by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: pianist-composer Chris Neiner at the Covenant, and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble at Cleveland Chamber Music Society
•Interesting reads: Jakub Hrůša and Jennifer Koh in the news
•Almanac: Wynton Marsalis, Howard Shore, Charles Gounod, and Gussie Davis
HAPPENING TODAY:
Pianist-composer Chris Neiner is the featured artist today on the Tuesday Noon series at Church of the Covenant, where he’ll play music by Copland, Barber, and John Adams, as well as three works of his own. There will be a freewill offering.
And at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society welcomes the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble to Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, where a group of eight string players will play works by Brahms, Henry Purcell, and George Enescu. Tickets are available online.
You can find more details in our Concert Listings.
INTERESTING READS:
Let’s catch up with a pair of artists with ties to the area.
First, Jakub Hrůša, who has been a frequent guest conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra since his debut with the ensemble a decade ago. In an article in The Guardian, he talks about today’s announcement that in 2025, he will be music director of the Royal Opera House.
And violinist Jennifer Koh, who studied at Oberlin before launching an international career, collaborates with bass-baritone Davóne Tines in a new multimedia show titled “Everything Rises,” which they recently performed in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
As Anastasia Tsioulcas writes in her review for The New York Times, the project “interrogates what it means to be a classical musician of color — to have chosen to make a creative life and professional career in a medium and a milieu that are overwhelmingly white, and to have tucked away fundamental elements of their identities in the process.” Read here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today, wish a happy birthday to the legendary Wynton Marsalis, who turns 61. Among the many accomplishments of that trumpeter, composer, educator and Jazz at Lincoln Center artistic director, he wrote the first jazz composition to receive the Pulitzer Prize.
That honor came in 1997 for Blood on the Fields, his oratorio about the history of slavery in the United States. Listen to “Work Song” from that piece here, as performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, vocalists Paula West and Kenny Washington, and pianist Eric Reed under the direction of Marsalis in 2013.
Turning 76 is Canadian composer Howard Shore, a three-time Academy Award winner for his scores to the film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. Click here to listen to the Prague Film Orchestra and conductor George Korynta play music from The Fellowship of the Ring.
French composer Charles Gounod, who passed away on October 18, 1893, is most famous for his twelve operas, including the popular Faust. Listen to the “Ballet Music” from that work, played here by Yondani Butt and the London Symphony.
Another passing to honor is that of Dayton-born songwriter Gussie Davis, who died on this date in 1899. Rejected from Cincinnati’s Nelson College of Music because of his race (that school no longer exists), Davis received private lessons in exchange for low-wage janitorial work, and went on to become the first Black songwriter to reach fame in New York’s Tin Pan Alley scene. Head to YouTube to listen to his first song, published in 1880 and sung here by Vernon Dalhart: “We Sat Beneath The Maple On The Hill.”