By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. On the schedule: light opera, Piano Cleveland Young Artist finals, carillon concerts & Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom with Nikolai Lugansky (pictured)
. Women’s Orchestra appoints music director, New Ohio Arts Economic Relief Program grants, administrative staff cuts at CIM
Almanac: milestones for composers Unsuk Chin, Harrison Birtwistle & James MacMillan
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld — the show with the famous Can-Can and the sixth and final Ohio Light Opera production to open this summer hit the stage in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster on Thursday and repeats on Sunday at 2. OLO’s other shows running in repertoire this weekend: How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Saturday at 2), Arizona Lady (Friday at 2), No, No, Nanette (Friday at 7:30) and Camelot (Saturday at 7:30).
Six finalists in the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists will play concerto movements with conductor Steven Byess and the Canton Symphony in the Final Round on Friday at 7:30 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Witness these performances either live or online (tickets required).
Fans of tower bells have two opportunities to hear the McGaffin Carillon in University Circle this weekend. Resident carillonneur will play “Mostly Baroque” on Friday at 12:15, and guest carillonneur Dennis Curry from the Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield, Michigan, will play a recital on Saturday at 6 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of that church. Enjoy these as outdoor music or catch a webcast and listen anywhere.
Finally, The Cleveland Orchestra will perform at Blossom on both Saturday and Sunday at 7. Nikolai Lugansky will be soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto and Stanislav Kochanovsky will lead the Russian composer’s First Symphony on Saturday. Sunday’s performance finds Lucas Waldin at the helm and vocalist Capathia Jenkins in the spotlight for “a wide-ranging revue of R&B classics by Adele, Toni Braxton, The Jackson 5, Earth, Wind and Fire, Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder, and other great soul and R&B artists.” Tickets available online.
Click here to visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings page for more information.
WOMEN’S ORCHESTRA NAMES NEW MUSIC DIRECTOR
The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra has named Eric Benjamin as its new music director.
Benjamin majored in music education at the New England Conservatory, returning in 1987 to study orchestral conducting with Carl St. Clair. Further conducting studies took him to Gunther Schuller’s Festival at Sandpoint (ID) and to Tanglewood, where he studied with Gustav Meier, Kurt Sanderling, Lukas Foss and Leonard Bernstein.
He has served as director of the Akron Youth Symphony, as guest conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, Erie Philharmonic, Canton Symphony, and Columbus Symphony, and as music director of the Tuscarawas Philharmonic.
For five years he hosted, wrote and produced the award-winning radio program “Klassical Kids“ on WCLV.
In 2017 he returned to the Akron Symphony as associate conductor. He is adjunct faculty at Kent State University and at the University of Mount Union, where he directs the Alliance Symphony and teaches courses in conducting, composition and arranging.
NEWS BRIEFS:
A second round of Ohio Arts Economic Relief Program grants sends another $20.4 million to 104 organizations around the state. The ARPA funds are part of a $5.83-billion appropriations bill signed earlier this year.
About a quarter of the grants went to Cuyahoga County organizations, with the three largest awards of $1.5 million going to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Playhouse Square Foundation and the Cleveland Orchestra’s nonprofit arm, the Musical Arts Association. The Cleveland Play House also received close to $1.1 million. Read more from IdeaStream here.
The Cleveland Institute of Music has eliminated about a dozen administrative staff as part of a restructuring effort. The University Circle institution has around 70 administrative staff listed on its website. An additional 152 are listed as conservatory and preparatory staff.
In a statement, CIM Chief Marketing Officer Kathleen Drohan wrote: The decision to restructure was made to preserve the exceptional training environment at CIM which our students have come to expect, while continuing to ensure that cost is not a barrier for any student. Read the IdeaStream story here.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
July 14 by Jarrett Hoffman
Korean-born composer Unsuk Chin, who was born in Seoul on this date in 1961 but has lived in Berlin for over 30 years, boasts a bio full of prestigious awards, positions, and associations with a who’s-who of top musicians and ensembles.
Among her most acclaimed pieces are several highlighting soloists. Her 1991-93 Akrostichon–Wortspiel (“Acrostic-Wordplay”) for soprano and ensemble is considered her international breakthrough, while her Violin Concerto won the 2004 Grawemeyer Award. To top it off, her Cello Concerto was ranked by The Guardian in 2019 as the 12th greatest work of 21st-century art music.
July 15 by Daniel Hathaway
The late English composer Harrison Birtwistle was born on this date in 1934 in Accrington, Lancashire (he died in 2022). His 1986 Earth Dances have been compared to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Christoph von Dohnányi recorded the work in 1996 with The Cleveland Orchestra for Decca (listen here), but there’s also a video of a performance by Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra led by Marcus Stenz.
July 16 by Daniel Hathaway
Scottish composer James MacMillan was born on July 16, 1959 in Kilwinning, Ayrshire. I interviewed Chanticleer’s music director Tim Keeler for a preview of a forthcoming performance on the Tuesday Musical series in Akron, and one of the works he highlighted was MacMillan’s O Radiant Dawn. It figures importantly in a program titled “Awakenings” that celebrates the re-emergence of vocal music as the pandemic loosens its grip on the choral world. “It’s a prayer to beckon the new day, a prayer for light to shine in darkness.” Listen here to the brief but moving piece as performed by Britain’s Apollo 5 at the VOCES8 Foundation in London, the former St. Anne & St. Agnes Church near St. Paul’s Cathedral.
