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Re•Views

Ohio Light Opera embraces the nuances of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel (June 14)

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by Stephanie Manning

If you’ve never seen Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, don’t let the title fool you. Although the carousel in question is literal, it’s also a metaphor — for cycles of unhealthy relationships, social ostracization, and abuse.

Eighty years on from its Broadway debut, Carousel finds itself in a tricky position in the musical theater canon. Featuring some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most beautiful songs, the work is so beloved that TIME Magazine named it the best musical of the 20th century. But it’s also faced criticism for its portrayal of domestic violence.

Deftly directed by Steven Daigle and unafraid to face some thorny topics head on, Ohio Light Opera’s Carousel made for a compelling start to the company’s 46th season at The College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre on June 14. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “A Musical Feast” at Heights Theater & in Nate’s World (June 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland’s season theme of “Lost and Found” extended to the choice of venue for its program “A Musical Feast” on June 14.

Heights Theater opened in 1919 as a motion picture theater with 1,200 seats. Renamed Coventry Theater, then Centrum, it eventually closed in 2003. The space was repurposed as a church, following a period as a comedy club, and is now being used as a performance venue.

The sound carries well, but the large space has an odd acoustic which suits some styles of music better than others. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland opening night: “Lost and Found” in Mixon Hall (June 11)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The thirteenth season of ChamberFest Cleveland began on an auspicious note with “Lost and Found,” a sold-out opening concert on Wednesday, June 11 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

The Festival put a special mark on the occasion by fielding two of its largest ensembles for the opening and closing works, and by presenting the Cleveland premiere of a riveting work by one of CFC’s four composer-performers in between.

Pianists Michael Stephen Brown and Roman Rabinovich shared thousands of notes as soloists in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in C for two claviers, a product of the composer’s concerts in Zimmermann’s Leipzig Coffee House, when he increasingly turned his attention away from church duties and produced concerts with University musicians. The C-major concerto is apparently unique for not having been arranged from an earlier work. [Read more…]

Margi Griebling-Haigh’s The Higgler gets a curious, yet charming, world premiere (June 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

The Higgler is an opera about missed opportunities, mixed signals, and difficult decisions. So what awaits its regretful characters once the story ends? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

The ambiguous ending of Margi Griebling-Haigh’s opera is perhaps its biggest paradox. On one hand, when the lights went up not long after a key plot reveal, it left plenty of unanswered questions. On the other, it was hard not to be charmed by the world premiere production at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, which I saw on June 8.

The quandary about the ending originates not from Griebling-Haigh’s libretto, but from the original text — A.E. Coppard’s short story “The Higgler,” which the composer follows almost to the letter. Narrator Joseph Hollings occasionally read out verbatim passages, describing certain scenes that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible with the limited set. But director Marla Berg ensured that all transitions were clear, and the rotating backdrops allowed up to three distinct locations to be represented onstage at one time. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Reflections” at Church of the Saviour (June 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The second program of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2025 season, titled “Reflections,” offered a varied but carefully sequenced triptych, was presented on June 13 at Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. Works by Arvo Pärt, Anton Arensky, and Camille Saint-Saëns captivated with a blend of suspended time, remembrance, and fervent sweep.

Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (“Mirror[s] in the Mirror”) was a remarkable opener, drawing violinist Gabrielle Després and pianist Michael Stephen Brown into a meditative dialogue and listeners into a quasi-hypnotic state. Després’s playing was austere and strangely luminous — testaments to her musical imagination and steady bow arm. She beautifully shaped each phrase — sharpening the listeners’ focus and slowing the collective pulse. Brown’s piano triads resonated with bell-like purity, so finely braided with Després’s lines that the effect was clairvoyant. As each violin note faded, the piano gently cued the next — gestures mirroring one another like eternal reflections in glass.

[Read more…]

Hao Yang and Helen Zhibing Huang celebrate Chinese culture at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival (June 5)

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by Stephanie Manning

The opportunity to hear rare repertoire is exciting enough. But hearing it performed so beautifully made the evening of June 5 truly special.

As part of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, guitarist Hao Yang and soprano Helen Zhibing Huang presented a lovingly curated program that blended their Chinese heritage and Western musical training. At the centerpiece was a collection of songs set to Chinese poetry — providing a look into this gorgeous repertoire.

Both performers grew up in China before coming to study in the U.S., and each spoke about their personal connection to this program. “We’re so grateful we get to connect to our culture through this beautiful music,” Huang told the audience in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: recitals by Alan Mearns, Laura Snowden & Petra Polácková (June 7 & 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Northern Ireland-born guitarist Alan Mearns, now based in North Carolina, gave the first of three very different recitals I heard at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. He performed on Saturday afternoon, June 7 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Following the plan he described in an interview, his solo recital largely featured transcriptions and arrangements of works not originally intended for the guitar, a topic he addressed in a lecture conversation with Jonathan Leathwood the day before.

The gist of that session, Mearns said, was that arrangers are really re-composing pieces that should sound as native as possible on new instruments, but need not slavishly include every note of the original. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: recitals by the Patterson-Sutton Duo & Jason Vieaux (June 6 & 7)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival just keeps getting better and better. For 2025, there are masterclasses, lectures, a youth competition, guitar-maker showcases, and several headliner recitals by guitar royalty — a heady blend, whether you’re a die-hard or a casual listener. The concerts were held in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall, an acoustic and sensory jewel of a room to hear music in, especially the soft-spoken kind.

On Friday June 6, cellist Kimberly Patterson and guitarist Patrick Sutton — the Patterson-Sutton Duo — offered a varied and vivid program, moving easily from the folk-infused music of Wales to more contemporary sounds. Their taut and expressive playing balanced the program’s strands of tradition and invention.

Stephen Goss’s Welsh Folk Songs, a suite of six traditional melodies arranged for cello and guitar, opened the program. The work communicates the rich folk heritage of Wales and allowed both instrumentalists to evoke a world of fable and memory.

[Read more…]

No Exit enthralls with works by The Collective (May 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On Wednesday, May 28, a collaboration between No Exit and The Collective at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium testified to the merits of exploring fresh musical terrain — in the end offering rewards for both the sympathetic listener and those less easily persuaded.

After a brief welcome by CMA Performing Arts Director Gabe Pollack, the lights lowered and a short black and white film starring Timothy Beyer’s head — not an AI stand-in, he insisted — introduced the concert.

The Collective is an international group of composers who have banded together to facilitate performances of their work. No Exit, Cleveland’s independent new music ensemble, occasionally performs The Collective’s  music, as they did spectacularly on Wednesday. In June, the two organizations will embark on a two-week European tour that will include stops in Greece, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands.

[Read more…]

Michelle Cann at Severance: smiles, laughter, and learning something new (May 19)

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by Stephanie Manning

What’s the best part about attending a dinner party? Maybe it’s the friendly conversation, the relaxed atmosphere, or a lovely musical performance. Michelle Cann’s recital had all three.

On May 19, the pianist welcomed the audience into her (temporary) home at Severance Music Center, entertaining with both elegant musicianship and cheerful dialogue. The warm lighting, low ceiling, and plush seats of Reinberger Chamber Hall helped make it feel as if the packed crowd was listening from inside Cann’s living room.

Presented in Cleveland as part of the 2025 Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival, “The Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance” is a program as much about education as it is about performance. [Read more…]

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