by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: Apollo’s Fire and Alan Choo bring Biber’s Rosary Sonatas to Akron
•Announcements: 2024 Blossom Music Festival lineup and tickets, Akron Symphony Chorus auditions this week, and applications open for the 2024 Modern Snare Drum Competition
•Almanac: a longtime, prominent figure in Cleveland’s musical community
HAPPENING TODAY:
Apollo’s Fire and concertmaster Alan Choo will conclude their run of “Sacred Mysteries: Biber’s Rosary Sonatas for Violin” tonight at 7:30 pm at First United Methodist Church of Akron. A pre-concert conversation with visiting scholar Susan McClary will take place one hour beforehand. Click here for tickets, and here to read a preview article by Daniel Hathaway.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced the lineup for the 2024 Blossom Music Festival, which runs June 29 to September 1. Click here for details and tickets, which go on sale today at 10:00 am.
The Akron Symphony Chorus will hold auditions via Zoom on Thursday and Friday, February 22-23, by appointment only. The ensemble is open to ages 16 and up, and generally rehearses on Mondays from 7 to 9:30 pm. To schedule an audition, contact Brenda Justice at the Akron Symphony office either by telephone (330-459-7404) or by email.
Applications for the 2024 Modern Snare Drum Competition are open, with a deadline of April 5. The Competition takes place May 24-25 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. More information here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Daniel Hathaway
Arthur Shepherd, a prominent figure in Cleveland’s musical community for three decades, was born into a Mormon family in Paris, Idaho, on February 19, 1880. He graduated from the New England Conservatory in 1897 and moved to Utah to reorganize and conduct the Salt Lake Symphony.
After returning to teach at NEC and serving in World War I, Shepherd was hired by Nikolai Sokoloff as his assistant conductor and program annotator in 1920. Though he moved across the street in 1927 to lecture in music at Case, he held on to his program annotating job until 1930, while also serving as music critic for The Cleveland Press. He became chair when music gained departmental status at Case in 1928, “inaugurating a 20-year program of experimental opera,” according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,
Listen to Shepherd’s Symphony No. 1, “Horizons” here in a recording by the Cleveland Orchestra under Louis Lane made from a radio broadcast, and here to a playlist of selected chamber works by Shepherd featuring pianist Grant Johanssen and The Abramyan String Quartet. A smattering of his smaller pieces appears here in the Petrucci Music Library.
Plain Dealer critic Wilma Salisbury wrote an article about Shepherd when he was posthumously awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music in 1977.