by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At Noon, organist Jonathan W. Moyer plays music by Dupré, Franck, Bruhns & Johann Sebastian Bach at the Church of the Covenant, and at 7:30, Timothy Weiss leads faculty baritone Timothy Lefebvre and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble & Oberlin Sinfonietta in the first performance of Jesse Jones’ Song Cycle (composer pictured) in Finney Chapel. Both free concerts will be webcast.
Visit our Concert Listings for details of these performances.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
French president Emmanuel Macron has confirmed a new opening date for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and plans for a new museum in Paris. Read a story in The Art Newspaper here.
The Cleveland Institute of Music has received a gift of $1 million toward the projected $21 million renovation of Kulas Hall from a generous previous donor who remains anonymous. Read a press release here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
December 12 is a rare blank date in music history. Drawing on loosened associations, two celebrations occur to us which may be worth a thought.
First, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was born on this date in Ådalsbruk. His fame rests mainly on his 1893 expressionist image, The Scream, which exists in several versions, has been stolen twice, and “communicates the anxiety and terror of a man being dragged into a new and terrifying modern era, defined by conflict and mechanical industry.”
If that resonates with your own feelings, click here to learn more by reading the British Museum’s Ten Things you may not know about The Scream.
And December 12 is National Ding-a-Ling Day, “ which encourages us to reconnect by telephone with people we once talked to often. “It may be an old classmate, co-worker, or neighbor from years ago. Or perhaps a call will go out to the child who used to mow the grass during the summer. How about that couple who carpooled for soccer? What was their name? Many people slip out of our lives who would love to hear the ding-a-ling of a call from you. Why don’t you join the Ding-a-ling club and call someone this year?”
That leads us (via those loosened associations) to Gian-Carlo Menotti’s opera The Telephone (or L’Amour à trois), which premiered in 1947 and was presented by Oberlin Opera in a special made-for-the-pandemic production directed by Jason Aaron Goldberg in November of 2020. Jarrett Hoffman reviewed it for ClevelandClassical.com.
