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Join an Oberlin organ tour from the comfort of your home

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by Daniel Hathaway

Do you enjoy pub crawls for comparing the ambiance of different watering holes? Organ crawls can be just as pleasurable for organophiles — who often combine bending the ear and the elbow to double the fun. Now that the pesky coronavirus has crashed the party, moving about in groups from one venue to another is not in the cards for the foreseeable future, but thanks to the faculty of the Oberlin Summer Organ Academy, you can at least take a virtual tour of some of the Conservatory’s impressive instruments and hear them played in two online programs on Thursday and Friday.

On June 25 at 7:30 pm, organ professors Jonathan Moyer and Christa Rakich will join organ curator David Kazimir on Oberlin Stage Left to tell about the distinguished history of organ instruction at Oberlin. They’ll also lead a video tour to four of Oberlin’s concert organs — just a few of the instruments in the Conservatory’s impressive keyboard fleet, which includes practice and studio instruments of all styles and sizes. The virtual tour will include brief performances. [Read more…]

Roundtables discuss the black experience in music and how to make change

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Two roundtable discussions this month — one with strong local ties, another that was more nationally oriented — were centered around the black experience in music and how administrators, educators, and other individuals in the field can join the fight for equality.

On Friday, June 19 (Juneteenth), fifteen recent Oberlin graduates and current students gathered over Zoom on the topic of “Black Voices in the Conservatory.” Presented by the Oberlin College Black Musicians’ Guild and moderated by Troy Stephenson, a 2020 graduate in viola performance, that discussion included perspectives from both the jazz and classical spheres.

Broadcast on social media by Young Concert Artists and The Violin Channel on Wednesday, June 10, “Learning to Listen” brought together twelve diversity advocates and classical musicians from across the country — soloists, orchestral players, chamber musicians, educators, composers, and administrators — including a few faces familiar to Northeast Ohio.

[Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival goes virtual beginning July 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

As goes the Blossom Festival, so goes the Kent Blossom Music Festival, the parallel educational program that each summer brings young musicians to the Kent State University campus for several weeks of intensive chamber music coaching by members of The Cleveland Orchestra and other musicians.

In a normal season, multiple student concerts would be on the docket as well as faculty recitals, and a student chamber orchestra would be sharing an al fresco program with The Cleveland Orchestra. But in this thoroughly abnormal summer, nothing will be happening in person either at Blossom or Kent State. Instead, KBMF will be offering five streamed broadcasts of concerts from its archives on Wednesdays beginning July 1.

The performances can be accessed on the Kent Blossom website. Here’s the schedule.

Wednesday, July 1 at 7:30 pm – Concert 1 with the Miami String Quartet & Spencer Myer, piano. Haydn’s Quartet No. 64 in D (“Largo”), Op. 76, No. 5, Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 16 & Max Bruch’s Quartet No. 1 in c, Op. 9. [Read more…]

The Best of ChamberFest Cleveland on WCLV 104.9 Ideastream

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by Mike Telin

Founded in 2012 by Diana and Franklin Cohen, ChamberFest Cleveland has become a highly anticipated event each June for people seeking an immersive chamber music experience.

If the absence of live Festival performances this summer is leaving a void in your soul, take note: ChamberFest is collaborating with WCLV 104.9 Ideastream to broadcast nine programs drawing on material from all eight festival seasons on the station’s Wednesday evening “Ovations” Series and six, one-hour Sunday evening broadcasts. WCLV co-founder Robert Conrad will host and produce the series. Click here to view the schedule.

It’s no secret that since the pandemic caused the cancellation of all live performances, there has been a seemingly never-ending “stream” of performances by musicians and arts organizations over the Internet. Coupled with the reality that our lives are now spent in front of a glowing computer screen, this has caused our eyes and minds to grow weary.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater’s Summer Concerts return online 

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by Mike Telin

With the weather forecast to be 85 and sunny with no rain in sight, why not take a picnic to your backyard or front porch and enjoy a family-friendly evening of music courtesy of Cleveland Opera Theater?

Beginning on Saturday, June 20 at 7:00 pm, the company will take its popular Opera For All free summer concerts online. (And if you’re looking for a culinary theme to accompany your listening pleasure, Saturday just happens to be National Ice Cream Social Day.)

“Our hope is that families will be listening together,” Megan Thompson, Cleveland Opera Theater director of education and outreach, said by telephone. “We won’t be announcing the programs until the night of each concert, but it will be a nice mix of familiar pieces, lesser-known works, and we almost always sprinkle in some fun musical theater pieces as well — especially from the Golden Age.”

Performances will continue on July 25 at 7:00 pm (National Hot Fudge Sundae Day and Wine and Cheese Day) and on August 30 at 7:00 pm (National Toasted Marshmallow Day — s’mores perhaps?). [Read more…]

Pianist Michael Lu dedicates 5pm Series recital to racial justice

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by Jarrett Hoffman

In response to current events, pianist Michael Lu will begin his free, live-streamed recital on the 5pm Series (Friday, June 19 at 5:00 on Facebook) with the Andante second movement of Florence Price’s Piano Sonata in e. He will then continue with his previously scheduled program: Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole, Franck’s Prelude, Choral, et Fugue, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in c.

Lu is dedicating the concert to Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, “and every single member of the African-American community whose lives and futures were cut short because of the cruelty of a broken system that for centuries has failed them,” the pianist said during a recent conversation.

For every donation made to the 5pm Series for Lu’s concert, he will match it in giving up to a total of $200 to the NAACP. He will also donate all of his proceeds to the International Rescue Committee (35%), the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (30%), and back to the 5pm Series (35%) “to help increase the reach of their platform and support professional musicians during these difficult times with the coronavirus pandemic.”

[Read more…]

Oberlin to stream memorial for David Boe on June 14

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin Conservatory has announced a virtual memorial service for the late David S. Boe, Professor of Organ and former Dean of the Conservatory, who died in Chicago on April 28 from complications of COVID-19.

The event, to be live streamed from Oberlin’s Fairchild Chapel on Sunday, June 14 at 4:00 pm, will be led by the Rev. Jimmy Madsen, the retired pastor of First Lutheran Church in Lorain, where Boe served as music director and organist for over 40 years. Tributes will be given by Steven Plank, professor of musicology, and David Kazimir, curator of organs. Music by J.S. Bach, Heinrich Scheidemann, and others will be played by Jonathan Moyer, who holds the David S. Boe professorship in organ.

The two John Brombaugh organs in Fairchild Chapel were commissioned by Boe. The gallery instrument, built in 1981, is a mean-tone organ in the North German style, while a one-manual instrument in the front of the chapel was designed for the Boes’ home and donated to Oberlin in 2012.

Read more about the memorial event here in an article by Cathy Partlow Strauss.

Best of ChamberFest Cleveland broadcasts begin June 24 on WCLV

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by Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland patrons will be thrilled to learn that the popular early summer concert series founded in 2012 by Diana and Franklin Cohen won’t be completely missing in action this year due to the pandemic.

In lieu of its ninth season of live performances, ChamberFest is collaborating with WCLV to broadcast nine programs from its high-quality concert archives. The performances, which draw on material from all eight festival seasons, will be broadcast on the station’s Wednesday evening “Ovations” Series on June 24, August 5, and August 12 from 8:00 to 10:00 pm, and in a series of six, one-hour Sunday evening broadcasts from June 28 through August 2, all at 8:00 pm.

WCLV co-founder Robert Conrad will host and produce the series, which will include performances that have never gone out over the airwaves before.

We’ll share more information about the broadcasts next week. Meanwhile, here’s the schedule as it stands now, subject to change. [Read more…]

Credo goes online for summer 2020

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by Mike Telin

When it became clear that moving forward with an in-person music festival on the Oberlin campus was out of the question, Credo wasted no time making the decision to take the 2020 Festival online. “We thought that if the projections were right, there would be portions of the population that would feel safer with this method,” Credo’s Artistic Director Peter Slowik said during a recent telephone interview. “I think we had announced Credo Online by March 15, and I believe we were the first music festival to do that.”

Beginning on June 22 and continuing through July 10, nearly 160 students will be logging in every day to participate in live events including master classes, private lessons, and chamber music excerpt classes. Students will also have access to a variety of recorded content such as curated concerts by the Arianna, Callisto, and Jasper String Quartets, and faculty lectures about technique, as well as music theory and history discussions. They can also engage with their fellow Festival participants during “hangout sessions.”

How did the Festival planners figure out how to make everything work smoothly and efficiently? “It’s funny, because you solve one problem only to discover that you’ve created another,” Slowik said. “Most music festivals are built on the premise that you get a bunch of people together, sort them out, and do a lot of interactive things. But when you have students from five time zones in the U.S. alone, not to mention Asia, and teachers in three time zones in the U.S., it gets a little interesting when you’re planning remote private lessons. It’s also important that everybody is together for a master class, so those need to be scheduled at a certain time of day.”

[Read more…]

Mark Kosower to launch Trinity live stream series June 5

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower will play the first pair in a summer series of three live-streamed concerts from Trinity Cathedral on Friday, June 5 at 7:00 pm. His programs will cover all six of Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo cello suites, probably written at Cöthen between 1717 and 1723, before the composer took up his 27-year position in Leipzig.

The performances will truly be live, but with no audience present in Trinity’s spacious nave. “The whole idea was inspired by Andrea Bocelli’s Easter Sunday performance in the Duomo in Milan early in the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kosower said in a recent telephone conversation, noting that Trinity’s music director Todd Wilson was responsible for the idea.

“It really was a very dramatic thing — Bocelli sending music soaring out into that empty space, connecting with people who are isolated and alone because of the circumstances we find ourselves in, and also just communicating the power of music. Instead of a solo tenor, we’ll have a solo cello.

“There are always silver linings in these uncertain and turbulent times, and one of them is the opportunity for innovation and creativity,” Kosower said. “We find ourselves at home, which is of course a place of comfort, but at the same time we have to find new ways to reach out, to connect to people, and be very active and alive as musicians, because you’re really only communicating when you’re connecting with people.” [Read more…]

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