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Gremillet announces Cleveland Orchestra changes

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Cleveland Orchestra CEO André Gremillet announced on Wednesday afternoon that in-person performances at Severance Hall have been cancelled through June due to the continuing health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Watch a video of his announcement here.

A new series of recorded concerts will be available on the Orchestra’s Adella platform beginning in March for subscribers, ticket holders, and donors who have supported the ensemble above $300 for the year.

Looking forward to summer, Gremillet noted that the Orchestra is planning a ten-concert season at Blossom Music Center in July and August, which will operate at reduced capacity.

Oberlin Conservatory Honors Black History Month 

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by Mike Telin

Beginning this week, Oberlin Conservatory will honor Black History Month with a series of events titled To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. It begins on Thursday, February 4 at 7:30 pm with a series overview hosted by Chris Jenkins, the Conservatory’s associate dean for academic support and liaison to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. The programs, which continue throughout the month, will be broadcast live on Oberlin Stage Left. A calendar of events can be found at the bottom of this article. 

Saturday, February 6 at 1:30 introduces “Decentering the Canon in the Conservatory.” Moderated by Chris Jenkins, the symposium is the result of conversations held by Conservatory faculty over the summer of 2020 — talks dedicated to responding to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and other tragedies linked to systemic racism. The event is presented as part of the Richard Murphy Musicology Colloquium.

What is the canon and what does decentering the canon mean? “The panelists have written extensively on this topic,” Jenkins said during a recent interview. “Although they come at it from different points of view, they agree that the canon has centered esthetically and conceptually on the idea of whiteness and on works by white composers. Beethoven and Brahms have certainly been elevated by the quality of their work, but just as much because of the obsession with Germanic culture that characterized American classical music in the 20th century. The panelists are talking about music that is other, which has its roots in cultures of people of color, and has been systematically excluded for reasons other than quality.”

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: In Focus: Episode 5 — Looks can be deceiving 

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by Mike Telin

While the music on the next installment of The Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus series may appear uncomplicated in the score, assistant conductor Vinay Parameswaran cautions listeners that looks can be deceiving.

Debuting on Thursday, January 28 at 7:00 pm, “Musical Patterns” juxtaposes the magic of modern minimalism with Baroque splendor. The program, available only on the Adella app — click here for information — will include music by Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, John Adams, and J.S. Bach, and will feature pianist Marc-André Hamelin and associate concertmaster Jung-Min Amy Lee. The stream will be accessible on demand until April 28, 2021.

Philip Glass said that Glassworks — released in 1982, originally as a six-movement chamber music work to be enjoyed on a Walkman — “was intended to introduce my music to a more general audience than had been familiar with it up to then.” It is the first movement, “Opening” (reworked by Christian Badzura for piano and strings), that will be performed during the In Focus concert.

“It’s only six or seven minutes long, and if you look at the piano part it is quite delicate,” Parameswaran said during a telephone conversation. “Only at the climax does it become loud and use the full range of the piano.” [Read more…]

No Exit presents “New Year, New Works — a Virtual Concert + Commentary Experience”

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by Mike Telin

“Like for a lot of ensembles, this season turned out differently than what we had imagined it would be,” No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer said during a recent telephone conversation. “All of the music we had planned, we couldn’t do. They were all ensemble pieces, and we are not getting together as an ensemble this season, so we had to commission solo pieces on the quick — we needed to find composers who would not only write something good but also deliver it on time.”

On Friday, January 29 at 7:00 pm, No Exit will present “New Year, New Works — a Virtual Concert + Commentary Experience.” The program will feature world premieres by Tyler Adamthwaite, Inga Chinilina, and Jeremy Rapaport-Stein as well as music by Iannis Xenakis and Giancinto Scelsi. The free performance and program book are available on the ensemble’s website and Facebook page.

“Tyler, Inga, and Jeremy are very gifted and wrote some interesting pieces,” Beyer said. “I’m sure that listeners are going to really enjoy what they experience.” [Read more…]

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…]

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