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DIARY: Monday, June 8, 2026

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by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND WRAP-UP: 

On Sunday evening following the last concert of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, the four finalists in the James Stroud Youth Competition played 15-minute sets of repertoire of their choosing on the stage of Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of music.

Half an hour later, Colin Davin, Jonathan Leathwood, Kevin Loh, Petra Polácková, Nicolò Spera, Jason Vieaux, and Hao Yang, judges for the final round, had chosen the winners:

First Prize $10,000: Ruqi Jiang

Second Prize $5,000: Micah Montgomery

Third Prize $2,500: Tae Kim

Fourth Prize $1,250: Justin Chen

Best Performance of the Competition Set Piece $500.00: Catalina Wert

STARTING UP THIS WEEK:

ChamberFest Cleveland will feature four concerts from Wednesday through Saturday, ENCORE Gates Mills Music & Ideas Festival will host performances on Friday and Saturday, and Ohio Light Opera will open its season of six shows at the College of Wooster with a matinee performance of My Fair Lady on Saturday. There are more concerts to enjoy — visit our Concert Listings for details.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Composer Robert Schumann was born on this date in 1810 in the German Saxon town of Zwickau. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, March 16, 2026

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by Daniel Hathaway

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

On Friday, The Cleveland Orchestra released details of its 2026 Blossom Music Center and Summers at Severance seasons. Click here to download the press release.

The Cooper International Violin Competition is now accepting applications for its 2026 contest at the Oberlin Conservatory. Open to violinists 13-18, the Cooper runs from Thursday, August 6 through August 10, 2026, and offers a total prize pool of $40,000. Application deadline is April 1. More information here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

There’s quite a mixed list of arrivals and departures to acknowledge on this 16th day of March: Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi (who died in 1736 in Pozzuoli of tuberculosis at the age of 26), American composer and conductor Edwin London (born in Philadelphia in 1929), English conductor Sir Roger Norrington (born in 1934 in Oxford), American composer David Del Tredici (born in 1937 in Cloverdale, California), Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (who died in Los Angeles in 1968), and American composer Roger Sessions (who died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1985 at the age of 88). [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, December 16, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

12 Noon – Charlotte Beers Plank, organ (pictured). Church of the Covenant, University Circle, Cleveland. Free.

NEWS BRIEFS:

King’s College, Cambridge, to form first all-female choir

The Times of London reports that “More than five centuries after its foundation, the college known for its Christmas service sung by an all-male choir is to establish an all-female ensemble.” Read the article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Mike Telin

On this day in 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany. [Read more…]

DIARY: Labor Day Weekend, 
Friday, August 29—Monday, September 1, 2025

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HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

The Concert Truck with pianists Susan Zhang, Maxim Lando, Saya Uejima, & Luca Rozo parks at Akron’s Mustill Store Museum & Barder House | Keiran Cantilina plays traditional tunes from the British Isles on the McGaffin Carillon in University Circle | Sarah Hicks conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in three live-to-picture screenings of Disney’s The Lion King at Blossom | and the Hingetown Jazz Festival (pictured) takes over The Bop Stop, Saucy Brew Works & Jukebox.

WEEKEND ALMANAC: 

by Jarrett Hoffman

One challenge in our almanac is balancing between musicians who are already well-known, and those who deserve better when it comes to legacy.

Today, in an effort to “open the floor,” I decided to simply reach into the bowl of August-30th-music-history and scoop out a handful of names. Several of these musicians I had never heard of, but all proved impressive or delightful to learn about. [Read more…]

DIARY, Tuesday, May 20, 2025

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at 12 noon, the Church of the Covenant in University Circle presents organist Ralph Holtzhauser in music by Denis Bedard, Brenda Portman, Charles Tournemire, Simon Preston, and Mark Miller.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Canton Symphony has released details of its 2025-2026 season. Its classical series will include performances led by guest conductors Wesley Schulz, JoAnn Falletta, Tito Muñoz, Roger Kalia, Jeri Lynne Johnson, Mélisse Brunet, and Francesco Lecce-Chong. Featured soloists and ensembles will include Meg Su, guitar, Nikki Choi, violin, Mark Kosower, cello, Averi Ellis, narrator, Jessica Leigh Payne, soprano, Sunghoon Han, bass-baritone, the Canton Symphony Chorus, and Zhan Shu, violin. Tickets for these and other series events will be available on July 1. Read the announcement here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1896, Clara Wieck Schumann died in Frankfurt am Main. The pianist, teacher, and wife of Robert Schumann was known principally as a concert pianist, a career she pursued for more than six decades — four of them after Robert’s death in 1856. [Read more…]

DIARY, Tuesday, December 10, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

Messiaen at La Trinité, 1940

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, organist Evan de Jong plays works by J.S. Bach and Johann Adam Reincken at the Church of the Covenant.

Tonight at 7 pm, Apollo’s Fire takes Jeannette Sorrell’s interpretation of. George Frideric Handel’s Messiah to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Akron.

And tonight at 7:30, John Kennedy, who conducted Oberlin’s concert performances of Rhiannon Giddens’ and Michael Ables’ opera Omar last weekend, extends his stay to lead the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra in works by Gabriella Smith, John Cage, and Louise Farrenc in Finney Chapel.

For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.

NEW RELEASES:

The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that its recording of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, led by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, is now available worldwide for digital streaming and download in spatial audio on all major platforms, marking the fourth recording to be released by the Orchestra in 2024. Read a press release here.

The Cavani Quartet announces the launch of The Art of Collaboration: Chamber Music Rehearsal Techniques and Team Building, by Annie Fullard and Dorianne Cotter-Lockard. Click here to visit a website dedicated to the book launch.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen (pictured above) was born on December 10, 1908 in Avignon. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, September 24, 2024

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

At Noon, organist Christa Rakich plays original works & music by J. S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant.

And three concerts are on the docket for tonight, all beginning at 7:30.

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society launches its 75th season with the all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer (pictured). “Music of a Silent World,” at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church celebrates the music of nature in works by Majel Connery, William Byrd, Heinrich Isaac, Robert Schumann, Tom Petty, Lawrence, and Ayanna Woods, and a gala reception follows.

Meanwhile, two masters of the keyboard go head to head. The London-based, Siberian-born pianist Pavel Kolesnikov will present J.S. Bach’s complete “Goldberg Variations” in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center, and British-born organist David Briggs, currently artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, will make the Holtkamp organ in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, sound orchestral in a program that includes his own Improvised Symphony in 4 Movements.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of upcoming performances.

SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT:

No Exit New Music has announced details of its 16th season, “New Season, New Sounds,” which begins with performances from October 17-19 at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Auditorium, Waterloo Arts, and SPACES. See the detailed schedule here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

British conductor and musical scholar Christopher Hogwood died of a brain tumor in Cambridge on this date in 2014. One of the forerunners in the early music revival movement, Hogwood relaunched the 18th-century Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, clearing a pathway for such later conductors as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM eventually outgrew its concentration on Baroque music and recorded the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as all of Mozart’s piano concertos with Robert Levin.

Hogwood was also noted for transforming Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society into a period instrument ensemble, along with his influential guest conducting appearances with a number of symphony orchestras. His career is detailed in Barry Millington’s obituary in The Guardian.

Click here to watch Hogwood’s performance of Haydn’s last symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (misidentified as the AAM!), and here to watch a performance he led of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with Robert Levin, who provided his own improvised cadenzas.

To see Christopher Hogwood in action as a musical scholar who served on the faculty of London’s Gresham College, here are two lecture-concerts: London: Music Under the Shadow of Handel, and an analysis of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.

DIARY: Tuesday, September 26, 2023

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By Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, Oziah Wales plays Julius Reubke’s Sonata on the 94th Psalm at the Church of the Covenant.

Not happening: The Severance Music Center concert by the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra originally scheduled for this evening has been postponed.

Check our Concert Listings for forthcoming events.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On September 26, 1800, New England composer William Billings died in Boston, French conductor Charles Munch was born in Strasbourg in 1891, and American composer and trombonist William Dawson was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1890.

Billings departed the scene too early to have left recordings, but Ross W. Duffin and Quire Cleveland brought his infectious motet I Am the Rose of Sharon to life in a concert at Historic St. Peter’s Church in April, 2014. The piece sets words from the Biblical Song of Songs (“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples…”) Watch here. Pictured  below: Billings’ hymn tune Chester from 1781. [Read more…]

Cellist Zlatomir Fung brings Shostakovich to his Cleveland Orchestra debut (July 22)

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by Peter Feher

The Cleveland Orchestra put together an intricate and intriguing musical puzzle on July 22 at Blossom Music Center. Each piece on the brilliantly balanced program — which showcased the sensibilities shared by 20th-century composers in France, the Soviet Union, and Japan — held the key to understanding and appreciating the others.

The Orchestra, guest conductor Kahchun Wong, and the evening’s soloist, cellist Zlatomir Fung, (left) were more than up to the task of fitting it all together. Spareness, precision, and sensitivity to detail were the features uniting the mix of repertoire, and the musicians gave superb performances where not a note was wasted.

Claude Debussy’s La mer is a study in symphonic texture — all the more beguiling because the composer was not, by usual standards, a master orchestrator. [Read more…]

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