by Daniel Hathaway
NEWS BRIEFS:
Oberlin alumnus Randall Craig Fleischer, conductor of the Youngstown Symphony as well as New York’s Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Alaska’s Anchorage Symphony, died unexpectedly at his home in California on Wednesday at the age of 61. Read a story from the Youngstown Business Journal here.
On August 20, The Cleveland Orchestra released the third edition of TCO Classics. “Summer Nights,” a collection of memorable performances at Blossom. The series marks the first time that free, on-demand streams of full-length concert recordings are available directly from the Cleveland Orchestra website. The streams will be accessible through September 17. More information here.
The Orchestra has also announced the release on October 2 of its second 2020 recording, captured just as the coronavirus began shuttering its live performances. Featuring Schubert’s Ninth Symphony and Ernst Křenek’s Static and Ecstatic, the album was recorded on March 13 in Severance Hall with only a dozen people in attendance. More information here.
TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
In addition to the daily Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra broadcast over WCLV (some Beethoven, some Mozart, and Walter Piston’s Suite from The Incredible Flutist), the weekly carillon concert in University Circle, and the nightly MET Opera stream (Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra), today marks the beginning of the three-day Tri-C JazzFest Virtual Festival, and features a special recital by organist Aaron Tan from St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. (Tan, winner of the American Guild of Organists’ 2018 National Competition in Organ Performance, played in Cleveland at St. John’s Cathedral in February of 2019). Details here.
INTERESTING READS AND VIDEOS:
Jarrett Hoffman, ClevelandClassical.com’s managing editor, has profiled Cleveland early music ensembles Les Délices and Apollo’s Fire in the online edition of Early Music America. Safety, finances, the pandemic, and racial diversity are issues that the ensembles are confronting in embarking on their fall seasons. Read the article here.
In the fourth episode of “Behind the Beat,” composer Courtney Bryan talks with Cleveland Museum of Art’s Tom Welsh about her forthcoming opera “about a free Black woman who established a Shaker community in 19th-century Philadelphia.” Watch here.
Washington Post critic Michael Andor Brodeur writes about Opera Lafayette’s new Zoom-based series for kids, ages 3-7, which recalls his own formative education in classical music and opera, “straight from the masters: Bugs, Elmer, Porky.” Read the article here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1893, French composer Lili Boulanger was born in Paris. Not as well-known as her sister Nadia, who mentored countless 20th-century composers, Lili’s career lasted only 24 years until her death in 1918. But she left a cache of luminous compositions, of which probably the best-known is her setting of Psalm 24. Hear it in a performance by the choir of First Plymouth Church in Lincoln, Nebraska led by Painesville native Tom Trenney.
Lili Boulanger won the Prix de Rome in 1913 on her second try at the age of 19 with her cantata Faust et Hélène, the first female composer to achieve that distinction. Listen to a performance by Alan Gilbert and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic here.
