by Jarrett Hoffman
TRANSIENT CANVAS & NO EXIT:
No Exit has announced that they will present Boston-based duo Transient Canvas (bass clarinetist Amy Advocat and marimbist Matt Sharrock) on Friday, February 5 at 7:30 pm, concluding the two ensembles’ season-long partnership. The program, “Do Your Thing,” is all Cleveland and all new — it consists of six world premieres by students at Kent State University, Cleveland State University, and Baldwin Wallace Conservatory who have spent the past few months workshopping with the duo. Watch on YouTube or Facebook.
WORKING TOWARD RACIAL EQUITY:
In The New York Times, Joshua Barone highlights seven organizations that have long been working to correct inequities in classical music. Read about the work of the Chicago Sinfonietta, Imani Winds, Tonality, Sphinx Organization, Castle of Our Skins, The Dream Unfinished, and Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra — mostly small organizations — and “the advice they have for their larger counterparts.” Also receiving a shout-out are the Detroit Symphony and Michigan Opera Theater, “two organizations known for long-term, local investments and programs.” Read the article here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
If you were born on January 27, congratulations — you share a birthday with Mozart. No doubt some of his genius has been transmitted unto you. Several other famous musicians were born on this date as well: composers Édouard Lalo, Jerome Kern, Radames Gnattali, and Nancy Galbraith (a Pittsburgh native still living there), pianist/composer John Ogdon, conductor/pianist/composer “Skitch” Henderson, jazz musicians Bobby “Blue” Bland and “Hot Lips” Page, clarinetists Jack Brymer and Michael Collins (based in Britain), and flutist Emmanuel Pahud (Berlin). If by chance you don’t feel quite up to their standing as you all converse around the birthday table, perhaps you can make sure you’re all seated on tall stools that make everyone’s legs dangle, so that no one can quite take themselves seriously.
If you died on this date — first, we appreciate you reading, and second, you’re in good company as well, with composers such as Hieronymus Praetorius and Giuseppe Verdi, and the harpsichord craftsman Bartolomeo di Francesco Cristofori.
Let’s mix and match a couple performers and composers. First up: Mozart with a noted specialist in his music, Jack Brymer, who was considered one of the leading clarinetists of his generation. Listen here to his 1969 recording with the Allegri Quartet of the Clarinet Quintet in A, which he played in his final public concert 28 years later.
(You can use that as an aural preview of this Friday’s on-demand concert presented by CMS Lincoln Center via the Cleveland Chamber Music Society, which features David Shifrin in the Mozart Quintet and other works.)
Another possible pairing: Berlin Philharmonic principal flute Emmanuel Pahud with Verdi, here in the Fantasy on Themes from “La Traviata,” an arrangement that Pahud commissioned. The flutist is joined here by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
And how about “Skitch” Henderson with Jerome Kern, on the 1956 album Sketches by Skitch. Listen to Kern/Hammerstein’s All The Things You Are as reimagined by Henderson and His Orchestra, cued up here on YouTube. (Henderson’s nickname was given to him by another nicknamed star, “Bing” Crosby, because of his talent sketching out new arrangements.)
