HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon, organist Kingsley Price Wood plays works by Anonymous, J.S. Bach, César Franck and Maurice Durufle at the Church of the Covenant.
And tonight at 7:30 in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical presents the renowned French ensemble Les Arts Florissants in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at 300, featuring violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte (pictured).
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Here are two musicians with local connections who entered the world on November 18.
Lillian Fuchs’ two brothers, Joseph and Harry, both played in The Cleveland Orchestra, Joseph as concertmaster and Harry as a cellist. But the violist of the family, born on this date in 1901, didn’t mind being left out of the spotlight, even by her own parents. She told The Strad 1986, “I was delighted to be left alone.” Lillian was a celebrated soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue who taught for 29 years at the Manhattan School of Music, 26 at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and 22 at the Juilliard School. Her playing inspired works by Bohuslav Martinů, among others.
Her own compositions are less well-known, but violist Marina Thibeault brought Fuchs’ Sonata Pastorale to the LCCC Signature Series in 2019, and recorded it on her album ELLES, dedicated to women composers. Read our interview with interview with Thibeault here.
And composer Ruth Crawford Seeger was born on November 18, 1953 in East Liverpool, Ohio. She lived for a short time in Akron and around the Midwest before growing up in Jacksonville, Florida. Her career was impressive and unusual — an important American modernist who influenced Elliott Carter, and later became a folk music specialist. She was also the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Listen to her String Quartet (1931) in a performance by the Denver-based Playground Ensemble here, and read more about the composer and that work in an article from The New York Times. (“…she wrote this piece that’s so ahead of its time,” JACK Quartet violinist Austin Wulliman said.)
