by Peter Feher
Midway through his performance on July 21 at Ludwig Recital Hall — part of this year’s Kent Blossom Music Festival — flutist Demarre McGill invited the audience into an understanding of his program with an abstract but heartfelt speech. It was all preface to the next piece on the program, an arrangement of three short songs by William Grant Still.
McGill described the “unlikely duo” of emotions coursing through Still’s music, a balance between “mystery and hopefulness” or “nostalgia and energy” — or simply and musically put, major and minor. The flutist kept the discussion artistic, even suggesting that all this talk doesn’t really have any bearing on the music itself. [Read more…]
From the podium, Herbert Blomstedt is always proving that there are new insights to be found in even the most well-trod pieces.
The stage was packed at Blossom Music Center on Sunday, July 18. The pops program of American songbook standards — part Broadway, part Hollywood, and part jazz — called for a full orchestra, plus a rhythm section up front and a row of saxophone players off to the side. This is music that can work with just piano and singer, but after months of pandemic-adapted performances, it was great to see a full-scale production.
In his remarks before the July 28 Kent Blossom Music Festival concert, featuring members of The Cleveland Orchestra, Kent State University president Todd Diacon noted that while the past year has not been easy, “It has been made easier by the arts.” This statement was ratified by the performances that followed, where the freedom and passion in the musicians’ playing created a restorative sense of joy and optimism.
Chanticleer, the legendary all-male vocal ensemble, appeared on Tuesday Musical’s series at E.J. Thomas Hall on July 27. Founded in 1978, the ensemble presented one of their trademark eclectic programs, in which a Renaissance motet by William Byrd could bump up against Burton Lane’s pop song 
The Ohio Light Opera made a smart move adding The Fantasticks to its repertory this season. The company that puts operetta first but always has room for a musical or two couldn’t have chosen a better classic for this strange summer back from the pandemic. This is a show that needs only a barebones setup, and OLO’s production (which ran from July 14–24, outdoors at Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster) was charmingly stripped down.
Venezuelan-born conductor Rafael Payare made his debut with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center on Sunday, July 25. Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 featured Stefan Jackiw as soloist, and the program concluded with Antonín Dvořák’s evergreen “New World” Symphony. Payare is the music director of the San Diego Symphony and music director-designate of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
What was that strange din coming over the live feed from Ludwig Recital Hall on Friday evening, July 23, as the Miami String Quartet filed onstage to play the third faculty recital of the Kent Blossom Music Festival? Accustomed as we were during the pandemic ban on live audiences to hearing the sound of no hands clapping, it was both startling and thrilling to witness a large crowd putting their hands together to welcome one of the Festival’s perennial favorites back for an in-person performance. 
It seems like every orchestra will be doing its version of Mozart in the great outdoors this summer, an old-fashioned program that has recently found new life. The combination of open-air venue, fewer musicians on stage, and repertoire at the ready seems to satisfy the pandemic equation.
Apollo’s Fire is making the most of the summer. Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra is easing audiences back into live performances this month with a program, “Bach, Vivaldi, and Friends,” that satisfies all musical expectations. The group followed up a terrific first concert on Saturday, July 10, at the Avon Lake United Church of Christ with two more local performances and one on tour at Tanglewood.