by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Rocky River Chamber Music Society ends its season by presenting baritone Edward Vogel (pictured) with pianist Jenny Parker in A Palace in the Wild: Journeys in British Art Song (7:30 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church).
For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.
CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM SETS END-OF-YEAR ANNUAL FUND GOAL:
On Saturday, founder and editor Daniel Hathaway wrote in an email, “Thanks to the continuing support of our readers, we have once again set our annual fund goal at $23,000 for this fiscal year.
“That leaves us with only $6,500 to raise before June 30. We hope you will want to pitch in with a gift at this time, either with a check or with a credit or debit card. Visit the Donate page on our website for details.”
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra announces 2026–27 season, celebrating 40th anniversary (Press release.) James Feddeck will lead three concerts, all of which will be free in celebration of the anniversary.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1849, German composer Otto Nicolai died of a stroke at the age of 38, Russian composer Anatoly Liadov was born in St. Petersburg in 1855, American songsmith Irving Berlin was born (as Israel Belin) in Russia in 1888, American choreographer Martha Graham was born in Pittsburgh in 1894, African American composer William Grant Still was born in Mississippi in 1895 (some sources say 1898), and German composer Max Reger died in Leipzig in 1916 (of a heart attack at the age of 43).
Berlin’s 101 years on earth (and on Tin Pan Alley) produced a flood of songs that document the popular cultural life of America in the 20th century. Carnegie Hall celebrated his 100th birthday in May of 1998 with an elaborate tribute featuring such luminaries as Walter Cronkite, Michael Feinstein, Isaac Stern, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Jerome Robbins, Garrison Keillor, Frank Sinatra — the list goes on. Watch here.
To end, we should mention the first performance on this date in 2000 of Colin Matthews’ Pluto – the Renewer, written to update Gustav Holst’s original list of heavenly bodies in this corner of the universe (a bit wrong-headed, since the composer had astrological signs rather than heavenly spheres in mind when he wrote The Planets —he also left Earth out). Even though Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006, Matthews’ add-on piece may still be worth a listen. Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic here.
