by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: free concerts from Piano Cleveland (Chu-Fang Huang in “Piano at the Pub”) and Singers Companye
•Announcements: grant programs from Arts Midwest and South Arts, and the Canton Symphony outdoors with Summer Serenades
•Featured video: saxophonist Gary Bartz on NPR Tiny Desk series
•Almanac: Verdi’s Requiem and Wagner
HAPPENING TODAY:
Two free concerts for your Wednesday evening.
At 6:00 pm at Forest City Brewing, Piano Cleveland presents Chu-Fang Huang as part of the “Piano at the Pub” series.
And at 7:30 at First United Methodist Church in Cuyahoga Falls, Samuel Gordon leads Singers Companye in a program titled “Jubilate Deo,” which includes Dan Forrest’s work of the same name, Gordon’s own Redbuds, Jocelyn Hagen’s Trees Need not Walk the Earth, Jacob Narverud’s Sunflower, Paul John Rudoi’s Two Old Crows, and Over the Rainbow (arr. Narverud).
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Here are three grant programs with upcoming deadlines: apply by May 23 for the GIG Fund and the Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities from Arts Midwest, and by June 1 for Jazz Road from South Arts.
The Canton Symphony has released the full schedule for this year’s Summer Serenades, the series of free outdoor concerts around Stark County. The series includes nine chamber music concerts as well as a full orchestra concert and live animal showcase on July 13. See the schedule here.
FEATURED VIDEO:
One of last week’s NPR Tiny Desk Concerts features Oberlin jazz saxophone professor Gary Bartz, who also takes the mic for some vocals in a five-song setlist of originals: Nommo – The Majick Song (feat. Mumu Fresh), I’ve Known Rivers, Reparations (feat. J. Ivy), Music Is My Sanctuary, and The Song of Loving-Kindness. Watch here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Daniel Hathaway
On May 22 in 1874, Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem was first performed at the church of San Marco in Milan, ending a long requiem saga for the composer, who had originally proposed a collaborative work by several Italian composers to honor Gioachino Rossini after his death in 1868. Verdi himself contributed the final movement, “Libera me,” but for various reasons, the project fell through a week before its premiere in November of 1869.
Verdi found an opportunity to recycle that “Libera me” when Alessandro Manzoni died in 1873 and he embarked on writing a new Requiem all on his own in honor of the famous Italian author and humanist.
Click here to watch a performance of the Requiem by CityMusic Cleveland at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on May 2, 2019 led by James Gaffigan. The special Yom ha-Sho’ah performance commemorated the prisoners at the German concentration camp Theresienstadt, who performed the Requiem 16 times in 1944, before being sent to their death at Auschwitz. Soloists are Chabrelle Williams, soprano, Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano, and Joshua Blue, tenor. The chorus was prepared by Ben Malkevitch.
(PS: the Requiem for Rossini was finally performed in 1988 in Stuttgart, conducted by Helmuth Rilling. Listen here.)
And on May 22, 1813, Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig. It’s now next to impossible to talk about the composer of the Ring operas without referencing his popularity with the perpetrators of the Third Reich.
British actor and writer Stephen Fry addresses Wagner’s complicated legacy and his own fascination with the composer’s music in his hour-and-a-half long Wagner and Me, available for free in an occasionally spotty posting on YouTube, and for a fee on various streaming services.
Former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor Brett Mitchell joins Bill O’Connell in WCLV’s 35-minute video discussion of The Ring. Watch Gods and Monsters: The Musical Journey of Wagner’s Ring Cycle here.
If that’s all too heavy a subject for a warm spring day, British singing comedienne Anna Russell is only a click away with her priceless analysis of The Ring. Enjoy a video of her first farewell recital at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1984 that features some of her immortal sketches: How to Become a Singer; Wind Instruments I Have Known; On Pink Chiffon; How to Write Your Own Gilbert & Sullivan Opera; Analysis of the Ring Cycle (“I’m not making this up, you know!”) & Backwards with the Folk Song.