by Mike Telin
On Wednesday, December 3rd I found myself in an odd situation – I wasn’t scheduled to attend any concerts, yet I had the urge to hear some live classical music. Checking our concert calendar, I discovered two interesting, and best of all, free concerts in University Circle. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Packed tight on a Wednesday night, the Oberlin Conservatory Lounge played host to the Punch Brothers for their latest jam session on December 3. Joining the band were a legion of thirty-some college and conservatory musicians playing violin, trombone, oboe, double bass, accordion, djembe, and tuba, to name a few. A big crowd of fans snapping photos, shooting video, nodding, singing, and wiggling along helped keep the night going until near closing time. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
It was Austrian night in Cleveland last Tuesday. In Severance Hall, the Vienna Boys Choir was working its holiday magic, no doubt beautifully. In Plymouth Church in Shaker, where I was, the Juilliard String Quartet gave a different sampling of Vienna, presenting three masterpieces by composers intimately associated with Vienna — Anton Webern, Franz Josef Haydn, and Franz Schubert. [Read more…]
by Zoë Madonna, guest contributor
Typically, only a few faculty and devotees warm the seats at Oberlin Conservatory’s historical performance (HP) division concerts. Be warned: that may not be the case for much longer. Students Parker Ramsay and Jackson Studzinski assembled a bunch of historically informed tricksters on December 2 in Oberlin’s Fairchild Chapel, for the first concert in the new Tenth Muse series. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
CityMusic Cleveland continued to move into new territory with the first of its five “Holiday Concerts” on Wednesday evening, December 3. Led by Peter Bennett and collaborating with members of the choirs of Sagrada Familia Parish on their home turf on Cleveland’s West Side, CityMusic ventured into Latino repertoire with a performance of Ariel Ramirez’s forkloric Missa Criolla. The curtain-raiser was a Sinfonia by Antonio Sarrier, a Spanish-born composer and trumpeter who emigrated to Mexico in the mid-eighteenth century. In between, Laura Koepke was the featured soloist in Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland Orchestra second trumpet Jack Sutte has been busy recently compiling a second CD, Fanfare Alone. This time Sutte appears all by himself — but in the company of a sizeable cast of Schilke brass instruments. Recorded last May in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace University by Five-Four Production’s Robert Friedrich, the eighty-three minute, two-disc set features twenty-eight tracks of music for solo trumpet, cornet and flugelhorn comprising pieces by twenty individuals. [Read more…]
By Mike Telin
Arts Renaissance Tremont pulled it off again. Each season the series organizers present at least one program that, on paper, seems so niche, so inside the inner-circles of classical music, that it causes you to wonder how many people this program is going to attract. On Sunday, November 23 in Pilgrim Congregational Church, ART treated a capacity audience to a brilliantly performed and entertaining concert by eight bassists of The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
We are often told that classical music seems to belong only to the elderly. It ain’t necessarily so, judging from last Tuesday evening’s concert at Lorain County Community College, when a largely college-age audience heard a sparkling recital given by duo parnas. The performers, too, are of the younger generation — two sisters barely into their twenties and already enjoying significant attention in the professional concert scene. [Read more…]
by Tom Wachunas
If America’s entry into World War II was seen by its citizens as not only necessary but also heroic and noble, then perhaps no orchestral work better embraced such lofty resolve than Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Thus began the program called “Remembrance” by the Canton Symphony Orchestra, with CSO assistant conductor Rachel L. Waddell on the podium, on November 23 at Umstattd Performing Arts Hall. [Read more…]
by Jane Berkner
It was a treat to be reminded of the brightness of the orchestral world’s future on Sunday night, November 23 in Severance Hall. For that occasion, artistic director Brett Mitchell designed a terrific concert for the opening of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra’s 2014-2015 season. [Read more…]