by Mike Telin
Since performing its inaugural concert in 2013, the Cleveland-based new music ensemble Ars Futura has quickly established itself as a dynamic force in the area’s burgeoning contemporary classical music scene. Judging from their engaging BOP STOP performance on Monday, March 23rd as part of NEOSonicFest, the ensemble is not only a collective of six accomplished players, but flutist Madeline Lucas Tolliver, clarinetist Drew Sullivan, violinist Tara Lynn Ramsey, cellist Daniel Pereira, pianist Shuai Wang and percussionist Luke Rinderknecht also know how to present the music in a way that leaves you wanting more. [Read more…]
The BOP STOP stage was covered Sunday night — with instrument stands and cases, clarinets and saxophones large and little, and at least one broken reed — for The Renga Ensemble’s first visit to Cleveland. Having just released The Room Is last week, the sextet, formed by Chicago-based composer and clarinetist James Falzone, showed off their reed feast of a debut album, as well as a few extra tunes. 
It’s a banner week for Chicago-based clarinetist and composer James Falzone. Today marks the release of his Renga Ensemble’s debut recording The Room Is on the Allos Documents label. Tomorrow the group will embark on a nine-city tour promoting the album. Then, on Sunday, March 1 at 7:00 in the Bop Stop, Falzone and his Renga Ensemble colleagues Ken Vandermark, Keefe Jackson, Jason Stein, Ben Goldberg, and Ned Rothenberg, playing an assortment of clarinets and saxophones, will present a concert featuring music from the new recording along with improvised works. 
Jazz concerts can often be formulaic. We expect to hear selections from the Great American Songbook, most often played or sung in a predictable form. But the jazz concert on Friday, January 30 at the Bop Stop featured Amanda Powell, and she’s anything but predictable.
Twenty-some audience members mostly lined the bar. Soup and pretzel bites were eaten, and little kitchen clangs were heard. It might have been the most laid-back setting of any concert. And — not but — the music was excellent, as the Verditas Quartet thrilled Cleveland’s BOP STOP Sunday night with quartets by Haydn, Beethoven, and Dvořák — and their own personality. 
It appears that Northeast Ohio’s classical music organizations are going to be wasting no time getting back into full swing after the holidays. A quick check of our Concert Listings page reveals that almost as soon as 2015 is upon us, audiences will have plenty of concerts to choose from. However, the prize for being first out of the blocks goes to the Oberlin Conservatory.
There were no horses in the parade, but the procession that brought the musicians of Les Délices onstage at the Bop Stop Saturday evening hinted at the military origins of the stirring French baroque music to come. 
Nearly a year ago, the surprising news that an upscale Ohio City jazz club, The Bop Stop, had been donated to The Music Settlement piqued one’s curiosity: how would the school use that attractive, crescent-shaped facility?