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Sun Valley Music Festival: Conversations with Marc Damoulakis and Si-Yan Darren Li 

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by Mike Telin

With the absence of Northeast Ohio’s annual feast of live summertime classical music offerings, I’m thankful that we live in a time when technology can help fill the void in the artistic soul. That technology can also take you to far-off festivals that you’ve always wished you could attend, but never have had the opportunity.

From Monday, July 27, to Wednesday, August 19, you can attend the 36th annual Sun Valley Music Festival Summer Season for free from the comfort of your own home, or backyard. The free, one-time-only webcasts were developed by Festival Music Director Alasdair Neale in collaboration with Creative Director James Darrah, who served as stage director for The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2015 production of Richard Strauss’ Daphne.

The performances, recorded in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Rochester, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Toronto, feature single-location, socially distanced performances and multi-location, video-synced performances which will also include commentary by Alasdair Neale and conversations with guest artists and Orchestra musicians. The free, one-time-only concerts will be broadcast at 8:30 pm Eastern time on the Idaho-based Festival’s website. [Read more…]

Sphinx Performance Academy “at” CIM: advocating for diversity while going online

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by Jarrett Hoffman

If there’s one classical music festival that best represents this particular moment in time, it might be the Sphinx Performance Academy. Not only does it focus on cultural diversity, and not only has it shifted online this summer due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it has also taken on a new dimension amidst the movement for racial justice sparked by the death of George Floyd.

SPA, as the festival is known, is a full-scholarship program focusing on chamber music and solo playing for string players ages 11-17 who come from cultural backgrounds that are underrepresented in classical music. It’s one of the many programs of the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization, founded in 1997 and devoted to diversity in the arts.

Multiple conservatories and schools of music have hosted SPA since it launched in 2004, including the Cleveland Institute of Music since 2017. And with physical hosting out of the question this year, the CIM-affiliated session will run online from July 25 to August 8. (That will follow other virtual sessions of SPA that took place earlier in July and June through partnerships with the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School.)

[Read more…]

Piano Cleveland’s Virtu(al)oso fields a rich mix of contestants 

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by Daniel Hathaway

Now that Piano Cleveland has posted biographies and repertoire selections for the 30 pianists who will be competing long-distance later this month in the organization’s first online competition, it’s time to get to know those players a little better, both as performers and individuals.

As is the case with all international competitions, participants come from far and wide: from China (4), Russia (4), Italy (3), the U.S. (3), Japan (2), the United Kingdom (2), and Austria, Azerbaijan, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Peru/Canada, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan (1 each). Those are their official home countries, although their studies have dispersed them all over the map.

The final 30, announced on July 1, were winnowed by a selection jury from videos sent in by more than 130 hopefuls. The competition will be conducted remotely, through videos recorded at Steinway facilities in the U.S., Europe, and China. By the time the first round officially begins on July 31, twelve will have performed in Hamburg, six each in Cleveland and London, four in New York, and two in Beijing.

Ranging in age from 18 to 30, the contestants are well accustomed to the pressures of international competitions, having taken home top prizes in a long list of contests. Several have already recorded more than one album. At least four of the contestants are also composers who will include their own works in their performances. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony announces
Interlude Season for 2020-2021

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by Staff

This past Monday, the Akron Symphony Orchestra revised its plans for the coming year. The previously announced 2020-2021 concert season has been moved forward to  2021-2022, and the Orchestra will instead present the ASO Interlude Season — Akron Symphony’s Gift to the Community, designed to share free music throughout  Northeast Ohio.

“I’m tremendously excited about the Interlude Season,” ASO Music Director Christopher Wilkins said in a press release. “I do mourn the loss of a full orchestra season. But ironically, it gives us the chance to do a great many things we’ve always wanted to do. Our greatest asset is the creativity of our musicians, and this new plan allows us to utilize their skills in an extraordinary variety of ways.”

During the season, which will run from August 2020 through May 2021, ASO musicians will provide free performances with numerous collaborative partners, including the Akron Art Museum, the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, Akron Public Schools, Akron-Summit County Public Library, the Akron Zoo, International Institute of Akron, Jilly’s Music Room, Love Akron, Mustard Seed Market & Café, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Summa Health, the Summit County Historical Society, and Tuesday Musical Association. [Read more…]

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…]

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