Andrew Garland Archives - Cleveland Classical

Review: BW Art Song Festival — baritone Andrew Garland and pianist Warren Jones (May 22)

May 27, 2014 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Guytano Parks

American baritone Andrew Garland presented a recital dubbed “The Quest — Don Quixote and Other Wanderers, ” as the second faculty performance of the 22nd Art Song Festival in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace University on Thursday evening, May 22.

Partnering masterfully with Warren Jones, Musical America’s “Collaborative Pianist of the Year” for 2010, Garland took us on the quest via music by Vaughan Williams, Schubert, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ravel, Steven Mark Kohn and Leigh-Darion. Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel, based on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, opened the program. The first of the nine songs, “The Vagabond”, marched along deliberately and found the team pausing slightly on the last beat of certain measures, effectively emphasizing the poetry.

Garland delivered the text with beautiful, clear diction, resonant tone and elegant phrasing, while Jones produced an exquisite array of tone colors, textures and dynamics on the piano. [Read more…]

Twenty-Second BW Art Song Festival to feature recitals by Joan Rodgers and Andrew Garland

May 20, 2014 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Daniel Hathaway

The twenty-second Art Song Festival, now firmly established at Baldwin Wallace University, got down to business on Monday, May 19 and will culminate in a free recital by ten singer-pianist teams on Saturday, May 24. In between, those teams will receive coachings in master classes from British soprano Joan Rodgers, American baritone Andrew Garland (left), and the celebrated collaborative pianists Roger Vignoles and Warren Jones.

Participants will also have the opportunity to hear their teachers in action in two evening recitals. Rodgers and Vignoles will perform in Gamble Auditorium on Tuesday, May 20, followed by Garland and Jones on Thursday, May 22. Both performances begin at 8:00 pm and tickets are required.

Dedicated to the advancement of one of the most intimate and expressive forms of chamber music, the Art Song Festival was first organized by George Vassos at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1985 and featured two distinguished artists, Elly Ameling and Gérard Souzay. Following a one-year hiatus in 1989, the festival was relaunched as an every-other-year event, and eventually moved to Baldwin Wallace, where it is now headed by BW’s voice department chair Joanne Uniatowski. [Read more…]

Singers’ Club of Cleveland: To Dwell in Harmony (Dec. 9)

by Kevin McLaughlin

The Singers’ Club of Cleveland brought the joy of the season to Trinity Cathedral on Tuesday evening with a program titled To Dwell in Harmony, a holiday offering both polished and good-humored. The venerable all-male chorus — whose lineage stretches back to 1891 and includes collaborations with conductors from Beryl Rubinstein to Robert Shaw — now finds itself under new leadership.

Christopher Clark, appointed in August as Artistic Director (while serving concurrently as Director of Choirs at Case Western Reserve University), led his first Singers’ Club concert with easy command. The chorus appeared to trust him from the first downbeat, and the audience received him just as warmly.

Trinity Cathedral, whose acoustics can flatter or expose a chorus in equal measure, proved an asset. The evening opened with one of its most effective moments: Veni, Veni Emmanuel in John Englert’s arrangement. Clark placed the choir on three sides of the audience, creating a surround-sound of chant that was silky and assured — a confident beginning. [Read on…]

Les Délices welcomes the festive season with “Noel, Noel” (Dec. 7)

by Stephanie Manning

Once December kicks in, an almost overwhelming number of holiday programs pop up around Northeast Ohio. But Les Délices’ offering should draw your attention.

While other festive concerts may create the atmosphere of a bustling party by the fireplace, “Noel, Noel” is like observing a snowy evening from the warmth of the indoors. This is music best enjoyed in quiet contentment, and especially live — so it’s no surprise that the early music ensemble brought back this signature program for three performances this month.

On December 7 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the six-member group presented a lovely ninety-minute program, which is also available on CD and via streaming until the end of the year. [Read on…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: In Four Voices (Dec. 3)

by Kevin McLaughlin

Renaissance polyphony can bloom in resonant spaces, but the Donna and James Reid Gallery at the Cleveland Museum of Art presents particular challenges: hard surfaces and a long reverb tend to blur consonants into watercolor. The Cleveland Chamber Choir’s four-voice ensemble met those conditions head-on during its “In Four Voices” program on December 3. What emerged was an evening of consistently beautiful vocal timbre shaped by a group navigating the sonic characteristics of the room.

The concert, to be followed in January and March by appearances of various-sized ensembles, is part of a new development for the Cleveland Chamber Choir, called the Camerata Series — more information here.

To improve their chances of hearing one another, the quartet — soprano Lauren Vanden Broeck, mezzo-soprano Kira McGirr, tenor Joel Kincannon, and bass Dominic Aragon — stood in a traditional “part book” formation, like a diamond, facing inward. This meant that their sound was directed toward each other, rather than outward to the listeners around them. [Read on…]

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