by Nicholas Jones
Now that the sun is finally beginning to melt some of Cleveland’s snow piles, the Cleveland-based band Les Délices reminds us of the wintry darkness from which we earnestly hope soon to emerge. In a departure from their usual repertoire — the secular music of the French baroque — the group served up a rich and satisfying feast of Lenten fare, a concert of sacred music for the Christian season of penitence and reflection. (This concert repeats on Saturday, March 7, at St. Peter’s Church, Cleveland (7:30 pm) and Sunday, March 8, at Plymouth Church UCC, Shaker Heights (4:00 pm). [Read more…]
On Saturday, February 28 in Finney Chapel, the Oberlin Artist Recital series presented the Bang on a Can All-Stars in a high energy concert that featured music by Bang on a Can founders David Lang, Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon, as well as works by Kate Moore, Steve Martland and Philip Glass. 
The BOP STOP stage was covered Sunday night — with instrument stands and cases, clarinets and saxophones large and little, and at least one broken reed — for The Renga Ensemble’s first visit to Cleveland. Having just released The Room Is last week, the sextet, formed by Chicago-based composer and clarinetist James Falzone, showed off their reed feast of a debut album, as well as a few extra tunes. 
Performing on the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series, French guitarist Gäelle Solal thoroughly charmed a good-sized audience at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday evening, February 28. She seems to have had a similar effect on guitar students in a series of CCGS-sponsored classes preceding her performance. No wonder. She has a winning personality, and her playing is ravishing. 
A program of twenty-one settings of poetry from a single source might seem to be much of a muchness, but Quire Cleveland’s concert “The Song of Songs: Medieval to Modern” on Friday evening at St. John’s Cathedral proved to be thoroughly varied, endlessly fascinating, and sung with style and total commitment. 
Last Thursday evening, Laura Carlson Tarantowski’s bright set design, beautiful in its classical symmetry, served as a perfect foil to the messy romantic tangles of Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, when Baldwin Wallace Opera’s engaging production opened for four performances in John Patrick Theater. “Welcome to a world of love, lust, disguise, joy, grief, and madness,” director Benjamin Wayne Smith wrote in his program note. “The plot can be confusing,” he added. No kidding! 
It’s not every day that a performer can be judged to be one of the two or three best in the world. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee could make that claim, but he probably wouldn’t, at least not publicly. Brownlee, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, a Steelers and Ohio State football fan, and an aficionado of good food, is a down-to-earth guy who happens to be one of the leading current examples of that rare species, the bel canto tenor. 
For CIM Opera’s opening night performance on Wednesday, February 25 in Kulas Hall, conductor Harry Davidson, an outstanding CIM orchestra, and a multi-talented CIM cast who were eager to take full advantage of the wonderful opportunities Mozart offered them shown forth in an impressive performance. 
Given that the theme for the February 22 Canton Symphony Orchestra program at Umstattd Hall was “Czech Mates,” one would reasonably expect selections by Czech composers. So it’s interesting that the first work on the program was by Mozart, something of a country unto himself. His Symphony No. 38, “Prague,” is anything but Bohemian in character, and fit the bill if only because it premiered in the Czech capital to great acclaim in 1787.