By Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At noon, organist Mayumi Naramura & Baroque cellist Grace Mockus play music by Sweelinck, Byrd, Purcell, Domenico Gabrieli & Salvatore Lanzetti at the Church of the Covenant.
And at 7:30, the Russian Duo and friends — Oleg Kruglyakov, balalaika, Terry Boyarsky, piano, Eliesha Nelson, viola, Peter Wright, tenor, and Chris Bohan — offer music by Tchaikovsky and stories by Chekhov at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
Check our Concert Listings for details of these and forthcoming events.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Last week the Management and Musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra ratified a new, three-year trade agreement that includes adjustments to compensation, and changes to working conditions “that benefit both the institution and the musicians.” Read a press release here.
INTERESTING READ:
In preparation for his role as Leonard Bernstein in the biopic Maestro, actor Bradley Cooper studied with such conductors as Gustavo Dudamel and Yannick Nézet-Séguin — “and by stealth in concert halls or from the orchestra pit.” Read “Conducting Lessons: How Bradley Cooper Became Leonard Bernstein” in the New York Times here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Here are two American composers’ birthdays to which to raise a glass today: Zenobia Powell Perry, born in Boley, Oklahoma in 1908, and Steve Reich, who made his personal debut on this date in New York in 1936.
In 2015, ChamberFest Cleveland programmed two of Reich’s works, New York Counterpoint (for amplified clarinet and tape, featuring Franklin Cohen in CIM’s Kulas Hall) and Nagoya Marimbas (played by Scott Christian and Alexander Cohen at The Wine Spot).
Two of Reich’s CDs were reviewed by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette music critic Jeremy Reynolds for ClevelandClassical.com. Read his takes on the EP of Electric Counterpoint here and Third Coast Percussion | Steve Reich here.
Composer, poet, pianist, and educator Zenobia Powell Perry studied privately with R. Nathaniel Dett in Rochester while Dett was teaching at Eastman. She moved on to work with Darius Milhaud (pictured above), and with William Dawson at the Tuskegee Institute, and participated in the teacher training program for Black Americans headed by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Her Underground Railroad opera Tawawa House, written in 1985, was restored and revived in 2014 at the Gallo Center for the Performing Arts in Modesto California. Watch a documentary about the work here, and click here for a performance of an orchestral suite from the opera by the Southeast Symphony in Los Angeles, conducted by Anthony Partner.
