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Fire, Grace, and Ash at St. Malachi’s April 30

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by Mike Telin

“Music is something that throughout time has developed different flavors around the world,” violinist Edwin Huizinga said during a Sunday morning telephone conversation.

“There are no borders in music. And it’s amazing to me that even centuries ago, music was being shared in houses and pubs. Even then there were people traveling around. I always think of O’Carolan, who was this itinerant Irish harpist.

“He was blind and there are stories of him meeting up with Baroque musicians and composers, and sharing tunes with each other. So one of my passions in life is to share the fact that all music is similar in the way that it’s created. It comes from a rhythmical background, and a community background.” [Read more…]

After two years online, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival goes live again from April 8-10

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by Daniel Hathaway

Nine decades ago when it was still a college, the grand plan for Baldwin Wallace University’s annual Bach Festival was based on a repeating cycle of four of the Leipzig cantor’s major vocal works, giving students the opportunity to sing and play the two Passions, the B-minor Mass, and the Christmas Oratorio during their undergraduate days in Berea.

Back on track after a two-year online exile, the 2022 Festival, enhanced by a $100,000 gift from the Kulas Foundation, will comprise 15 in-person events, including a performance of four of the six cantatas that make up Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

The weekend will also continue the 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of BW’s Riemenschneider Bach Institute, named for scholar and festival founder Albert Riemenschneider, a party that was interrupted by the pandemic in 2020.

Part of the Kulas funding will support the appearances of two period ensembles now based in Boston that were formed largely by students who met at Oberlin and at the Juilliard School. [Read more…]

ACRONYM to release its
10th CD on July 24

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Baroque string band ACRONYM cleverly changes the meaning behind its abbreviated name for each of its recording projects. For their tenth and latest CD, due to be released on July 24, they’ve pegged themselves as “Archive Crawlers; Researchers Of Niche Yellowed Manuscripts.”

An apt description, for Cantate domino cantica obsoleta: Forgotten Works from the Düben Collection mines a rich trove of some 2,300 manuscripts in the library of Uppsala University. The holdings were assembled by a small dynasty of composers who served as Kapellmeisters to the Royal Swedish Court in Stockholm during the 17th and 18th centuries.

“It’s a fascinating archive,” Kivie Cahn-Lipman said by telephone from Youngstown, where he teaches cello at Youngstown State University. “It’s mainly a collection by German composers with a smattering of other folks. There’s Latin and German choral music, a small number of pieces in French and Swedish, and one vocal work in a nonsense language.” [Read more…]

A guide to staying home and streaming videos of concerts

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Live streams, re-broadcasts, digital archives, and YouTube channels — here are some videos of performances to keep you occupied during social distancing.

Beginning locally, some performances are still taking place via live stream, without an audience. On Thursday, March 19 at 4:30 pm, Oberlin Conservatory will stream a faculty and guest concert from Stull Recital Hall. Flutist Alexa Still, cellist Mihai Tetel, and pianist Evan Hines come together in Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Játo (“Jet Whistle”) and Valerie Coleman’s 2019 Amazonia.

Piano Cleveland, the presenting organization of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, has announced a new weekly series called The Quarantine Concerts, to be streamed every Thursday at 7:30 pm from Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland. The first concert, on March 19, will feature pianist Yaron Kohlberg as well as the piano duo of Natsumi Shibagaki and Irwin Shung. Online audience members have the opportunity to offer their support directly to these artists by donating to Piano Cleveland’s Musicians’ Fund.

[Read more…]

Rambling House: fifteen minutes with violinist Edwin Huizinga

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by Daniel Hathaway

One of the most flexible and prolific violinists on the concert circuit, Edwin Huizinga will bring one of his multiple musical personalities to Medina and Cleveland this weekend, when he joins the musicians and dancers of Rambling House for an early-bird St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

The Celtic show, which will also feature soprano Amanda Powell, guitarist William Coulter, uilleann piper and flutist Brian Bigley, violinist Kristen Bigley, storyteller Tomàseen Foley, and dancers Brandon Asazawa and Alyssa Reichert, will be performed on Saturday, March 2 at 7:30 at the Medina Performing Arts Center (tickets here), and on Sunday, March 3 at 7:00 pm at the Bop Stop (tickets here). [Read more…]

CD Review —
ACRONYM: The Battle, the Bethel & the Ball

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by Nicholas Stevens

ACRONYM — Anachronistic Cooperative, Realizing Obscure Nuanced Yesteryear’s Masterpieces — does not play the kind of music that marketers can brand as “relaxing.” Just as classical musicians have questioned the selling of their art as soporific and soothing, these twelve string and keyboard players reject sleepiness, self-seriousness, and the confines of the canon. On The Battle, the Bethel & the Ball, they pursue their stated mission of giving life to unknown, “wild instrumental music of the 17th century.” [Read more…]

ACRONYM in The Battle of Vienna on Pipino Series in Youngstown (Oct. 5)

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by Robert Rollin

On Friday, October 5, the Baroque string band ACRONYM presented The Battle of Vienna in Youngstown’s Ford Family Recital Hall on Youngstown State University’s inaugural Donald P. Pipino Performing Arts Series. The program was a mélange of inventive 17th-century works employing novel techniques brought by Italian composers to the German-speaking lands, including Venetian polychoral effects. ACRONYM’s consistently fine intonation and exceptional ensemble were nothing short of amazing all evening. [Read more…]

ACRONYM to play Baroque battle music on inaugural Pipino Series at YSU

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by Daniel Hathaway
and Kivie Cahn-Lipman

Youngstown State University is inaugurating a new cycle of concerts this season: the Donald P. Pipino Performing Arts Series, which continues through April 2019, includes seven events in diverse genres. Commenting on the new offerings in a press release, Phyllis M. Paul, Dean of the Cliffe College of Creative Arts & Communication, said, “The Series brings to Youngstown the types of cultural opportunities usually found only in large metropolitan areas.”

The second event on Friday, October 5 at 7:30 pm in Ford Family Recital Hall at the DeYor Center on Youngstown’s Federal Plaza will feature the celebrated Baroque string band ACRONYM in a program commemorating the 1683 Battle of Vienna. That standoff was a turning point in the long conflict between the Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires and inspired a programmatic work by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber.

“Dedicated to giving modern premieres of the wild instrumental music of the seventeenth century,” ACRONYM is itself an acronym for its fanciful moniker, “Altmusik Collective Resurrecting Obscure Nuanced Yesteryear’s Masterpieces.” The ensemble is largely made up of musicians who have passed through the Oberlin Conservatory’s Historical Performance Program. Its members can also be heard performing in such period and modern instrument groups as Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire, Toronto’s Tafelmusik, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Early Music Festival, the English Concert, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and Chicago Lyric Opera. [Read more…]

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