by Mike Telin
HAPPENING TODAY:
“Winds of Change,” the second offering in this season’s Les Délices concert series is available online today. The program features Emi Ferguson, flute, Shelby Yamin, violin, Debra Nagy, oboe, Rebecca Reed, gamba and cello, and Sydney Guillaume, composer.
Inspired by philosophical ideals of liberty and equality and early abolitionist writing, works by Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. Georges and Luigi Boccherini are joined by a new work by Haitian composer Sydney Guillaume. During a pre-concert talk, musicologist Claude Dauphin and scholar/baritone Jean Bernard Cerin will share their research into Haitian musical history. The online-only concert will be available on-demand through December 17. Click here for tickets and link. Read our preview article here.
At 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, the CWRU Collegium, Early Music Singers, Baroque Chamber Ensembles, Renaissance Violin Band and cornettist Bruce Dickey will present “Nature’s Secret Whispering.” The program includes works by Orlando di Lasso, Annibale Perini, Erasmus Widmann, Lambert de Sayve, Andrea Gabrieli, and Michael Praetorius. The concert is free.
Also at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel, Oberlin Conservatory faculty Katherine Jolly, soprano, Jonathan Moyer, organ, and Alexa Still, flute will perform works by Arvo Pärt, Christopher Rouse, Jehan Alain, John Corigliano, William Bolcom, Dave Ragland, and William Grant Still. The event is free. Click here for live stream.
IN THE NEWS:
The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society has announced its International Series spring 2022 concert lineup. Duo Noire (Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett), will make their Cleveland debut on March 5. Paraguayan guitarist Berta Rojas makes her Cleveland debut on April 2, and on May 14 William Kanengiser will make a return visit to the series. All three concerts will be held at Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights. Tickets are available online.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today we celebrate the births of Carl Maria von Weber (1786), conductor Eugene Ormandy (1899), and violist/composer Lillian Fuchs (1901). As I scrolled through the list of other musical figures who were born on this day, I was curious to know who many of them were, or are. So today we celebrate the births of three people who were randomly selected from the list.
On this day in 1895, Swiss composer, pianist and conductor Ernst Levy was born in Basel, Switzerland. A noted musicologist, Levy taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago and the New England Conservatory. His book, A Theory of Harmony, published in 1985, delves into his concept of harmonic “undertones.” His compositional output includes 14 works for orchestra, a cello concerto, over 30 chamber music works, and 7 piano sonatas. He retired from academia in 1966 and returned to his native Switzerland where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died in 1981 in Morges, Switzerland.
Click here to listen to his live performance of Brahms’ Intermezzo in A, Op.118, No.2.
In 1914, composer and organist Leif Solberg was born in Lena, Norway. Following the completion of his studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music. From 1938 to 1982 Solberg served as the organist in Lillehammer. In addition to numerous works for organ, his catalogue includes cantatas, a string quartet, a violin sonata, and the Symphony in g. He died in 2016 at the age of 101.
Click here to listen to organist Tim Collins perform the Fugue from Solberg’s Fantasy and Fugue on the Folktune Se solens skjønne lys og prakt.
In 1927, composer and teacher Lawrence Moss was born in Los Angeles, California. Moss earned his B.A. at the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. from the Eastman School of Music, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. His teachers included Leon Kirchner and Ingolf Dahl. A recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Scholarship, and four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Moss has served on the facilities at Mills College, Yale University, and since 1969 has taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. His students include Northeast Ohio’s own Jeffrey Mumford. Moss makes his home in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Click here to listen to an interview with Lawrence Moss titled “Alive and Composing”.
