by Daniel Hathaway
NEWS BITS:
There’s a podium change for The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert at Blossom on Saturday, August 28: the ensemble’s associate conductor, Vinay Parameswaren, will replace Elim Chan, who has experienced travel complications. The program, featuring pianist Jonathan Biss, remains the same.
The Akron Symphony will hold auditions for chorus members and paid section leaders at Faith Lutheran Church in Fairlawn on August 28 by appointment, beginning at 4:00 pm. Chris Albanese directs the chorus, which will perform Haydn’s The Creation and other works with the Orchestra this season. To schedule an audition, contact Brenda Justice, Coordinator of Choral Programs, by email.
The Canton Youth Symphonies have issued a last call for auditions for its three ensembles, led by music director Matthew Jenkins-Jaroszewicz and made up of students from six counties in Northeast Ohio. The sessions will take place from August 29 to September 1. Click here for details and signup information.
ONE YEAR LATER:
It’s informative to revisit the Diary for August 24, 2020, when the classical music world found itself heading into a new season with many unanswered questions. Even with the widespread availability of vaccines one year later, many of those questions remain as we approach 2021-2022. Here’s what we recommended as Interesting Reads then:
As some organizations begin taking exploratory steps to offer live performances once again, New York Times critic Anthony Tomassini writes about the difference between live and virtual concerts with reference to recitals of both types by pianist Conrad Tao. And his colleagues Joshua Barone and Zachary Woolfe reflect on their experience attending the same in-person concert after being deprived for nearly half a year: they heard the JACK Quartet playing in a New Jersey parking lot.
And as performing arts schools begin their fall semesters virtually or in-person, three Washington Post arts writers survey a number of officials — including Oberlin Conservatory Dean William Quillen — about the challenges ahead.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On August 24, 1924, American pianist Louis Teicher, one-half of the famous duo piano team of Ferrante and Teicher, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The two musicians met at Juilliard, began playing together, and embarked on a very successful career playing lighter music for two pianists. Early adopters of the prepared piano, they introduced a variety of insertions and techniques that resulted in such dazzling performances as their version of this Mambo tune.
And on this date in 1985, American composer Paul Creston died at the age of 78 in a suburb of San Diego. Born in New York City in 1906 to Sicilian parents (his birth name was Giuseppe Guttoveggio), the largely self-taught composer wrote a sizeable catalogue of music including six symphonies as well as treatises on rhythm, meter, and harmony.
Click here to enjoy Creston’s Fantasy for Trombone and Piano played by the Cleveland Orchestra’s Rick Stout with pianist Christina Dahl, and here to watch Joseph Gramley and Clive Driskill-Smith, the percussion/organ duo who perform as Organized Rhythm, play his Meditation for Marimba and Organ in Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan.
And for today’s silly season, non-musical story, we turn back to August 24, 1967, when the Youth International Party, led by Abbie Hoffman, interrupted trading at the New York Stock Exchange by tossing dollar bills from the viewing gallery to the trading floor, where brokers stopped what they were doing and scrambled to grab them. Read about Hoffman’s initial foray into guerrilla theater here in the Smithsonian Magazine.
