by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Orchestra will celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the 40th consecutive year on Sunday, January 12 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall. Assistant conductor Vinay Parameswaran will lead the Orchestra and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, William Henry Caldwell, director, in a program whose repertory departs slightly from past concerts.
“There won’t be a featured soloist this year,” Parameswaren said in a telephone conversation late last month. Instead, the majority of the program will feature African American composers.
“We’ll open with Adolphus Hailstork’s Fanfare on Amazing Grace, then move to a couple of pieces from Duke Ellington’s suite, The River, and on to the first movement of Florence Price’s First Symphony. Jahja Ling is going to conduct her Fourth Symphony in April, and I’m doing a movement from that piece with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra during the Open House on January 20. It’s nice to get to celebrate a composer like Price, who wrote a ton of music and had premieres performed by the Chicago Symphony and other big orchestras, but who doesn’t make it onto concert programs very often these days.”
Duke Ellington’s music is a similar case. “I’ve conducted his Harlem and I’ve studied his Three Black Kings,” Parameswaran said. “Ellington doesn’t get as much recognition for his orchestral writing as he does for his jazz, but he certainly knew what he was doing. Again, it’s a rarity to find his music appearing on a classical program, but I’m glad it’s on this one.” [Read more…]
Although saxophonist Noa Even has spearheaded many commissioning projects for her duos Ogni Suono and Patchwork, she had not commissioned one for herself. That was until events surrounding the 2016 presidential election got her thinking about how humans connect to one another.
“Holidays Old & New” describes Cleveland Chamber Choir’s performances this weekend in more than one way. The main thread that artistic director Scott MacPherson has woven through the program is the pairing of ancient and modern holiday works — from as far apart as the 14th and 21st centuries — that bear the same text. 
The act of improvisation — creating a piece of music on the spot — is difficult to describe. “This type of music is not easy to talk about,” bassoonist, improviser, and educator Dana Jessen said during a recent telephone conversation. “There are some improvisers that don’t want to talk about their approach to the process because it feels a little less tangible than other musical genres.”