By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Uncommon music both on the airwaves and in concert
. Alisa Weilerstein’s Fragments project and Ravenna High School band kids
. Remembering Mistislav Rostropovich, Ferde Grofé, and Grant Johanneson (pictured)
HAPPENING TODAY:
From 2 pm to 4 pm, Eric Charnofsky continues his forays into Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music with Darius Milhaud’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 295 No. 4, Libby Larsen’s Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII (soprano and piano), Steven Burke’s Spring Fever for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano, Vincent d’Indy’s Tableaux de voyage (orchestrated), Leoš Janáček’s Little Queens (girls’ choir) & Amy Williams’ Cineshape 4 (solo piano). Click here to listen to the internet feed: or tune in to 91.1 FM in the greater Cleveland area.
8:00 pm – Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project presents Wisconsin-based percussionist Noah Depew & sound and visual designer Jon Muller at Convivium 33 Gallery, 1433 E 33rd St, Cleveland. Suggested donation $15. Click here for more information.
IN THE NEWS:
During the COVID lockdown, like many cellists, Alisa Weilerstein turned to J.S. Bach’s six unaccompanied suites for solace and inspiration. Weilerstein took things a step farther and developed a project she calls Fragments, “a series of staged solo recitals that weave Bach’s cello suites with newly commissioned works.”
This project is intended “to reimagine what a cello recital can be, to challenge some of the conventions that Weilerstein thinks might inhibit a listener’s immediate response to the music, and to add layers of theatricality to the arguably staid traditions of the concert hall, in an acceptance that a musician is, after all, performing on a stage.
“Each of the six programs, which Weilerstein will offer over the next few seasons, [including a Cleveland performance in May], will have a dramaturgical element…There will be limited program notes in advance, little to guide listeners except their ears and eyes through a collagelike narrative arc assembled from musical fragments.”
Read a New York Times article by David Allen here
Where we Are, a New York Times visual column about young people coming of age and the spaces where they create community, visits the band room of Ohio’s Ravenna High School. The band kids of Ravenna High dream of leaving their “nothing town,” but fear what that means they may have to leave behind. Click here to access the story.
ALMANAC
On March 27, Russian cellist and conductor Mistislav Rostropovich was born in 1927 in Baku, and American composer and arranger Ferde Grofé was born in 1892 in New York City.
Click here to listen to a 1969 live performance of the Dvořák concerto featuring Rostropovich with George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra.
Grofé talks about his influence on Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in an excerpt from an interview (skip the silly stuff and start at 1:39), and conducts a rehearsal of his Mississippi Suite. And for sci-fi buffs, here’s a cleaned-up print of the 1950 film Rocketship X-M, with score by Grofé that includes the first use of a theremin in a film score. (Sorry, we’re avoiding the Grand Canyon Suite.)
And on this date in 2005, American pianist Grant Johanneson, who served as president of the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1977 to 1985 died in Berlin. Click here for a true blast from the past: Johanneson performs the third movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 83 on The Ed Sullivan Show, on May 5, 1963.
“The Ed Sullivan Show was a television variety program that aired on CBS from 1948-1971. For 23 years it aired every Sunday night and played host to the world’s greatest talents…and is well known for bringing rock n’ roll music to the forefront of American culture through acts like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones. The entertainers each week ranged from comedians like Joan Rivers and Rodney Dangerfield, to Broadway stars Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, to pop singers such as Bobby Darin and Petula Clark. It also frequently featured stars of Motown such as The Supremes, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder and The Jackson 5. The Ed Sullivan Show was one of the only places on American television where such a wide variety of popular culture was showcased and its legacy lives on to this day.”
