by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: “Holiday Organ Spectacular” at Trinity, impressionism in front of impressionism at CMA, holiday favorites from Cynthia Cioffari and the BassoonaRoos, “Carols and Cocoa and the Dana Holiday Concert,” Opera Scenes and Trombone Choir at Oberlin, and Apollo’s Fire’s “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas”
•Announcements: Application deadlines for the Cleveland International Piano Competition and the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability Conference, and honors for harpist Yolanda Kondonassis from Musical America
•Almanac: Bright Sheng, Dave Brubeck, and Lead Belly
HAPPENING TODAY:
At this time of year, the list of concerts grows tall with holiday and end-of-semester events — and even taller as new performances pop up with holiday spontaneity, threatening to fall through the cracks. But phew! — the heroic writers of our Diary series can come to the rescue, mapping out the long-scheduled events as well as whatever happenings have suddenly come on our radar. Today’s list is a mix of both.
At noon, Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag series will hold its “Holiday Organ Spectacular,” featuring Todd Wilson (pictured) and students from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Click here for program details and the livestream. A freewill offering will be taken up. (And with Wilson’s retirement from Trinity coming at the end of the month, don’t forget to sign the Messiah score that will be his gift — look for Emily at the table where you enter and exit the church).
At 6, as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Chamber Music in the Galleries series, faculty from the Music Settlement will perform works of classical impressionism in front of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (Agapanthus). It’s free.
At 6:30, University of Akron faculty bassoonist Cynthia Cioffari and the school’s BassoonaRoos ensemble will head to the Medina County District Library to play holiday favorites, including Nutcracker selections, Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, and jazz-inspired arrangements. It’s free, but registration is recommended here.
At 7 in Stambaugh Auditorium is “Carols and Cocoa and the Dana Holiday Concert,” featuring the YSU Trombone Ensemble, YSU Flute Ensemble, Dana Clarinet Ensemble, Brass Quintet, YSU Jazz Ensemble, Voices of YSU, Dana Chorale, Dana String Orchestra, and Dana Symphony Orchestra. Carols in the Grand Ballroom will be followed by the main program in the Concert Hall — with cocoa to be had during intermission in the lobby. Tickets are available here.
And finally, at 7:30, you have your choice of three events:
The two at Oberlin Conservatory are free and will also be livestreamed: Oberlin Opera Scenes I (musical selections and monologues from works by Otto Nicolai, William Shakespeare, Benjamin Britten, Lee Hoiby, and Cole Porter — details here) and a concert by the Oberlin Trombone Choir (works by Steven Verhelst, Franz Joseph Haydn, David Biedenbender, Daniel Speer, Ethan Pound, and Richard Wagner — details here).
The other is at Bath Church UCC, where Apollo’s Fire will give the first of several performances of “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas” — a communal celebration of the American immigrant experience, welcoming Christmas with love, singing, dancing, and prayer. Read Mike Telin’s interview with hammered dulcimer player Tina Bergmann here, and get tickets here.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Applications are due December 15 for the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition (July 28 – August 10). Click here for details.
CIM faculty harpist Yolanda Kondonassis has been named one of Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals for 2023. Read an article from CIM’s Newsroom here and see the full list here.
And the Ohio Arts Council has shared that the Kennedy Center’s Office of Accessibility is seeking proposals for the 2024 LEAD (Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability) Conference, to be held in Seattle from July 29 through August 4. Proposals are due December 11. More info here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Turning 68 today is Chinese-born American composer Bright Sheng, who is known for incorporating elements of Eastern and Western music into his compositions. Along those lines, he’s named Béla Bartók among his greatest influences, given that composer’s imitation of folk melodies, and his harnessing of the flavor of folk music rather than necessarily its style.
Sheng’s works have twice been named first runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize — listen to one of those pieces, the orchestral work H’un (Lacerations), here in a recording by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony.
Sharing that birthday is American composer and jazz pianist Dave Brubeck (1920-2012). Perhaps the most fitting way for us to honor that figure is by listening to Jazz at Oberlin, a live album by the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel in 1953. (Click here for a playlist of the album on YouTube.)
Not only considered among the best of Brubeck and among the best albums of the decade, it was also highly influential on the presentation of jazz — and on the prospect of official jazz studies at Oberlin, something that wasn’t at all in the picture in the ‘50s. Wendell Logan, who in 1973 launched the College’s jazz department, described that Finney Chapel concert as “the watershed event that signaled the change of performance space for jazz from the nightclub to the concert hall.” (Read more about the history of the school’s jazz department here.)
Tracing backwards from jazz to blues, we come to American singer, songwriter, and twelve-string guitarist Huddie William Ledbetter, best known by the stage name Lead Belly, who died on this date in 1949. Both his own songs and his recordings of folk standards have been highly influential, and his 1940 sessions with RCA Victor resulted in the album The Midnight Special and Other Southern Prison Songs, considered a milestone in African American folk music. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
Enjoy his vibrant, expressive tenor and his improvisational bits of speech here in one of his most popular recordings: the folk song Where Did You Sleep Last Night.