by Stephanie Manning
Whatever piece ACRONYM is playing, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard it before. While the ensemble focuses on Baroque music, it’s not from composers the casual listener might know — instead, the group hones in on less-familiar tunes from the 17th century. Some of these pieces haven’t been heard in the 400 years since they were composed, but ACRONYM makes them sound refreshingly contemporary, bringing them to life in stunning splendor.
The Oberlin Artist Recital Series proved the perfect occasion for the group’s visit to Northeast Ohio on November 15. ACRONYM was founded by Oberlin alumni, and their first public performance in 2014 was held in the same venue: Warner Concert Hall. They hadn’t been back since, making Tuesday’s concert a long-overdue homecoming.
Warner was a fitting choice not just symbolically, but also sonically. The combination of Baroque strings, theorbo, harpsichord, and organ created a nice blend and balance, allowing the opportunity for softer instruments to stand out. In Johann Rosenmüller’s Sonata à 5 in g, Doug Balliett’s violone pizzicatos resonated beautifully, and in Johann Heinrich Schmelzer’s Sonata in d, harpsichordist Elliot Figg became an equal player in the texture with his clever improvisations. The slight exception was Joshua Stauffer on theorbo — despite the instrument’s big physical presence on stage, he received little time in the spotlight. [Read more…]
On a recent chilly Sunday in Cleveland Heights, waves of sleet skittered down from the heavens, ricocheting off anything that stood in their way. But the real storm was brewing inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where Apollo’s Fire and director Jeannette Sorrell took the stage for their latest program. “Storms and Tempests” entertained a packed house on November 13, as the Baroque orchestra played up the drama of both nature and love.
From his first moments on the podium, Edward Gardner seemed entirely at home in Severance Music Center. The English conductor made his debut with The Cleveland Orchestra the other Thursday, but you wouldn’t have known it from his ease with the ensemble and the general calm of the program.
Given the venues that Daniel Emmet is used to performing in, Severance Music Center must have felt like quite the culture shock. The classical crossover vocalist, a 2018 finalist on 
Wonderful things can happen when two accomplished ensembles collaborate. Such was the case on Saturday, October 8, when the Cleveland Chamber Choir and the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra joined forces at the Church of the Covenant in a program titled “Heaven and Earth.” The result was spectacular.
Rarely is there a program title as accurate as Les Délices’ “Winds of Change.” The program embraced the new and different in a variety of ways — referencing both specific events, like the French and Haitian revolutions, and broader ideas, like advocacy for composers of color. Originally presented as an online offering last season, on October 23 the concert proved it was certainly worth hearing live.
By the time she was a teenager, Bokyung Byun had lived in South Korea, China, and the United States — giving her an international perspective, but also complicating her sense of belonging. And as many musicians do, she grappled with her feelings through music. For her visit to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society on October 8, Byun brought a program designed around her identity, both as a performer and as a person.
It is the composer George Walker’s centennial this year, and on October 9, pianist Alexandre Dossin — performing in Cleveland for the first time — gave a concert featuring the composer’s work through six decades at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. The performance was part of the Tri-C Classical Piano series.