by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ENTRIES:
. News Briefs: Cuyahoga Arts & Culture and Assembly for the Arts receive $3.3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act
. Interesting Reads & Listens: canceling the “1812,” musical chairs at Westminster Abbey & St. John’s Cambridge, a conversation between Pierre van der Westhuizen and Aaron Dworkin
. Almanac: celebrating birthdays of Ashkenazy, Hartke, and Morricone
ON TODAY:
Ohio Light Opera continues its run of The Student Prince at 2:00 pm at Freedlander Theatre in Wooster. Purchase tickets here.
There are two concerts in Kent today at 7:30 pm.
The first Kent/Blossom Faculty Concert features Cleveland Orchestra musicians Amy Lee, associate concertmaster, and Frank Rosenwein, principal oboe (pictured), plus various guests, in Ludwig Recital Hall. Tickets are available online.
And Standing Rock Cultural Arts & Kent United Church of Christ presents Jurij Fedynsky, bandura & kobza. The evening will include a prayer service featuring traditional Ukrainian sacred kants and psalms, dumy (historical epic poems), and folkloric songs. Kent UCC Church. Free, but donations are welcome.
To check out live concerts happening this week in Northeast Ohio, see our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
On July 5, Cuyahoga County Council awarded $3.3 million in funding made possible by the American Rescue Plan Act to Cuyahoga Arts & Culture and Assembly for the Arts to help bolster the creative economy, a sector hit hard by the ongoing pandemic. Read the story here.
Missing something at Blossom on July 4? Along with other ensembles, and for the first time since 1978, The Cleveland Orchestra withdrew Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture from its Independence Day weekend programs. Written to mark the retreat of Napoleon’s forces from Russia, the piece always seemed a curious choice for an American holiday. In a New York Times story, Cleveland Orchestra President and CEO André Gremmilet said, “Given the way Russia is behaving right now and the propaganda that is out there, to go and play music that celebrates their victory I just think would be upsetting for a lot of people.
“Everyone would hear that reference, complete with the cannons, to the current war involving Russia. It would be insensitive to people in general, and certainly to the Ukrainian population in particular.”
(An aside: the 1812 also created a labor issue for orchestras like the Boston Symphony, which, as the Boston Pops, began playing the piece in the 1970s for its Esplanade concerts on the Charles River. The BSO used an electronic device for the cannon bursts that needed to be operated by a member of the electricians’ union, but the cannon was also considered to be a musical instrument because it was cued into the score. So it took members of two unions to add that effect to the performance.)
London’s Westminster Abbey has announced the appointment of Andrew Nethsingha as organist and master of the choristers beginning in 2023, replacing James O’Donnell, who moves across the Pond to a professorship at Yale. Nethsingha has been music director of St. John’s College of Cambridge University since 2007. Read the Abbey’s press release here.
INTERESTING LISTEN:
Former Cleveland International Piano Competition head Pierre van der Westhuizen, now Executive & Artistic Director of Michigan’s Gilmore Festival, discusses the changing landscape for presenting organizations and the impact of digital platforms, in a conversation with Aaron Dworkin. Watch the ArtsJournal video here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On July 6, 1937, Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy was born in what is now Nizhny Novgorod. A frequent guest at Severance Hall, Ashkenazy recorded all of the Beethoven concertos from the keyboard. He talked about his life and career with host Zsolt Bognár in the 62nd episode of Living the Classical Life. watch the interview here.
And on July 6, 1952, composer Stephen Hartke was born in Orange, New Jersey. Two years before he became head of Oberlin’s composition department in 2015, he won a Grammy for his Meanwhile — Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays. Listen here to a performance of the work by eighth blackbird on Naxos. And listen to a podcast interview in Off The Podium with Tigran Arakelyan here.
Considering the withering heat and humidity of the past few days, doesn’t an afternoon in a cool, dark movie theater sound enticing? Or perhaps just a couple of hours on the couch in the A/C enjoying the music of one of the world’s premier film composers — Ennio Morricone — who died on July 6, 2020 at the age of 91.
Although Morricone never left Rome and never learned to speak English, he created some 400 film scores and a hundred classical compositions. Click here to listen to 39 excerpts from his oeuvre.
Among the other aspects of his intriguing life, Morricone was a skillful chess player who once held grand master Boris Spassky to a draw in a simultaneous competition involving 27 players, of which he was the last man standing.