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Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VII (Jan. 12)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program titled Music of America VII held on Sunday, January 12 at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, the Cleveland Chamber Collective presented a concert of attractive and varied new music, inspired by sounds from around the globe —  India to Buenos Aires and Bali to Manhattan.

At two and a half hours, the program might have stood a trimming, but it would be hard to know what to cut — the works and performances by familiar and rising Cleveland professionals were uniformly splendid. Director Ty Alan Emerson served as gracious host as well as stagehand and impresario.

In Reena Esmail’s Blaze, a duo for violin (Emily Cornelius) and tabla (Dylan Moffitt) much of the intensity came from Cornelius’s relationship to Moffitt’s exact playing — we were drawn in by the quietness of Moffitt’s tabla and by Cornelius’s attention to it. The two drifted in and out of sync, with the violinist both captive to and rebelling against the insistent rhythm, even while she conjured enigmatic extremes of darkness and ecstasy.
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Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VI

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday, August 3 at 7:00 pm at Disciples Christian Church, The Cleveland Chamber Collective will present Music of America VI. The program includes works by Caroline Shaw, Missy Mazzoli, Jessie Montgomery, Michael Oesterle, Trevor Kazarian, and Eric Charnofsky. The concert is free.

During a recent telephone conversation Cleveland Chamber Collective director and conductor Ty Alan Emerson said that the Music of America series has evolved over time.

“When we started out, we were calling it American Icons, which was our way to feature music by composers such as Lou Harrison, George Crumb, and Leonard Bernstein. Then we thought, there’s all this other music being made in America that isn’t getting played. So several years ago we started to look at who else is out there and who are we missing.”

Emerson noted that right now, inclusion is the hot button in classical music, and that for several years the ensemble has been trying to find ways to be more inclusive.

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Cleveland Chamber Collective: Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker (Apr. 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It is one of Cleveland’s persistently good things that outlets for fresh new music — played by some of the area’s best musicians — continue to thrive. On Sunday, April 28, we were reminded of this again at Cleveland Chamber Collective’s presentation of Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker, a Requiem for chamber ensemble and digital playback at the Pivot Center.

Emerson conducted a distinguished ensemble comprising Linda White, flute, Emily Cornelius, violin, Brian Slawta, viola, Trevor Kazarian, cello, Eric Charnofsky, piano, and Dylan Moffitt, percussion.

Oath Breaker takes the audience on a 60-minute journey of anger, grief, and hope, as a kind of collective PTSD therapy session about the events of January 6 and its subsequent aftermath. The mixture of recorded electronics, live performances, and poetic and prosaic texts helped to conjure in real time the horror of that day.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Zidur Guitar Duo (Feb. 24)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Hermelindo Ruiz and Samuel Diz, constituents of the Zidur Guitar Duo, made their Cleveland debut on Saturday, February 24, endearing themselves to the crowd at the Maltz Performing Arts Center with an attractive program and winning personalities — two young virtuosos from out of town you’d like to meet afterwards over tapas and beer.

Ruiz, a native Puerto Rican, and Diz, Spanish-born, delighted in sharing music from their respective countries, including works by Egúrbida, Gottschalk, Rodrigo, Vide, and Acosta, plus two by Ruiz himself. While other guitarists might have been inclined to flashier repertoire, Ruiz and Diz chose milder stuff, perhaps ambassadors of a gentler sort.

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