by Jarrett Hoffman
AND THE AWARD GOES TO…
On Saturday, the Lower Great Lakes Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences named the recipients of its 52nd annual Emmy Awards. The winner in the category of Education/Schools – News was a video produced by Darrielle Snipes and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District highlighting the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Education Program. Click here to watch the video, titled “Students’ grades, emotions improving through musical program.” And see the full list of winners here.
And on Friday, Tania León was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her orchestral work Stride. The Pulitzer jury described the piece as “a musical journey full of surprise, with powerful brass and rhythmic motifs that incorporate Black music traditions from the US and the Caribbean into a Western orchestral fabric.”
It was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in February of 2020 as part of Project 19, the ensemble’s commissioning program celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment. Read León’s interview with Tom Huizenga for NPR here, and listen to a clip from a rehearsal of Stride here.
TODAY ONLINE:
Last Thursday, the Re:Sound New Music Festival released its second weekly playlist: “Work & Play.” Watch here, or explore the entirety of the Festival’s offerings here through June 30. If you haven’t registered yet, you’ll need to do that first, but it’s free.
Venturing outside of Northeast Ohio, virtual possibilities for your day include chamber music from pianist Martha Argerich and friends, a combination of discussion and performance around Prokofiev violin sonatas from Lincoln Center, and violinist Augustin Hadelich teaming up with pianist Orion Weiss. Head to Musical America for details about those events.
NEWS BITS:
Passes are now available from Ticketmaster for the 42nd Tri-C JazzFest, to be held September 11 and 12 under the covered Evans Amphitheater.
And rock star and composer Stewart Copeland will bring Police Deranged for Orchestra to Blossom Music Center on September 11, performing greatest hits of The Police on drums with The Cleveland Orchestra and guests. More info here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
The first name to celebrate today is American composer, conductor, and pianist Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, who was born on this date in 1932, and who charted a widely varied career in classical music, jazz, dance, pop, film, and television.
One venture on the podium to highlight: in 1965 he co-founded and later served as Music Director of New York’s Symphony of the New World, which aimed to provide opportunities for Black and Puerto Rican musicians who faced discrimination from major orchestras.
In 2005, a year after his death, Cedille Records released Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson: A Celebration, containing six world-premiere recordings of works dating from 1955 to 2004. That playlist includes two works that have seen performances in Northeast Ohio over the past several weeks: the Sinfonietta No. 1 (Tuesday Musical with the Sphinx Virtuosi in May) and Lamentations for solo cello (ChamberFest Cleveland and cellist Zlatomir Fung just yesterday).
Take a listen to those pieces — click the above links for their first movements — in addition to taking a moment to read some of the liner notes by Gregory Weinstein, who begins by sharing Perkinson’s response after being asked to define Black music:
I cannot define black music. I could say that it is a music that has its genesis in the black psyche or the black social life, but it is very difficult to say what black music really is. There are kinds of black music, just as there are kinds of other musics….
Download the full program booklet here.
Other artists to celebrate today include Chinese pianist Lang Lang, who turns 39, and two musicians who passed away on this date in history, 400 years apart: Flemish composer Orlando de Lassus (1594), and Cleveland-born composer and conductor Henry Mancini (1994).
Enjoy Lang Lang soloing with The Cleveland Orchestra in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, three excerpts from Lassus’ Bicinias in the hands of Cleveland’s Contrapunctus Early Music, and Mancini leading his orchestra in a medley of his own hits: Pink Panther, Moon River, Baby Elephant Walk, and Peter Gunn.