by Timothy Robson
It was March 20, 2020, when The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst gave their last concert as a complete ensemble before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live performances for more than a year. The Orchestra, with guest conductor Brett Mitchell, returned triumphantly to Blossom Music Center on July 3 and 4 to celebrate Independence Day. I attended on July 4.
by Jarrett Hoffman
The name Florence Price had barely come up in school. So in 2016, when pianist Michelle Cann was asked to play that composer’s Concerto in One Movement with the New York City-based orchestra The Dream Unfinished, she hesitated.
“I’d never heard of the piece, and I hardly knew her,” Cann said during a recent telephone conversation. “I thought, I’m not going to just agree to this — I need to see the music.” She remembers when the orchestra sent it to her like it was yesterday. “I sight-read through it, called my friend, and said, ‘This piece is amazing.’ I was like, wait a second — how is it so good, and no one’s ever played it, at least recently?”
After giving the New York premiere five years ago with Dream Unfinished, and debuting it with The Philadelphia Orchestra earlier this year, Cann will play Price’s Concerto in One Movement with The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Brett Mitchell on Saturday and Sunday, July 3-4 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center.
The program, “An American Celebration,” also includes works by Bernstein, Watkins, Hailstork, Copland, Tchaikovsky, and Sousa, and will open the Orchestra’s Blossom season. Tickets and more information are available here.
by Timothy Robson
There were all manner and ages of intergalactic creatures at the Blossom Music Festival for Friday evening’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back live music performance by The Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Sarah Hicks, who entered the stage brandishing a red light saber. I left my own saber at home and didn’t wear my Star Wars jammies, but lots of folks in attendance visibly showed their appreciation for this movie classic through fan attire. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
South Pacific, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s legendary 1949 musical about American military personnel and their interaction with Polynesian natives during World War II, proved to be a hit at the Blossom Music Festival on Saturday evening, August 24. The lawn was packed and the pavilion was mostly sold out. The semi-staged production was a collaboration between The Cleveland Orchestra and Baldwin Wallace University’s Music Theatre Program. BW’s Victoria Bussert directed the staging, in which the singing actors performed in front of The Cleveland Orchestra (in slightly reduced size, although generous for a Broadway pit band). [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Film music leaves an impression on many of us at an early age, and Sarah Hicks was no exception. The principal conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra’s “Live at Orchestra Hall” series, Hicks is also known as an in-demand guest conductor, particularly in the genre of in-concert film.
“I saw the original Star Wars movies in theaters as a very young child,” Hicks said during a telephone interview. That wasn’t the spark to her interest in music — she was already playing the piano by age five — but it was still an experience she called transformative. “I remember those movies, I remember that music. It was a huge part of my childhood.”
Hicks will revisit The Empire Strikes Back, the second film from the original Star Wars trilogy, during screenings with The Cleveland Orchestra on August 30, 31, and September 1 at 7:30 pm at Blossom. (Fireworks to follow each performance, weather permitting.) That score by John Williams introduced the world to “The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)” — it’s hard to imagine Star Wars without it — and to “Yoda’s Theme.”
by David Kulma
The Cleveland Orchestra is joined by dozens of international soloists each year, but it’s always a wonderful experience to hear a member of the Orchestra step forward into the spotlight. On Saturday, August 10 at Blossom Music Center with guest conductor Asher Fisch, associate concertmaster Jung-Min Amy Lee showed off her amazing skill and musicality in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto in a program that also included works by Liszt and Brahms. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Musical theater fans have a thrill coming their way this Saturday, August 24 at 8:00 pm at Blossom. On tap is a production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1949 South Pacific featuring students from the Baldwin Wallace Music Theater program. And the orchestra? It’s one you might have heard of.
“There’s no way for me to describe what it’s going to be like the first time the students hear The Cleveland Orchestra play this music,” Victoria Bussert said during a recent phone call. She heads the Music Theater program at BW and directs Saturday’s performance.
“It will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because even on Broadway, you don’t get orchestras of this size, or this world-renowned,” Bussert said. “I’m kind of tingly just waiting for when we all walk into Severance [for rehearsal] and the students sing with them for the first time.”
by Jarrett Hoffman
For Vinay Parameswaran, leading The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom on Saturday, August 17 at 8:00 pm will be only one important event in what has to be called a good couple of months. He’s also conducted in Europe, driven about 5,000 miles back and forth across the U.S., and gotten hitched.
We spoke last week over the phone, and first he filled me in on all the details of June, July, and the first bit of August. Then we talked about this Saturday’s program, which includes Ives’ “Decoration Day” from the Holidays Symphony, Bernstein’s Jeremiah: Symphony No. 1 with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.
by Timothy Robson
The crowd was out in force at Blossom Music Center on Saturday evening, August 3, likely due to more moderate temperatures than in recent weeks, lower humidity, and a cloudless sky. The Cleveland Orchestra’s attractive program was added incentive, with Andrey Boreyko as guest conductor, and Swiss-Italian pianist Francesco Piemontesi as soloist in Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 in E-flat. After that, Boreyko, music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, led a beautifully judged performance of Alexander Zemlinsky’s unduly neglected Die Seejungfrau (“The Mermaid”). Both works fit into the category of “big music for a big space,” and they filled the Blossom pavilion with richly varied musical textures.
by Rory O’Donoghue
Whether performing with the Omni Quartet or soloing with The Cleveland Orchestra, violinist Jung-Min Amy Lee takes the same approach. “The orchestra is just a bigger setting for chamber music,” the associate concertmaster said in an interview last weekend. “It’s the same ideas, transfigured.”
Lee will get to flex those elevated chamber music chops this Saturday, August 10 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, where she will perform Barber’s enigmatic Violin Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra. I got the chance to catch up with the busy violinist and discuss her upcoming performance.