by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•OLO’s The Student Prince at 2:00, ChamberFest Cleveland’s “Extrême Expressions” at 7:30 — and perhaps a drink or two at the end of the day
•Details about Quire Cleveland’s 15th season
•News from Les Délices: new episodes of Music Meditations, and a job opening
•Almanac: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Clarence Cameron White, and Federico Mompou
HAPPENING TODAY:
The longest-running Broadway musical of the 1920s heads to Wooster today at 2:00 pm, when Ohio Light Opera gives the opening performance of Sigmund Romberg’s and Dorothy Donnelly’s The Student Prince. One of its most famous tunes? “Drink! Drink! Drink!” — which might inspire some evening plans?
Or perhaps those plans should wait until after ChamberFest Cleveland’s 7:30 pm “Extrême Expressions” at CIM (music by Claude Debussy, Kate Soper, Maurice Ravel, and César Franck). After all, a couple of the performers — violinist Stephen Waarts and soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, pictured above — will be making their ChamberFest debuts, an occasion that audience members can celebrate with a post-concert beverage or two.
Head to our Concert Listings for details and tickets.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Quire Cleveland has released its schedule for 2022-23. The ensemble’s 15th season highlights Renaissance music and its impact on composers centuries down the line through two concerts — “Carols for Quire XII: Angels and Shepherds” in December and “Pater Noster: Our Father” in April. Details here.
Bringing together readings of poetry with selections from the ensemble’s live-performance archives, Les Délices’ bite-sized audio series LD Music Meditations is back with three new episodes. Themes of “Personal Growth,” “The Moment,” and “Otherness” are explored through texts by four members of the West Side Catholic Center’s 2021 Poetry Group, underlaid with French Baroque music. The series is free, and you can listen online, on your preferred podcast platform, or by telephone hotline at 216-859-5800.
Speaking of Les Délices, the organization is on the hunt for someone to join their team in the flexible, part-time position of Box Office & Community Engagement Coordinator, covering areas such as patron communications, box office administration, and coordination of school- and community-based outreach programs. More details here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On June 30, 1958, Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen — Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate for the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra — was born in Helsinki. Salonen considered himself primarily as a composer (he took up conducting, he said, to guarantee that his works would be performed), but his fate was sealed when he stepped in at the last minute for Michael Tilson Thomas for Mahler’s Third Symphony in London.
Click here to watch a later performance of Mahler 3 with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London, when Salonen returned in October 2017 to the scene of his earlier triumph.
American violinist, composer, and educator Clarence Cameron White died on this date in 1960 in New York City. He attended the Oberlin Conservatory from 1896 to 1901, then studied composition with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in England, and violin in Paris. He succeeded R. Nathaniel Dett as head of the music department of the Hampton Institute from 1932-1935. White’s compositions include a ballet (A Night in Sans Souci) and an opera (Ouanga), two works based on Haitian themes for which he collaborated with playwright John Matheus.
Click here to watch a recent performance of White’s Suite Spirituale for Clarinet Quartet (at Clarinettissimo 2020), and here to watch an online video of his Levee Dance, Op. 27, No. 4 (performed by violinist Augustin Hadelich and pianist Joyce Yang).
And on this date in 1987, Catalan composer Federico Mompou died in Barcelona. A miniaturist trained in Paris, his piano works and songs are characterized by simplicity and elegance. British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor plays Mompou’s Paisajes in this video recorded at the studios of WGBH in Boston, and Mompou’s Musica Callada (“Silent Music”) inspired a music video.
The pianist Jenny Lin — who has performed in Cleveland on the Signature Series at Lorain County Community College, on the Cleveland Contemporary Players Artist in Residency Series at Cleveland State University, on the Kent Keyboard Series, and at the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival — has recorded a CD with all 28 of the short pieces in Mompu’s collection, and included two of them on her NPR Tiny Desk Concert.