DIARY: Tuesday, June 2, 2020

June 2, 2020 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

AFTER A WEEKEND OF VIOLENCE — PART TWO:

Continuing yesterday’s theme, and mindful of the challenge to the music industry by the organizers of Blackout Tuesday to set aside normal work today “for an honest, reflective, and productive conversation about what actions we need to collectively take to support the Black, community,” we can think of no more eloquent words to recommend than those of Wynton Marsalis in his long Facebook post from May 30.

“This is my response to injustice in our country and the world across the last forty years,” he writes at the end, sharing album covers of his compositions that draw on African American music and stories. Listen here to his 1997 oratorio Blood on the Fields, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

We will resume posting and send our weekly newsletter on Wednesday.

About Daniel Hathaway

Daniel Hathaway founded ClevelandClassical.com in September, 2008, after a thirty-one year tenure as music director of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, where he founded the Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert Series and Trinity Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School, he also studied historical musicology at Princeton and Harvard Universities. Before coming to Cleveland in 1977, he served as head of humanities at the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City and as head of arts at Groton School in Massachusetts. In Cleveland, he has served on the music staff of Cleveland Opera, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the faculty of Laurel School. As an organist, Hathaway has played recitals in the U.S., England, France, Germany, and Austria. He team-teaches Music Journalism at Oberlin College and Conservatory and is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

No Exit and Zeitgeist: An Evocation of Our Current Time (Jan. 9)

by Mike Telin

On Saturday, January 9 at SPACES, Cleveland-based No Exit and St. Paul-based Zeitgeist continued their long-standing collaboration with An Evocation of Our Current Time.

Unlike most performances where the audience is aware of what they will be experiencing, this one gave you very little information in advance other than it was to be “a 55-minute multimedia experience that draws on improvisation, film, artificial intelligence, environmental manipulation, lies, magic, gaslighting and other forms of chicanery.”

Unlike most No Exit concerts there were no elaborate programs to follow. And instead of presenting a number of works by a variety of composers, An Evocation of Our Current Time was a single work by No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer with technical assistance by James Praznik. As the capacity audience took their seats in the long gallery they were face to face with a dozen musicians, a projector, and a white wall.
[Read on…]

Trio Seoul: warmth and thoughtfulness at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Jan. 14)

by Stephanie Manning

Despite the frigid Wednesday weather dumping snow outside the Cleveland Museum of Art, January 14 almost felt like a pleasant spring day inside Gartner Auditorium. That phenomenon had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with Trio Seoul, whose warm camaraderie and excellent musicianship brightened the venue considerably.

Pianist Kyu Yeon Kim, cellist Brannon Cho, and violinist Jinjoo Cho — whose ENCORE Chamber Music Institute co-presented the event — started things off with their sunniest piece, Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 39 in G. The musicians kept the affect light and flowing, centered on the tasteful piano lines from Kim.

[Read on…]

Verdi’s Requiem, Welser-Möst, Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus find sacred balance, stamina (Jan. 15)

by Kevin McLaughlin

Photo by Yehven Gulenko

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Verdi’s Requiem surprised in its beauty on Thursday evening Jan. 15 at Severance Music Center in a performance by Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus.

Welser-Möst understands that the Requiem lives on a fault line between opera house and church, but, as he explains in the program, a performance ought never lose sight of Verdi’s reverence for the mass text. On Thursday the balance felt wisely judged. The “Dies irae” was terrifying precisely because it was controlled. The choir’s entrance struck with sudden force.

[Read on…]

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