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Cleveland Orchestra does Star Wars: Sarah Hicks on conducting in-concert films

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Film music leaves an impression on many of us at an early age, and Sarah Hicks was no exception. The principal conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra’s “Live at Orchestra Hall” series, Hicks is also known as an in-demand guest conductor, particularly in the genre of in-concert film.

“I saw the original Star Wars movies in theaters as a very young child,” Hicks said during a telephone interview. That wasn’t the spark to her interest in music — she was already playing the piano by age five — but it was still an experience she called transformative. “I remember those movies, I remember that music. It was a huge part of my childhood.”

Hicks will revisit The Empire Strikes Back, the second film from the original Star Wars trilogy, during screenings with The Cleveland Orchestra on August 30, 31, and September 1 at 7:30 pm at Blossom. (Fireworks to follow each performance, weather permitting.) That score by John Williams introduced the world to “The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)” — it’s hard to imagine Star Wars without it — and to “Yoda’s Theme.”

[Read more…]

New organ for First Lutheran Lorain continues Boe & Brombaugh legacy

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by Daniel Hathaway

The staff and parishioners of Lorain’s First Lutheran Church must have found images of the burning of Notre-Dame de Paris last April especially poignant. In August of 2014, arson reduced their sanctuary to rubble, taking with it the church’s stained glass windows and its historically important organ built by John Brombaugh in 1970.

On Sunday, August 25, nearly five years to the day after that conflagration, the church will formally inaugurate a new instrument by Paul Fritts of Tacoma, Washington in a 3:00 pm recital by Katelyn Emerson. The recitalist, who graduated from Oberlin in 2015 with degrees in organ performance and French and is now based in Stuttgart, Germany, will play a varied program of music by Lübeck, J.S. Bach, Muffat, Bridge, Brahms, and Franck, as well as the premiere of a commissioned work by Aaron David Miller. The recital is free.

Music director Brian Wentzel said in a recent telephone conversation that working on the project of a new sanctuary and organ has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “It’s one that I never imagined I’d have. But it’s been very fulfilling, and a joy to work with Paul Fritts and his crew. I’m very pleased with the result.” [Read more…]

South Pacific with BW & Cleveland Orchestra: talking to director Victoria Bussert

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Musical theater fans have a thrill coming their way this Saturday, August 24 at 8:00 pm at Blossom. On tap is a production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1949 South Pacific featuring students from the Baldwin Wallace Music Theater program. And the orchestra? It’s one you might have heard of.

“There’s no way for me to describe what it’s going to be like the first time the students hear The Cleveland Orchestra play this music,” Victoria Bussert said during a recent phone call. She heads the Music Theater program at BW and directs Saturday’s performance. 

“It will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because even on Broadway, you don’t get orchestras of this size, or this world-renowned,” Bussert said. “I’m kind of tingly just waiting for when we all walk into Severance [for rehearsal] and the students sing with them for the first time.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom: catching up with Parameswaran

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by Jarrett Hoffman

For Vinay Parameswaran, leading The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom on Saturday, August 17 at 8:00 pm will be only one important event in what has to be called a good couple of months. He’s also conducted in Europe, driven about 5,000 miles back and forth across the U.S., and gotten hitched.

We spoke last week over the phone, and first he filled me in on all the details of June, July, and the first bit of August. Then we talked about this Saturday’s program, which includes Ives’ “Decoration Day” from the Holidays Symphony, Bernstein’s Jeremiah: Symphony No. 1 with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.

[Read more…]

Summers@Severance: Osmo Vänskä and The Cleveland Orchestra

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by Jarrett Hoffman

August is when the end of summer comes into sight, a blues for which Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony might be the antidote. The composer himself called it “the jolliest work I have so far written” — and the first movement really is bottled joy.

That symphony, known as the “Italian,” will sit side by side with Samuel Barber’s lesser-known Symphony in One Movement this Friday, August 16 at 7:00 pm, when guest conductor Osmo Vänskä pays a visit to Severance Hall to close out The Cleveland Orchestra’s Summers@Severance series.

“I have to say that I am so happy about the Barber,” Vänskä said during a telephone interview. “Even three years ago, let’s say, I didn’t know anything about this first symphony of his. Now I have done it twice during the last season. I really love the piece, and I think that it might be a good surprise for many people to hear it.”

[Read more…]

Barber’s Violin Concerto: a conversation with Jung-Min Amy Lee

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by Rory O’Donoghue

Whether performing with the Omni Quartet or soloing with The Cleveland Orchestra, violinist Jung-Min Amy Lee takes the same approach. “The orchestra is just a bigger setting for chamber music,” the associate concertmaster said in an interview last weekend. “It’s the same ideas, transfigured.”

Lee will get to flex those elevated chamber music chops this Saturday, August 10 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, where she will perform Barber’s enigmatic Violin Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra. I got the chance to catch up with the busy violinist and discuss her upcoming performance. 

[Read more…]

Classical music events to catch during the rest of the summer

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by Daniel Hathaway

Classical music events begin spiraling down into the Dog Days of August this week, beginning with Ohio Light Opera, which will present final performances of Perchance to Dream (above) and Girl Crazy on Wednesday the 7th at 2:00 and 7:30 pm, The Devil’s Rider and Music in the Air on Thursday the 8th at 2:00 and 7:30 pm, South Pacific and Into the Woods on Friday the 9th at 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm, and Pirates of Penzance on Saturday the 10th at 2:00. Hurry to Freedlander Theater on the campus of The College of Wooster before the company packs it in for 2019. Tickets here.

The Cleveland Orchestra will be busy in several modes through the end of the month. Its Star-Spangled Spectacular — postponed from Independence Day because of the All-Star Game — takes place on Mall B downtown on Wednesday the 7th at 9:00 pm (catch it, if not in person, on the stream at ideastream.org). [Read more…]

Margaret Scharf, 89

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Margaret Rickerd Scharf, who co-directed the music program at Old Stone Church in Public Square from 1969-1999 with her husband, Warren, died on Friday, August 1 at the age of 89.

“Maggie” joined Warren on the faculty of the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory in 1993, where he had served as director since 1967, and taught organ there until 2013. The couple met as graduate organ students at the Eastman School of Music (he died in 2014). She also served as Dean of the Cleveland Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and taught at Cleveland State University.

Services will be held at The Old Stone Church on Saturday, August 10 at 11:00 am, followed by a luncheon. Read an obituary here.

Mozart’s “Great” Mass: A conversation with Lisa Wong

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by Rory O’Donoghue

This Friday, August 2 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall, the Blossom Festival Chorus will join The Cleveland Orchestra for a one-off performance of Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c-minor. Last Sunday, the Chorus and Orchestra brought the house down at Blossom in their Aretha Franklin tribute concert, with vocalists Capathia Jenkins and Ryan Shaw in the spotlight.

“It’s a busy summer in Cleveland,” Director of Choruses Lisa Wong said over the phone last week, “but it’s a fun one.” I got the chance to talk with Wong by telephone about her work with The Cleveland Orchestra Choruses in anticipation of this Friday’s concert, the latest installment of their Summers@Severance Series.

Rory O’Donoghue: How did you get started in choral music?

Lisa Wong: Interestingly, the very first choral and orchestral piece that I ever encountered was this Friday’s selection, Mozart’s Mass in c-minor. I sang it as an undergraduate music student, and we had a guest conductor who came to our university and worked with our choruses for that concert. It was a singularly influential moment in my life — I was so inspired by this wonderful conductor. As it turned out, that was the late Robert Page, who was director of choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra at the time. I didn’t know what that title meant, exactly, but I knew how inspired I was by the way this music bubbles up with emotion.  [Read more…]

Cooper International Competition: A conversation with first-prize winner Eric Charles Chen

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by Mike Telin 

After a grueling three rounds at Oberlin’s Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, on Friday evening, July 26 at Severance Hall, 18-year-old violinist Eric Charles Chen from Princeton, New Jersey was awarded the grand prize of $20,000. Earning second place and $10,000 was 14-year-old Shihan Wang of Beijing, China, while Sixteen-year-old Isabella Brown of Gurnee, Illinois, earned third place and $5,000.

Commenting in a press release on Chen’s performance of Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 in g with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Gemma New, Director and Jury Chair Gregory Fulkerson said, “What you heard from Eric was profound instrumental control and rhythmic understanding of the piece.” Fulkerson particularly praised Chen for his delivery of a duet with the Orchestra’s bass section late in the piece. “It was a true moment of greatness.” [Read more…]

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