by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: organist Katherine Johnson at noon
•News: Oberlin’s Poiesis Quartet wins Fischoff, Ohio arts funding announced, CIPC tickets on sale
•Almanac: the danzas of Juan Morel Campos
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12:00 pm on the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Noon Organ Plus series, organist Katherine Johnson will play a recital that includes Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Three Impromptus, Op. 78, César Franck’s Cantabilé (Trois Pièces pour grand orgue), Marcel Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in f, Op. 7, No. 2, and Rachel Laurin’s Étude Héroïque, Op. 38. A freewill offering will be taken up. The concert will also be livestreamed.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
On Sunday, the Oberlin Conservatory-based Poiesis Quartet won the Grand Prize at the 2023 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. “Comprising violinists Sarah Ma and Max Ball, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby,” as The Violin Channel reports, “the ensemble was also awarded the Gold Medal in this year’s Senior String Division, plus the ‘Lift Every Voice’ prize for the best performance of a piece by a historically underrepresented composer.” Their winnings? $16,500, “plus a tour performing concerts and outreach in the Midwestern United States and the Emilia Romagne Festival in Italy.”
On Friday, as part of the first round of the Ohio Arts Economic Relief Grant Program, the state of Ohio announced over $23 million in support for 139 arts organizations around the state. Read the article here from the Ohio Department of Development, and see the list of recipients here.
And tickets are now on sale for the 2023 Cleveland International Piano Competition and Institute for Young Artists, which runs July 5-16.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Composer Juan Morel Campos was born on this date in 1857 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Campos was both prolific and versatile, writing in a wide variety of forms, from masses to marches, but it is his danzas — which make up about half of his output — that have made him most famous. Having studied with Manuel Gregorio Tavárez, “The Father of the Danza,” Campos eventually became known as the quintessential composer in that genre.
Campos frequently wrote for his own dance orchestra, La Lira Ponceña, and on that note, you can click here to listen to conductor Rafael Enrique Irizarry and the Orquesta Filarmonica de Puerto Rico perform two Campos danzas: Gloria and No me toques.
Campos also arranged his danzas for piano, and one valuable resource to listen to those versions is the YouTube channel of Luciano Quiñones, himself a pianist-composer who specializes in the danza. Click here to listen to his performance of Maldito amor, representing the composer’s oft-visited theme of tormented love.