by Jarrett Hoffman
On December 6, CityMusic Cleveland continued its season-long chamber series celebrating 100 years of the 19th amendment with “Baroque Reflections,” streamed live from the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
Here are the numbers: seven masked performers (including several period-instrumentalists and, notably for these times, a soprano) alternated through multiple configurations from duo to sextet as they explored music by eight composers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
by Mike Telin
Since the Pandemic forced the shutdown of many performance venues, musicians have sought out ways of using their art to give something back to their communities. During November, saxophonist Jacob Swanson, returned to his hometown of Gowanda, New York, to record a recital at the town’s Historic Hollywood Theater that will be streamed until January 13, 2021 as a fundraiser for the historic venue — click here for details. And as we have come to expect from Swanson, his performances of music for saxophone alone or adapted for saxophone alone are in a word, stellar. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
At a time when just about everything is being scaled down, the one-hour concert sans intermission has become the norm, which is, quite honestly, a good thing. In their latest pre-recorded concert that debuted on November 27, No Exit takes things a step further. At 30 minutes in length, “Concert à la miniature” features solos and duos of five minutes or less, and the engaging diversity of the program coupled with stellar performances by members of the ensemble is a testimony to the cliché that good things come in small packages. Click here to access the performance on demand. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Steuart Pincombe, known to Northeast Ohioans as a magisterially bearded baroque cellist and viola da gamba player affiliated with Apollo’s Fire and Les Délices, seems to embody the accidental double-meaning of the acronym H.I.P. Historically informed performance meets millennial cool in the form of this off-the-grid farmer known for playing Bach in breweries. In time for the holidays, Pincombe has released a debut album titled the cello in my life. Equal parts in-joke, eye-catcher, and earnest declaration, the name belies the steely monumentality of the contents: the brewery cellist can sober you up too.
by Daniel Hathaway
Commissioned by Peter Gallagher in 2012, premiered in 2013 at the convention of the International Society of Bassists, and revised in 2019, Margi Griebling-Haigh’s 25-minute chamber opera, The White Trout, was released in mid-November on YouTube.
The piece embellishes an Irish folk tale from County Mayo as told by Samuel Lover and collected by William Butler Yeats. Predictably fantastical, the story centers around a beautiful woman whose fiancé, a king’s son, is murdered and thrown into a lake. The grieving bride eventually disappears (the work of fairies?) about the time villagers notice a strange white trout in the water. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
A chance meeting at Lakeside — where Verb Ballets was performing and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra artistic director Daniel Meyer was auditioning for a job — has resulted in the first collaboration between the two organizations. Although the original idea was for an in-person performance, the pandemic forced the project online.
Not such a bad thing, as it turns out. “Building Bridges Together,” which debuted as a video production on November 21, combined the strengths of two fine Cleveland performing arts organizations in a beautifully edited virtual event — bringing them into the same performing space for the first time through digital means. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
You’d be fortunate enough these days to be able to field three sopranos who could successfully channel the celebrated singing of the Three Ladies of the Court of Ferrara, but to find a trio of singers who all happen to be named Amanda would really be pushing your luck.
Jeanette Sorrell did just that for Apollo’s Fire’s “Allure” programs earlier this month, and the results are stunning. Sopranos Amanda Forsythe and Amanda Powell and mezzo-soprano Amanda Crider deliver the kind of jaw-dropping performances of virtuosic works that might well have landed them jobs at the 17th-century Ducal court.
by Daniel Hathaway
Full-length symphony orchestra concerts normally feature three works and run nearly two hours including intermission. The pandemic, which has changed so many things, has truncated programs, both to shorten possible exposure time and to avoid the social mixing of a mid-concert interval.
Thus the third “In Focus” performance by The Cleveland Orchestra that debuted on the Adella platform on November 12 lasts only 54 minutes from stem to stern, including a conversation between Emanuel Ax and Orchestra cellist Martha Baldwin, and features only two highly contrasting works led by music director Franz Welser-Möst. The performances continue to be available on the Adella platform until March.
by Jarrett Hoffman
On November 19, violinist Emily Cornelius and pianist Eric Charnofsky were minutes into a live-streamed recital as part of the Local 4 Music Fund’s “Tuning In” series when technical issues arose. The duo stopped playing after someone off-screen said that Facebook had shut down the broadcast, and following a moment of confusion, the video stream on my computer indeed cut out.
That delay was odd, but apparently the problem was a mistaken concern from that ever-benevolent giant of social media companies about a copyright violation. Twenty minutes later, Cornelius and Charnofsky began once again, and the city of Cleveland crossed its fingers.
by Jarrett Hoffman
In these less than ideal times, Raphaël Feuillâtre gave the ideal recital. His program on November 21 for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society was concise, varied, and well-structured, and it was performed, recorded, and filmed so intimately that it felt like it was live.