by David Kulma
It was another fascinating afternoon of recent music by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild at CSU’s Drinko Recital Hall on Sunday, October 13. Opening the Guild’s 60th anniversary season, the concert featured chamber music by eight local composers in the usual explorative potluck format.
by Timothy Robson
Ars Organi II, a multi-week series of organ recitals and lectures at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, came to an end last weekend. Audiences had been treated to new music for saxophone and organ with Noa Even and St. Paul’s organ mastermind Karel Paukert, followed by a weekend tribute to the great Austrian organist and pedagogue Anton Heiller, including brilliant recitals by two of his former students, Jay Peterson and Christa Rakich.
by Tom Wachunas
With music director Gerhardt Zimmermann in the pulpit, as it were, the Canton Symphony Orchestra took us to church with the first of the three works on its season-opening October 12 program. Written by the acclaimed contemporary American composer Jennifer Higdon in 1999, blue cathedral is a tone poem inspired by the searing loss of her younger brother, Andrew “Blue” Higdon, to cancer.
by David Kulma
Celebrating their tenth anniversary as a trio, The Texas Tenors starred in the captivating and wholesome opening concert of the Cleveland POPS Orchestra’s 24th season, led by music director Carl Topilow on Friday, October 4 at Severance Hall.
by Nicholas Stevens
Any classical musician can play familiar favorites or venture into best-kept secrets, but some instrumentalists are predisposed to a healthy mix. Classical guitarists, with their ability to transcribe almost anything, often highlight famous names while also drawing from a canon dominated by 20th-century Spanish and Latin American composers. They also play new music. Last weekend, Colin Davin converted the sunset light of an autumnal early evening into music with a well-curated program that included all of the above.
by Mike Telin
When inclement weather forced the cancellation of the Akron Symphony’s January 2019 concert, the solution was simple: reschedule the all-Russian program as the opening concert for the following season. On Saturday, September 21 in E.J. Thomas Hall, guest conductor Benjamin Zander and the ASO presented that program, and the results were worth waiting for. Throughout the evening the strings were supple and full-bodied. The winds sparkled. The brass were majestic.
by Timothy Robson
Chicago-based organist Jay Peterson, a former student of Anton Heiller (left), continued St. Paul’s Episcopal Church’s Ars Organi II series on Friday night, October 4. The recital was the first in a three-event mini series devoted to Heiller, the great Viennese organist, composer, and pedagogue who lived from 1923 to 1979. A panel discussion about Heiller on Saturday afternoon featured Peterson, Ars Organi mastermind Karel Paukert, and Oberlin Conservatory visiting organ professor Christa Rakich, also a Heiller student, who played a recital on Sunday afternoon. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Some composers of electroacoustic music are content to assemble collections of ear-tickling sounds — the musical equivalent of shiny objects that briefly attract attention. Others construct pieces that feature some kind of unifying narrative that invites the listener on a journey with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Canadian-born Sarah Davachi belongs to the latter persuasion, as she demonstrated at Transformer Station on Sunday evening, October 6. Her engaging, hour-long performance was part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Concluding a week-long residency, 23-year-old French guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre played the opening concert of the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series on Saturday evening, October 5. His program of works by Paraguayan, Spanish, French, Cuban, Brazilian, and Russian composers — some written for the instrument, some transcribed — covered a broad range of styles and introduced one of the bright young lights of the guitar world to a good-sized audience in Plymouth Church. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
The black box theatre, the unassuming intimacy, the ineffable crackle of composers and instrumentalists sitting ten feet apart: a recent concert at Lorain County Community College looked and felt like a typical new music occasion. Yet its unceasing flow of solos and duos foreclosed any temptation to write the experience off as just another contemporary show. To describe violinist Lauren Cauley and cellist Mariel Roberts, the performers who captivated listeners in LCCC’s Cirigliano Studio Theatre on Thursday, September 26, as “emerging” would be to conflate youth with artistic achievement — a mistake. [Read more…]