by Mike Telin
When Allison Loggins-Hull was named The Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, she hoped that the three-year fellowship would culminate in a large work informed by the city the Orchestra calls home. And she thought the best way to do that was to get to know its people and community organizations.
“It takes time to do this kind of work in a meaningful way,” she told ClevelandClassical.com during a May 2023 interview. “During my initial visit last fall, which was the first time I was ever in Cleveland, I spent time at museums, the Fatima Family Center, Global Cleveland, Karamu House, Cleveland School for the Arts, and The Baseball Heritage Museum. All of these offered very different tastes of Cleveland in an effort to introduce myself and let people know what I was envisioning.”
On Thursday, May 8 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra will present the world premiere of Loggins-Hull’s Grit. Grace. Glory — a musical story inspired by the people and history of Cleveland. The concert also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4. The program will be repeated on Friday at 11:00 am (no Prokofiev) and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.
“I’ve been compelled by mid-century American modern music for some time,” pianist Geoffrey Burleson said during a Zoom conversation. “I’ve recorded all of Roy Harris’ piano music and Vincent Persichetti’s twelve piano sonatas. I recently played some of Irving Fine’s music at Mills College under the auspices of Other Minds. I’m always saddened when people dismiss the mid-century neoclassic style. I just love it, and I’m doing all that I can to revive it.”
Sea shanties might make you think of the ocean, not Lake Erie. But the freshwater ships that sailed the Great Lakes in the 19th century held a rich musical tradition of their own. So when Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy found a song that mentioned Cleveland in the book Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors, she knew the group had to perform it.