by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: cellist John Walz and friends at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland Orchestra musicians and Karamu Artists in a program curated by Allison Loggins-Hull (pictured), singer-songwriter Alex Cuba at Transformer Station, Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble with trombonist/composer Alex Paxton
•Announcements: Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus to hold Tenor and Bass Camp, Kaboom Studio Orchestra taking auditions, Welser-Möst receives honorary membership with Vienna Phil
•Almanac: Leo Sowerby
HAPPENING TODAY:
At noon, cellist John Walz of the LA Opera Orchestra will be featured in a Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert, joined by violinist Andrew Sords, violist Eric Wong, and pianist Elizabeth DeMio. The program includes works by Johan Halvorsen (Passacaglia in g, adapted from Handel), Beethoven (String Trio in c, Op. 9, No. 3), Chopin (Prelude No. 6 in e), Clara Schumann (Piano Trio in g, first movement), and Brahms (Hungarian Dance No. 6 in D, arranged by Joseph Joachim). A freewill offering will be taken up. Access the livestream here
At 7:00, members of The Cleveland Orchestra will visit Karamu House’s Jelliffe Theater to join Karamu Artists in a program titled “Legacy: Past, Present, and Future.” Curated by composer Allison Loggins-Hull, the program includes Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Langston, and Loggins-Hull’s Persist and excerpts from Choir Boy. It’s free, but tickets are required.
The 7:00 program from singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Alex Cuba at Transformer Station, presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art, is sold out.
And at 7:30 at Warner Concert Hall, Timothy Weiss will lead the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble in works by trombonist and composer Alex Paxton. It’s free. Click here for the livestream.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus will present its first Tenor and Bass Camp on June 29 from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm at University Circle United Methodist. It’s free and open to 8th-12th grade tenors and basses as well as unchanged/changing voices, offering a space for students to explore repertoire for low voices, engage in exercises to help navigate the voice change, and ask questions about the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus faculty and singers. The application deadline is May 24. Register here.
The Kaboom Studio Orchestra is taking auditions for violin, viola, cello, flute, harp, and percussion. Apply here.
And Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst has been awarded honorary membership to the Vienna Philharmonic. “Honorary membership is not only awarded to musical artists, but also to individuals who share personal bonds of friendship with the orchestra. For many years now, Franz Welser-Möst has been one of us,” said Daniel Froschauer, Chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic. Read the full statement here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Daniel Hathaway
Leo Sowerby, born on May 1, 1895 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, figured prominently in the musical life of Chicago, where his works appeared regularly on Chicago Symphony programs, but is remembered today mostly for the music he wrote for St. James’ Church (later Cathedral) where he served as organist and choirmaster from 1927. In 1962, he retired and became founding director of the College of Church Musicians at Washington Cathedral, a position he held until 1968, when he died at Port Clinton, Ohio, enroute to Camp Wa-Li-Ro in Put-in-Bay, the summer choir camp where he had taught for many years.
(In summers, Sowerby also taught at the Evergreen Conference for Church Musicians in Colorado, where I had the honor of participating in his composition class while in high school. He recommended my Four Evening Orisons to his publisher, H.W. Gray, and they may still be in print.)
Sowerby won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize in Music for The Canticle of the Sun for chorus and orchestra, premiered by the New York Philharmonic and the Schola Cantorum in 1945 at Carnegie Hall (and performed here by Caros Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus of Chicago in 2011).
Among the composer’s virtuosic works for the organ are Pageant and his Symphony for Organ (whose final movement, Passacaglia, is performed here by Tate Addis at Yale’s Woolsey Hall in 2015). Sowerby also wrote an engaging Classic Concerto for organ and strings, performed here by Rolf Karlsen and the Oslo Philharmonic under William Strickland.
Back to the famous Pageant, he composed that pedal extravaganza for the young Italian virtuoso, Fernando Germani, the organist at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Germani commented after seeing the score; “Now write me something really difficult”. Listen here to a performance by Ken Cowan on the organ at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego, built by Quimby Pipe Organs of Warrenburg, Missouri.