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Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus 8 features Joshua Smith & Paul Jacobs

by Daniel Hathaway

Wind players have arguably been the most frustrated instrumentalists during the pandemic. When you pursue your art and livelihood by forcing air from your lungs through an instrument, you’re among the most likely candidates to spread the novel coronavirus, thus your near exile from concert halls.

For its latest In Focus episode, “Visions and Impressions,” The Cleveland Orchestra makes a gesture in the direction of welcoming winds back into the action, although principal flute Joshua Smith’s contribution to the event comes in the form of two unaccompanied pieces that leave him looking very lonely on the Severance Hall stage. [Read on…]

Les Délices: Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain

by Daniel Hathaway

Les Délices has once again joined forces with Boston’s Blue Heron, this time to produce the impressive video “Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain,” which debuted on Vimeo on April 8, and remains available on-demand until April 19.

LD’s artistic director Debra Nagy introduces the hour-long program with a discourse on the importance of the garden and its centerpiece, the fountain, for artists and musicians of the 14th century. Later in the program, Blue Heron artistic director Scott Metcalfe expands on the subject by exploring the Trinitarian metaphor behind that bubbling source of water in the Medieval mind. [Read on…]

Music From The Western Reserve: Black Squirrel Winds

by Jarrett Hoffman

As the classical music community knows, wind instruments have been fairly quiet over the past year. But knowing is different from feeling, and a pre-recorded concert by the Black Squirrel Winds on Sunday, April 11 turned out to be even more welcome than expected. Not only was it a rare showcase these days of the beautiful, colorful combination of sounds that make up the wind quintet, but it was played in an impressive fashion that’s far less common than a black squirrel sighting in Kent.

[Read on…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Tapestry — Jewish Ghettos of Baroque Italy” (video)

by Daniel Hathaway

With each of its themed programs, Apollo’s Fire is becoming more than just a period instrument ensemble that gives concerts. Its March program, “Tapestry — Jewish Ghettos of Baroque Italy,” which replaces performances of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, finds Jeannette Sorrell and her colleagues moving seamlessly out of their usual roles to morph into singing actors and dancers, all in order to bring the subject at hand to vibrant life.

The latest program, which visits the ghetto and palace at Mantua and the ghetto and church at Venice, uses expressive instrumental music by Salamone Rossi, Giuseppe Sammartini, Antonio Vivaldi, and Alessandro Marcello, two of Benedetto Marcello’s 50 psalm settings, and Hebrew prayers and songs associated with Passover and Purim to evoke the rich cultural life of those towns. [Read on…]

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