Big Round Records Archives - Cleveland Classical

CD Review
Gruca White Ensemble:
A Different Take

October 27, 2020 by Jarrett Hoffman

by Jarrett Hoffman

It’s one thing to create a varied setlist exploring one different genre after another, and quite another to pull it off as convincingly as the Gruca White Ensemble does on their latest CD, A Different Take, out on November 13 on the Big Round Records label.

[Read more…]

Les Délices visits 14th Century Avant-garde at Pivot Center (Nov. 24)

by Daniel Hathaway

As the historian Barbara Tuchman revealed in her book A Distant Mirror, the 14th century in Europe was both eventful and full of contradictions.

On the traumatic side, the Great Famine and the bubonic plague claimed a great swath of the population, the Hundred Years’ War raged, and the papacy moved from Rome to Avignon in France, marking the beginning of the decline in influence of the Catholic Church.

On the positive side came the flowering of experiments in music, a subject that Debra Nagy and her Les Délices colleagues charmingly explored in their “14th Century Avant-garde” program on Saturday, November 23 at the Pivot Center on Cleveland’s West Side, a converted 1919 building once used for making ships’ sails and awnings. [Read on…]

The Cleveland Orchestra serves up another treasure in fan-favorite Rhapsody in Blue (Nov. 29)

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — It’s an all-American extravaganza this holiday weekend at Severance Music Center. With Thanksgiving now in the books and December approaching fast, The Cleveland Orchestra has wasted no time gearing up its next few programs, many of them headlined by fan-favorites, to finish the calendar year on a high note.

On Friday, the marquee piece was George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, an orchestral staple — especially in 2024, which marks the work’s 100th anniversary. This isn’t the first time The Cleveland Orchestra has played it this year, as Béla Fleck performed his banjo-and-orchestra transcription at Blossom Music Center in July.

[Read on…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Hope and Solitude” featuring countertenor Reginald Mobley (Nov. 17)

by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire concertmaster and assistant artistic director Alan Choo curated an thoughtful, unusual, and thoroughly engaging program at Rocky River Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoon, November 17.

Featuring the formidable vocal gifts of countertenor Reginald Mobley, the program managed to gather under a single banner an orchestral suite and other selections by Henry Purcell, lute music by John Dowland, a suite by John Eccles, and an aria from J.S. Bach’s “Hunting” cantata as well as his solo cantata Ich habe genug. The well-attended concert ended with Spirituals that fit remarkably well into a menu of music played on period instruments.

In his director’s notes, Alan Choo wrote that this program “epitomizes the universality of music and its ability to uplift, heal, and revitalize the human spirit,” quoting the text of 17th-century Anglo-Welsh royalist poet Katherine Phillips’ O Solitude as set by Henry Purcell. [Read on…]

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