveland native Rob Kovacs gestured behind him to a bookshelf holding what he estimated to be 350-400 old video game cartridges. He laughed. “I’ve been collecting for about fifteen years, and I just keep going.”

His point was that if you add up all of those games, there’s a bounty of music that very few people have heard. “A lot of it’s great,” he said. “And when you hear it on a real, acoustic instrument, played in a fairly virtuosic way, I think it helps to make more people interested, and certainly helps them view it in a different light.”

That’s exactly what Kovacs aims to achieve when he brings this music into a classical context in two free, live-streamed concerts early this year: first on the Local 4 Music Fund’s Tuning In series on Thursday, January 21 at 7:00 pm, then on the Maltz Performing Arts Center’s Silver Hall Series on Sunday, March 7 at 3:00 pm.

[Read more…]

Local 4 Music Fund presents Duo Anime live on January 14

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by Daniel Hathaway

Although Duo Anime, the percussion duo of Mell Csicsila and Andrew Pongracz, have performed together for years, the demise of in-person concerts due to the pandemic has kept them apart for nearly twelve months. That will change on Thursday, January 14, when Local 4 Music Fund streams a live performance by these masters of mallets. I caught up with them for a Zoom conversation last Monday to find out more.

Duo Anime was birthed at Cleveland State University in 1992-1993 when Csicsila was in his second-to-last semester as an undergrad and Pongracz was just starting graduate school.

“It was really kind of forced on us,” Csicsila said. “There was a percussion ensemble program that was a little light on content, and our teacher Don Miller said, ‘I need ten more minutes. Learn these pieces.’ As a matter of fact, we’re playing those arrangements on this program.”

Except for an “impromptu video” of three Christmas songs the Duo posted in December (photo below), Csicsila said the last time he and Pongracz were in the same room was a year ago January or February. [Read more…]

Making Beethoven’s Op. 80 virtual: how Oberlin’s Tiffany Chang pulled it off

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by Daniel Hathaway

Originally, Oberlin Arts and Sciences Orchestra conductor Tiffany Chang simply planned to join in the celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday year with an October performance of his Choral Fantasy, featuring piano professor Peter Takács on the solo part the composer himself played at its debut in a marathon concert on December 22, 1808. But after the novel coronavirus began its inexorable progress across the country in March, shuttering live concerts for the foreseeable future, a change in plans was in order.

Why not create a virtual performance instead, using the school’s sophisticated recording technology? How complicated could that be? In a Zoom conversation from Chang’s home in Taiwan, where she has been hunkering down since the campus went on break at Thanksgiving, she confessed, “I didn’t know what I didn’t know, which is how you get into these huge projects.” [Read more…]

“Noel, Noel” — Les Délices premieres new Christmas program Thursday

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by Mike Telin

By now it’s no secret that the phrase “home for the holidays” has taken on a whole new meaning this year. And while we won’t be able to attend in-person concerts performed by large orchestras and choruses, Les Délices has created a new seasonal program that can be enjoyed from the comfort of your home — with your favorite beverage.

On Thursday, December 10 at 7:30 pm, the Cleveland-based ensemble will present the premiere of “Noel, Noel.” The pre-recorded, streamed program features French Noels, German hymns including Michael Praetorius’ Es ist ein Ros entsprungen and In dulci jubilo, and the haunting Old English Coventry Carol and 17th-century Drive the Cold Winter Away. The playlist also includes Gustav Holst’s In the bleak midwinter and Franz Gruber’s Silent Night.

Presented in the style of Lessons and Carols, the music is interleaved with poems by Christina Rossetti, e.e. cummings, and Thomas Campion, as well as recent work by Northeast Ohio poets Dave Lucas, Diane Kendig, and Julie Warther recited by longtime local radio and TV host Dee Perry.

A pre-concert talk begins at 7:00 pm, the premiere begins at 7:30, and a Q&A with the artists follows at 8:30. Click here for ticket information. If you’re not available on Thursday, no worries, your ticket gives you streaming access through December 23. [Read more…]

Rhiannon Giddens: Oberlin Stage Left 

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by Staff

Rhiannon Giddens, a 2000 Oberlin Conservatory alumna who has forged a remarkable — and remarkably wide-ranging — career in music, returns to her Oberlin roots for an appearance on Oberlin Stage Left on Thursday, December 10 at 7:30 pm.

She will perform with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, with whom she created her most recent recording. Their set will span traditional Irish and Scottish tunes, as well as blues, bluegrass, gospel, and more. It will be preceded by a conversation between Giddens and music theory professor Jan Miyake that touches on the performer’s career and her longstanding commitment to social justice issues.

[Read more…]

Local 4 “Tuning In,” a conversation with composer & pianist Eric Charnofsky

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by Nicolette Cheauré

A concert program comprised entirely of piano quintets is fairly uncommon, but on Thursday, December 17th at 7:00 pm at the Steinway Gallery you can hear three such pieces on the same program, as part of the Local 4 Music Fund’s “Tuning In” virtual concert series. You can hear piano quintets by Shostakovich and Amy Beach, performed by violinists Jennifer Walvoord and Diana Pepelea-Vardi, violist Esther Nahm, cellist Derek Snyder, and pianist Eric Charnofsky. The concert will also feature Charnofsky’s own composition, 5 by 5.

The piece was commissioned for and premiered by the Los Angeles-based group Pacific Serenades, and partly modeled off of Meditations on a Suicide, a film score Charnofsky composed in 1989. The work hasn’t been performed since 2011, “So this is bringing it back nine years later,” Charnofsky said during a recent Zoom interview. Specializing in premiering new works, Pacific Serenades highlighted a composer from the area at every concert, and their only requirement was to “compose something that is of lasting beauty.” In 5 by 5, commission number 101, Charnofsky utilized the compositional freedom he was granted. The title refers to the instrumentation and number of movements. Each — Intrada, Chaconne, Tarantella, Meditation and Postscript — features a different instrument and a specifically chosen interval, bouncing between celebration, resonance, quirkiness, and thoughtfulness. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra:
Bach, Mendelssohn, Masks, and Mysteries — a conversation with Nicholas McGegan

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by Mike Telin

If it’s late November, it must be time for Nicholas McGegan to return to Severance Hall. “This Cleveland thing is becoming a Thanksgiving tradition,” the affable conductor said during a recent telephone conversation. “This will be my third visit around this time in three years.”

Last week, McGegan led The Cleveland Orchestra in rehearsals and recording sessions of music from the late 17th to early 19th centuries. The program, titled “Inventions: Bach to Mendelssohn,” will be released on Thursday, December 10 at 7:00 pm as part of the Orchestra’s “In Focus” series and will be available exclusively on the Adella app. Click here for information. The stream will be accessible on demand until March 10, 2021.

Interestingly, McGegan’s visit to Cleveland was not on his schedule until a few weeks ago, when COVID restrictions necessitated a change in the Orchestra’s plans. The pandemic had also forced a change in McGegan’s calendar. “In October I was supposed to be on a month-long tour in the Netherlands and Belgium conducting the Mozart Requiem, and then I was to have had a month in Australia performing Messiah, and all of that disappeared.”

But as fortune would have it, opportunities began to knock at the door. “I’ve been to the Houston Symphony twice, now I’m coming to Cleveland, then going back to Houston and on to Dallas. None of this was on the books, so I am incredibly happy and grateful that the work I lost has been replaced.” [Read more…]

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