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ACRONYM to release its
10th CD on July 24

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Baroque string band ACRONYM cleverly changes the meaning behind its abbreviated name for each of its recording projects. For their tenth and latest CD, due to be released on July 24, they’ve pegged themselves as “Archive Crawlers; Researchers Of Niche Yellowed Manuscripts.”

An apt description, for Cantate domino cantica obsoleta: Forgotten Works from the Düben Collection mines a rich trove of some 2,300 manuscripts in the library of Uppsala University. The holdings were assembled by a small dynasty of composers who served as Kapellmeisters to the Royal Swedish Court in Stockholm during the 17th and 18th centuries.

“It’s a fascinating archive,” Kivie Cahn-Lipman said by telephone from Youngstown, where he teaches cello at Youngstown State University. “It’s mainly a collection by German composers with a smattering of other folks. There’s Latin and German choral music, a small number of pieces in French and Swedish, and one vocal work in a nonsense language.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Musicians’ “Summer Salute to Healthcare Workers”

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by Mike Telin

Never has it been more important to thank a healthcare worker than the present. And for the past four-plus months, people have expressed their gratitude to workers on the frontline of the Coronavirus Pandemic in a multitude of ways, from banging on pots to flyovers by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels.

For the past six weeks, more than 40 members of The Cleveland Orchestra have shown their appreciation with a “Summer Salute to Healthcare Workers.” The idea for the concerts came from Lynne Ramsey, the Orchestra’s first assistant principal viola.

“During the early part of the shutdown, Lynne saw military planes doing flybys over hospitals as a salute to healthcare workers,” violinist Isabel Trautwein said during a telephone conversation. “So she thought, what if musicians would do ‘playbys’?” [Read more…]

Miró Quartet to perform Beethoven Cycle for Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival

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by Mike Telin

In case anyone has forgotten, 2020 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. And while COVID-19 has interrupted most of the performances that were planned to honor the composer, at least one celebration will go on. But not without some redesigns.

Beginning on Thursday, July 16 and continuing through August 8, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival will present Beethoven’s complete string quartet cycle as performed by the Miró Quartet. The concerts will be streamed live in real time from a private venue in the Quartet’s base in Austin, Texas. For a complete schedule and to purchase tickets, click here.

Like most musicians and ensembles, the Miró — Daniel Ching and William Fedkenheuer (violins), John Largess (viola), and Joshua Gindele (cello) — began their unplanned hiatus in mid-March. Soon after, the Quartet began thinking about what the future held. 

[Read more…]

Callisto Quartet to perform live and al fresco in Solon on July 17

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by Daniel Hathaway

Life is full of new experiences for a young chamber music ensemble, but this week will mark a real first for the Callisto Quartet. Although violinists Paul Aguilar and Rachel Stenzel, violist Eva Kennedy, and cellist Hanna Moses played a number of outdoor concerts on their Italian tour last summer, Friday will be their debut performing on a baseball field.

On July 17 at 7:00 pm, the Callistos will play Mozart’s “Hunt” Quartet, K. 458, and Debussy’s Quartet in a free concert at Solon Community Park.

The event, presented by Chagrin Arts in cooperation with the City of Solon, will observe social distancing. Face masks are mandatory, and each household will be asked to stay within circles chalked on the field. Attendees should bring their own snacks and lawn chairs. The players, who will perform “right in front of the dugout,” will be miked.

[Read more…]

The Legacy of Black Classical Music: 
Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier
de Saint-Georges

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by Lilyanna D’Amato

While many of you may recognize this week’s composer, Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, perhaps you know him by a different name: “the Black Mozart.”

Deeply problematic, the nickname casts this virtuosic musician as the lesser equivalent of a White counterpart. In his article, Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-George and the Problem With Black Mozart, Julian Ledford suggests that through this biased comparison, Saint-Georges becomes “a mythicized inferior of the status quo’s perfect symbol of 18th-century classical music.”

Historically, this is how the Western canon has always understood Black classical music: in contrast to a supposedly superior model. By severing Saint-Georges’ name from Mozart’s, we restore the legacy he is owed — a reckoning long overdue.

Born in the French West Indies colony of Guadeloupe, Joseph Boulogne spent his childhood on a plantation near Basse-Terre. [Read more…]

Is now the time to retire 
The Star-Spangled Banner?

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by Daniel Hathaway

During the recent demonstrations responding to the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, a number of monuments were toppled that represented the racist history of the United States. Among them, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and elsewhere, statues memorializing Francis Scott Key were pulled down.

Key was author of the poem Defence of Fort M’Henry, inspired by the British bombardment in Baltimore Harbor in September 1814, that became the text of The Star-Spangled Banner. Joined to a tune by British composer John Stafford Smith, the song was officially adopted by the U.S. Navy in 1889 and became our National Anthem by resolution of Congress in 1931.

The problem with Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore lawyer and district attorney, is that he had owned slaves since 1800. While he went on public record to oppose human trafficking, he also represented the owners of runaway slaves.

The problem with his poem is that for 21st-century America, its sentiments seem less and less conducive to uniting a divided nation.

[Read more…]

CMA’s Performing Arts: Behind the Beat video series

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by Mike Telin

When the performing arts world came to a sudden halt back in March, Tom Welsh, director of performing arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, began to think about how to respond.

“After the shutdown there was a dash to develop online content,” Welsh said during a recent telephone conversation. “That sparked the Museum staff to create the curatorial video series On My Mind. So I stepped back and thought, instead of just inviting musicians to play on-screen, why not talk to them and hear what they have to say about how they’re confronting the situation and feeling in this weird moment.”

Hosted by Welsh, Behind the Beat features artists who have direct connections to CMA, and highlights the Museum’s rich legacy of music.

In Episode 1, Welsh speaks with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet. “Aleksandra’s new work Antennae was to have been premiered at CMA at the end of March, so that piece was the first big casualty of COVID-19,” Welsh said. After returning to Serbia, Vrebalov phoned Welsh, telling him that she had gotten in touch with Harrington, and had re-written a short excerpt from Antennae for string quartet. “That was Kronos’ first online-only production.” [Read more…]

Les Délices embraces change with two new online series 

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by Mike Telin

Trying to second-guess the future in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic has left every performing arts organization in the world trying to figure out a path forward. All are attempting to answer the same question: when and how will we be able to perform in front of an in-person audience?

Cleveland-based period instrument ensemble Les Délices has decided the best path would be to create an all-virtual 2020-2021 season. One series, Embracing Change, will feature four new, 60-minute pre-recorded concerts complete with on-screen titles, program notes, artist interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. First screenings will include live post-concert Q&A with the artists. Concerts will be available on demand for ten days and audiences can enjoy a closing “Reception” during the final day of each cycle. To view the season and purchase single tickets and subscription packages click here.

In a recent telephone conversation, Artistic Director Debra Nagy said that part of the genesis of Embracing Change was that she had already planned the 2020-21 season back in the fall of 2019. “I continued to tweak and build a budget and then COVID-19 hit in March of 2020.”

Nagy said she spent some time in denial and grieving, but as the weeks progressed, and studies were released about the possible dangers of singing and performing in large groups, she began to ask herself: what does this mean for Les Délices?  [Read more…]

The Legacy of Black Classical Music: Shirley Graham Du Bois

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by Lilyanna D’Amato

As America finds itself in the midst of a centuries-overdue reckoning, classical music must follow suit. A tradition long criticized for its exclusionary, Eurocentrist snobbery and stark lack of diversity, there remains a cruel, discriminative legacy behind the classical canon. One that, very purposefully, led us to Brahms and Wagner but kept us from Bologne, Price, and Still.

“The Legacy of Black Classical Music” hopes to remind us of those musicians and composers whose voices went largely unheard, whose careers were left obscured by the pernicious disease that is systemic racism. In this weekly series, we will explore the lives and contributions of Shirley Graham Du Bois, Florence Price, Josephine Baker, William Grant Still, and Joseph Boulogne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) — rich and valuable lives largely omitted from Western music history. Let us listen and learn together, celebrating their mastery while also taking the time to critically consider our own complacency in their erasure. For, in this admission lies the beginnings of vital change.

The first musician on our list is Shirley Graham Du Bois, whose tenacity, creative ferocity, outspoken personality, and intellectual prowess led her on a career spanning the globe. Born in Indianapolis in 1896, she spent her childhood immersed in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where her father served as a preacher and activist. [Read more…]

Piano Cleveland announces 30 pianists for its Virtu(al)oso global competition

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by Daniel Hathaway

Drawing from a pool of 158 pianists from 33 countries who range in age from 18-32, Piano Cleveland’s four-member screening jury announced today the names of the 30 who will record two rounds of performances under local health and safety guidelines at Steinway galleries in Cleveland, New York, London, Hamburg, and Beijing for the organization’s first-ever virtual competition, Virtu(al)oso.

First-round sessions will be streamed nightly at 7:00 pm EDT beginning on July 30 on the Piano Cleveland website. After eliminations, the final round for the six remaining contestants will be streamed on August 7 and 8 (WCLV 104.9 Ideastream will air the final rounds on August 8 and 9 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm). Winners will be announced during an awards ceremony on August 9.

Competitors include Lorenzo Adamo (20, Italy), Kevin Ahfat (25, Canada), Jonas Aumiller (22, Germany), Martin Bartlett (24, United Kingdom), Sergey Belyavskiy (26, Russia), Elia Cecino (19, Italy), Han Chen (28, Taiwan), Michael Davidman (23, United States), Madoka Fukami (32, Japan), Martin Garcia Garcia (23, Spain), Francesco Granata (21, Italy), Arseny Gusev (21, Russia), Anna Han (24, United States), [Read more…]

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