by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: “Folk Songs from the British Isles and Beyond” at Trinity Cathedral, and the Beijing Guitar Duo at Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library
•Announcements: Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus accepting applications, and the participants in the 2024 She Scores program from Local 4 Music Fund
•Almanac: Garrick Ohlsson’s last-minute visit to Cleveland, and going down the YouTube rabbit hole with Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife”
HAPPENING TODAY:
Today’s noontime Trinity Brownbag Concert at Trinity Cathedral is titled “Folk Songs from the British Isles and Beyond,” and features Abigail Hakel-Garcia (soprano and violin) and Adrian Murillo (guitar and theorbo) — pictured above — in works including Johnny O’Braidislee (Scottish traditional), The Ash Grove (Welsh traditional), Turlough O’Carolan’s O’Rourke’s Revel Rout, Rebecca Scout Nelson’s Beautiful Mess, and Mark O’Connor’s Appalachian Waltz. A freewill offering will be taken up. You can also catch the concert online.
And at 6:30, Tuesday Musical presents the Beijing Guitar Duo (Meng Su and Yameng Wang) in a free, one-hour concert at Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library. Registration required.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus is accepting applications for the 2024-25 season. More info here.
The Local 4 Music Fund has released information about everyone involved in the 2024 She Scores program. Click here to read about the composers who were accepted, as well as the panel members and musicians taking part.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Italian-American composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born on this date in Florence in 1895, as was American pianist Garrick Ohlsson in Bronxville, NY in 1948. Meanwhile, German composer Johannes Brahms died of liver cancer at age 63 in Vienna on this date in 1897, while German-born American composer Kurt Weill suffered a heart attack at 50 and passed away not long after, on April 3, 1950 in New York City. Finally, British tenor Peter Pears died in Aldeburgh in 1986 at the age of 75.
Picking out a couple of those names, celebrate Ohlsson by reading about his recent, last-minute appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra in a review by Kevin McLaughlin for Cleveland.com. (“With Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra musicians as partners, the pianist strode onstage to render as refined and unfussy a performance of a Mozart Piano Concerto as one might hope to hear.”)
And go down a YouTube rabbit hole in honor of Weill by bopping around from one version to another of his famous ballad “Mack the Knife” from The Threepenny Opera, one of his many collaborations with Bertolt Brecht.
Lotte Lenya sings it in the original German (she also sang in the original production), saxophonist Sidney Bechet transforms the tune into a virtuosic display for jazz band, Bobby Darin smooths it out all nice and cool, and in a version for wind quintet, the Amsterdam Quintet spins it into a lyrical, almost pastoral scene — not exactly a portrayal of a serial killer, but something quite pleasing to the ear nonetheless.