by David Kulma
Every year the Cleveland Chamber Music Society chooses an undergraduate string quartet from CIM to be its outreach arm. Alongside coachings from the Cavani String Quartet, the students perform educational concerts in local school districts. At the end of the season, they are then featured on CCMS’s free Young Artists Showcase. This year’s showcase at First Unitarian Church in Shaker Heights on May 6 showed off the excellent Belka Quartet. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday night, April 28 at Ludwig Recital Hall, the Kent State University New Music Ensemble presented a retirement concert for co-director Frank Wiley in celebration of his 38 years at Kent. Of the four Wiley works played, the two most recent were Rituals of Earth and Fire (1999) and the premiere of Violet Spirals at Twilight (2018).
by Robert Rollin
Last Saturday evening, May 5, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra presented its final concert of the season at Severance Hall under conductor Vinay Parameswaran. The evening’s highlight was 20th-century Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, a massive, three-movement piece that filled the stage with young musicians. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
After losing its previous performing venue — the Masonic Auditorium having been sold — Cleveland Opera Theater has found a new home in the Maltz Performing Arts Center at CWRU. On Friday, April 27, stage director Scott Skiba and conductor Domenico Boyagian brought the tragedy of Cio Cio San, alias Madama Butterfly, to life in an elegantly simple production on the wide stage of the former temple.
by Daniel Hathaway
The Kent State University Keyboard Series ended its current season on Sunday, April 22 with spectacularly lucid performances of Bartók and Liszt by University of Michigan piano professor Logan Skelton. The former was Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, an unlikely subject for a piano arrangement, the latter Liszt’s sometimes intractable Sonata in b, brilliantly brought to heel on this occasion.
by Daniel Hathaway
Singers Companye, Samuel Gordon’s Akron-based chamber choir, gave three performances of its spring program “An Unclouded Day: A Celebration of Love” in Cleveland, Fairlawn, and Hudson on April 20, 22, and 28. In their first concert at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood, they presented assured performances of modern choral works, including several by composers with Scandinavian and Baltic roots who write in expressive, opulent textures.
by Nicholas Stevens
The musicians’ collective Urban Troubadour offers not mere concerts, but adventures. In a cultural moment when encounters with chamber music range from formal recitals with traditional programs to party-like gatherings in living rooms, bars, and galleries, alternative formats have become common in Northeast Ohio and across the country. Yet even in the crowded field of efforts to “disrupt” the world of staid programming, Urban Troubadour’s multi-part evenings feel distinct and vital.
by Nicholas Stevens
The 2017-18 performing arts season celebrated several auspicious anniversaries in Northeast Ohio, and last week in Rocky River, the West Shore Chorale marked its first half-century. Any ensemble with an extensive record of uniting communities through music deserves a commemoration of grand scale and ambition, and the Chorale offered just such a program for its own anniversary at Magnificat High School.
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon the Youngstown State University Opera Department presented a workmanlike rendition of Jules Massenet’s fairytale opera Cendrillon (“Cinderella”) in Bliss Hall’s Ford Theater. An outstanding cast of singers under production director Misook Yun, an excellent orchestra conducted by Hae-Jong Lee, solid stage direction by Gary Lehman, and Wendy Akers’ fine costumes all contributed to an entertaining performance. [Read more…]
by David Kulma
Surrounded by eclectic new art in Ohio City’s SPACES gallery, No Exit and Patchwork came together on Friday, April 27 to sound the musical cutting edge. With half the works from 2018 and most of the composers under 40, this night was a cross section of current trends in the world of new classical music. [Read more…]