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Blossom Festival Band spotlights new and old favorites in “Salute to America” (July 3)

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by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — For an outdoor concert on July 3, you could hardly have asked for a nicer summer evening — or a more expert conductor.

“How about this weather!” Michelle Rakers cheerfully boomed from the podium, greeting the audience who had packed the lawn and pavilion at Blossom Music Center.

Under Rakers’ direction, the Blossom Festival Band presented “Salute to America,” a memorable take on the annual Fourth of July program that favored some lesser-known selections without ignoring the classics.

[Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival: WindSync with Jon Kimura Parker (June 25)

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by Peter Feher

What do you call a concerto for six soloists? There’s no punchline here — just a delightful question posed by the first faculty concert of this year’s Kent Blossom Music Festival.

On Wednesday, June 25, in Ludwig Recital Hall, pianist Jon Kimura Parker and the five members of WindSync came together in a dynamic performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue that somewhat confounded categories.

“Piano sextet” is the usual name for this combination of instruments, and Gershwin’s composition could easily be subtitled “a concerto in one movement.” Yet neither designation would do justice to the spirit of this collaboration, in which every musician shone.

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Errollyn Wallen braves the storm to share her Songbook at ChamberFest (June 18)

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by Stephanie Manning

Errollyn Wallen is many things — composer, vocalist, and published author, just to name a few. But you could also say she’s a little bit of a psychic.

As the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows in Mixon Hall rapidly darkened with storm clouds on June 18, she launched into her song “Tree.” “I’m perplexed by rooted trees,” she crooned over pizzicattos from her accompanying string quartet, as lightning flashed and the real-life trees bent and twisted in the fierce wind.

Shortly after, ChamberFest co-artistic director Diana Cohen stopped the concert to make a rare request: that everyone in the room make their way down to the Cleveland Institute of Music basement to shelter from the storm. This unusual little detour was just one way the Wednesday evening program lived up to its name, “Mood Swings.”

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Sing Hallelujah!” (June 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Sometimes the only thing that connects works in a concert is that they all appear on the same program page. That certainly characterized the mix of two Brahms songs, the premiere of a violin and piano work, a “repetitive music” classic for duo pianists, and a well-known piano trio that were featured in ChamberFest Cleveland’s sold out program “Sing Hallelujah!” on June 26 in Mixon Hall.

Johannes Brahms was partial to works that explore the lower, more mellow range of voices and instruments, as represented here by a pair of songs. Throughout both Gestillet Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied, mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, violist Kim Kashkashian, and pianist Amy Yang produced rich, expressive musical lines that projected beautifully into the hall. The “Sacred Crib Song” was especially endearing for quoting the well-known 14th-century Christmas song “Joseph lieber, Joseph mein,” a little joke referring to the work’s dedicatee, Joseph Joachim.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Inventions of Memory” (June 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 27 program, “Inventions of Memory,” offered three distinct meditations on musical remembrance. Presented in the tranquil setting of Harkness Chapel at Case Western Reserve University, eight of the festival’s standout artists illuminated works by Claude Debussy, Brett Dean, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The program opened with Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis, a cycle of idealized and slightly prurient visions of antiquity. Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Roman Rabinovich offered a reading attuned to the music’s erotic undertow and bathed in Lydian and whole-tone harmonies.

In La Flûte de Pan, Rabinovich’s shimmering textures evoked the strumming of a lyre as Barron spun out the tale of a young girl’s intimate flute lesson. Her voice, pliant and sumptuous, moved easily between innocence and seduction.
[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Starry Night” (June 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On June 21, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Starry Night” at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls. The program’s nocturnal theme included works by ChamberFest composer-in- residence Errollyn Wallen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Arnold Schoenberg.

The performance of Wallen’s Dervish for cello and piano was spellbinding. Like a trained actor, cellist Oliver Herbert took on a distinct persona: intensely expressive, earthy, and rapturous. Pianist Roman Rabinovich was not merely a counterpart, but a force that Herbert seemed at times either to resist or to be swept up by. Together, the duo sustained an inward intensity that made Wallen’s music feel at once intimate, expansive, and hypnotic.

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: George & Ira Gershwin’s Tip-Toes (June 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On a sunny Thursday afternoon in Wooster on June 26, Ohio Light Opera’s revival of the Gershwin brothers’ Tip-Toes (1925) made its premiere during a carefree two hours at the College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre.

Director Jacob Allen embraced the show’s silliness — mistaken identities, romantic mix-ups, and a heroine with amnesia — while keeping the action kinetic and the comedy light on its feetThe production succeeds due to excellent staging and choreography, but also thanks to sharp acting, nimble dancing, heartfelt singing, and general razzle-dazzle. Proof that even the more neglected musicals of the Jazz Age can still charm a modern audience. [Read more…]

ENCORE celebrates its first decade with “The Golden Waltz” (June 17)

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by Stephanie Manning

Ten years have gone by in a blink for the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute. So it’s only fitting that its official anniversary concert began with a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Artistic director Jinjoo Cho introduced the June 17 performance at the Maltz Performing Arts Center with a slideshow documenting  the evolution of the Music & Ideas Festival and Summer Academy. “Cleveland is home to me,” she said, clicking through photos of old programs, early notebook brainstorming sessions, and past students — many of whom are now professional musicians in their own right.

That trip down memory lane was a prelude to the musical portion of the concert, titled “The Golden Waltz.” [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon (June 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1947 Brigadoon owes much of its popularity to the familiarity of its music — and people who have never seen the show can find themselves carrying tunes like “The Heather on the Hill,” “Come to Me, Bend to me, ”and “Almost Like Being in Love” around in their ears, not knowing where they came from.

Equally as compelling are its Scottish Highland dances, which are numerous,  authentic, and as one commentator noted in a review of Brigadoon’s debut, so well-integrated into the plot that ‘it is impossible to say where the music and dancing leave off and the story begins.’

Engagingly directed by Jacob Allen, with lively choreography by Spencer Reese, and Wilson Southerland leading the excellent OLO Orchestra, Ohio Light Opera’s alluring production of Brigadoon opened on June 19 in Freedlander Theater at the College of Wooster. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Variations on Love and Loss” (June 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, June 20, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Variations on Love and Loss.” Complemented by a friendly acoustical space and a convivial throng, the program spanned a wide emotional range, from deep grief to luminous joy.

Witold Lutosławski and fellow composer Andrzej Panufnik originally performed Lutosławski’s Paganini Variations in cafés around Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, where public concerts were banned.

The duo wrote it partly to showcase their talents, and pianists James (Zijian) Wei and Roman Rabinovich brought fearless bravura to the work. The performers tore through each variation, trading volleys of octaves and whiplash runs. It was part sorcery, part acrobatic display — and entirely exhilarating. [Read more…]

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