by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
The Summer Solstice will occur today at 4:51 pm EDT when the sun reaches its most northern point in the sky during the year.
Before that happens, at 2 pm Ohio Light Opera will present the opening performance of Me and My Girl in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster, and at 7 pm, a new series, Third Thursdays at Transformer Station, will feature Ideastream’s Amanda Rabinowitz and Talons’ — the event is sold out. And The Canton Symphony has canceled its 6:30 pm Summer Serenade at the Canton Garden Center due to extreme heat.
Even though summer will have officially begun, tonight at 7:30, ChamberFest Cleveland will continue its series with “Rite of Spring,” a program featuring duo-pianists Roman Rabinovich & Yaron Kohlberg (pictured) & percussionists Tom Sherwood & Alexander Cohen in an arrangement of Stravinsky’s iconic work along with many other vernal selections in CIM’s Mixon Hall.
Meanwhile, at 7:30 pm in Akron’s Goodyear Theater, Nightingale Opera will present Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon, a take on the beloved fairytale of Cinderella (repeated on Friday). And this evening at 8, Tri-C JazzFest, will kick off a busy weekend with a performance by Take 6 in Playhouse Square’s Mimi Ohio Theatre.
INTERESTING VIDEO:
Yesterday, the Library of Congress wrote, “We thought #Juneteenth was a good time to share this stunning performance of Lift Every Voice and Sing, performed on the Library’s Stradivarius instruments by @sistastrings (Chauntee and Monique Ross) when they visited the Library earlier this year.
“Commonly referred to as ‘The Black National Anthem,’ the hymn was written and composed by brothers James Weldon and John Rosamond Johnson in 1900. According to the NAACP, at “the turn of the 20th century, Johnson’s lyrics eloquently captured the solemn yet hopeful appeal for the liberty of Black Americans. It was later adopted by the NAACP, and used as a rallying cry during the Civil Rights Movement.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Pianist André Watts was born in Nuremberg, Germany on this date in 1946 to a Hungarian pianist mother and an American father who was serving as a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. The family moved to Philadelphia when André was eight. His mother inspired him to practice with stories of Franz Liszt. By the time he turned 16, he had played concerti with the Philadelphia Orchestra at children’s concerts. His big break came when he won a competition to play with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic on the nationally televised Young People’s Concerts. Watch a clip of the January 15, 1963 performance here. As an adult artist, Watts frequently appeared with Gerhardt Zimmermann and the Canton Symphony. He died in 2023.
And on this date in 1948, Columbia Records held a press conference in New York City to introduce a new product, the 33-rpm “Long Playing” disc. Click here to watch a 1956 film about the innovative format, which reigned supreme for more than 30 years until the introduction of the digital Compact Disc, co-invented by Philips Electronics NV and the Sony Corporation in 1980. The LP is currently enjoying a resurgence as audiophiles return to analogue vinyl recordings.
by Jarrett Hoffman
German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach was born on this date in 1819 in Cologne. Probably his most famous work is the opera The Tales of Hoffmann, his final work, which he left unfinished. But looking at Offenbach’s career as a whole, his greatest contribution was in operetta, a genre in which he wrote nearly 100 works, influencing such composers as Johann Strauss Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. The satirical Orpheus in the Underworld, his first full-length operetta, is one of his most beloved. Click here to listen to the Overture (compiled by Carl Binder) performed by the Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra, led by Valery Platonov.
And German composer and violist da gamba Carl Friedrich Abel died on this date in 1787. Abel is known in part for his association with J.C. Bach, a partnership that produced England’s first subscription series: the Bach-Abel concerts. He’s also famous as a virtuoso of the gamba — and as is the case for many performing composers, those interests went hand in hand. Click here to listen to the Allegro in d, WKO 208 from the 27 Pieces for Unaccompanied Viola da Gamba, as performed by gambist Shirley Edith Hunt.
