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Rocky River Chamber Music Society: clarinet trios among friends (May 6)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

What is a little chamber music among friends? Pure enjoyment, that’s what. On Monday, May 6 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, you got the feeling that the pleasure had by this group — clarinetist Afendi Yusuf, violist Wesley Collins, and pianist Dawoon Chung — might have occurred with or without the rapt Rocky River Chamber Music Society audience in attendance.

But, lucky for us, we were. The program — clarinet trios by Mozart, Bruch, and Robert Schumann — brought together not only infrequently performed repertoire, but an obviously friendly group of collaborators.

[Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra with guitarist Jason Vieaux at the Covenant (May 4)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Saturday evening, May 4 found the excellent Blue Water Chamber Orchestra wrapping up their 14th season with guitarist Jason Vieaux playing Vivaldi and Avner Dorman, and the orchestra finishing up with Beethoven 7 at the Church of the Covenant under Daniel Meyer.

Blue Water comprises musicians and features soloists who live in Northeast Ohio, asks its audiences to “Pay what you wish,” and has committed itself to straight-through programs that normally run less than 90 minutes.

Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux, the featured soloist in a collaboration between BlueWater and the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, is both an international touring artist and a local hero, who treated the capacity audience to an elegant performance of Vivaldi’s D-major concerto — originally for lute — with a fine sense of pacing and crisp articulations. [Read more…]

Lang Lang and Cleveland Orchestra team up for a virtuoso night of Saint- Saëns, Berlioz and more (May 2)

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By Daniel Hathaway | Cleveland Classical
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio  — Virtuosity was abundantly on display at Severance Music Center on Thursday evening, May 2, not only in the persona of pianist Lang Lang, but also in the music and orchestrations of 19th-century French composers Camille Saint-Saëns and Hector Berlioz — as well as in performances by their modern interpreters, Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra.

In general use since the mid-18th century and meaning “a person with great skill, one who is a master of the mechanical part of a fine art,” the term virtuoso only begins to describe Lang Lang. In addition to his skills on the keyboard, he’s the classical equivalent of a rock star, capable of drawing sold-out crowds to his performances, as he did in Cleveland on Thursday. And worthy of both a private audience with the Pope and — just last month — a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he’s an international advocate for the piano whose “101 Pianos” extravaganza will visit Cuyahoga Community College on Friday.

[Read more…]

Alex Cuba shines at Cleveland Museum of Art’s
Transformer Station (May 1)

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by Max Newman

Cuban-Canadian singer-songwriter Alex Cuba has been described in many ways over the course of his career, from his “sugarcane-sweet melodies” and “pop-soul hooks” to “powerful guitar riffs that relinquish a conventional stereotype that exemplifies much of the Latin music landscape.” When he performed on the Tiny Desk concert series, NPR noted his “undeniable charm as he weaves evocative imagery into musical arrangements that not only call to mind his native Cuba but anywhere [that] an acoustic guitar and engaging voice command attention.”

All of these strengths, and more, were on display when Cuba took the stage at Transformer Station on May 1 as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts series.

[Read more…]

Conductor shines in Severance Music Center debut with Cleveland Orchestra in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (Apr. 26)

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By Kevin McLaughlin  |  Cleveland Classical

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Conductor David Afkham made everything look easy in his Severance Music Center debut with The Cleveland Orchestra on Friday evening, April 26. He committed to lead works by Unsuk Chin, Rachmaninoff, and Bartók in March when Lahav Shani asked to be away for the birth of his first child.

That program would be a heavy lift for any conductor, but the Orchestra responded to Afkham’s remarkable assurance and clarity and delivered some of the most exhilarating performances of the season to date.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: festive, virtuosic Bach (Apr. 26)

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by Peter Feher

Apollo’s Fire resurrected its take on J.S. Bach’s Easter Oratorio over the weekend, returning to this choral masterpiece that the ensemble last presented almost two decades ago.

Performances of the Easter Oratorio don’t exactly abound every year, and the reason is less than straightforward. Staging the work is something of a production, approaching the monumental scale of similar Bach compositions — the Passions, the B-Minor Mass, the Christmas Oratorio — but nowhere near as imposing. This contrast has meant that a great piece of music has sometimes been treated as not quite great enough.

Which is a shame because the Easter Oratorio is one of Bach’s most consistently uplifting scores. [Read more…]

Les Délices: Debra Nagy’s singular, ambitious Four Seasons (Apr. 13)

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by Peter Feher

Most Clevelanders spend at least part of the year wishing they could change the seasons here. But oboist Debra Nagy has actually done it with her ambitious rearrangement of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

In adapting these familiar violin concertos to the strengths and tastes of Les Délices — her period-instrument ensemble that continues to push historical performance in unexpected directions — Nagy has achieved something singular. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective: Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker (Apr. 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It is one of Cleveland’s persistently good things that outlets for fresh new music — played by some of the area’s best musicians — continue to thrive. On Sunday, April 28, we were reminded of this again at Cleveland Chamber Collective’s presentation of Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker, a Requiem for chamber ensemble and digital playback at the Pivot Center.

Emerson conducted a distinguished ensemble comprising Linda White, flute, Emily Cornelius, violin, Brian Slawta, viola, Trevor Kazarian, cello, Eric Charnofsky, piano, and Dylan Moffitt, percussion.

Oath Breaker takes the audience on a 60-minute journey of anger, grief, and hope, as a kind of collective PTSD therapy session about the events of January 6 and its subsequent aftermath. The mixture of recorded electronics, live performances, and poetic and prosaic texts helped to conjure in real time the horror of that day.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Composers Guild partners with Factory Seconds Brass Trio & others (Apr. 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland Composers Guild found an ideal partner in the Factory Seconds Brass Trio (Jack Sutte, trumpet, Richard King, horn, and Rick Stout, trombone), who, along with other performers, assembled a recital program of the first order at Rocky River’s West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday, April 21.

Before the trio took the stage, a handful of instrumental and vocal performers drew welcome attention to non-brass works by Nicholas Puin, Matthew C. Saunders, Margaret Brouwer, and Andy Junttonen.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical hosts Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (Apr. 20)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On April 29, the world will celebrate Duke Ellington’s musical mastery on the 125th anniversary of his birth. A sophisticated giant of American music, Ellington wrote and performed as leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 until his death in 1974.

It was a double privilege, then, to experience the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in EJ Thomas Hall on Saturday, April 20. First, to hear the JLCO again in Akron “after forty years” (according to Marsalis), and second, to hear this ensemble perform the Ellington book at the very highest level of technical skill and as mindful stewards of jazz tradition.

[Read more…]

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