by Nicholas Stevens
In a Northeast Ohio music world recently energized amid multiple anniversary seasons, ensembles have faced the challenge of honoring their histories while plunging headlong into the future. Leave it to No Exit new music ensemble, ten years young this season, to prove itself among the most forward-thinking of all. In a concert of world premieres on Saturday, February 16, the chamber collective played a program defined more by promise than by pomp.
by Jarrett Hoffman
If you ask a bunch of composers how they dreamed up their latest pieces, they’ll all have something completely different to say.
That’s what I learned this past week, when I spent time on the phone with five of them to ask about their new chamber works being premiered by No Exit this weekend.
That new music ensemble, directed by Tim Beyer, will give free performances of these pieces at Heights Arts (Friday, February 15 at 7:00 pm), SPACES gallery (Saturday, February 16 at 8:00 pm), and WOLFS gallery (Friday, March 1 at 7:00 pm) in this second installment of the group’s Cleveland Composers Series.
by Timothy Robson
Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project is a new non-profit devoted to the creation and performance of new music. Their first annual Re:Sound New Music Festival opened on Thursday evening, June 7 at the Bop Stop, where a large, diverse crowd sat around tables and the bar to hear four equally diverse and alluring ensembles. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
A year and a half ago, saxophonist Noa Even and cellist Sophie Benn got together to discuss ways to promote new music in Cleveland. They soon brought drummer Stephen Klunk and Bop Stop manager Gabe Pollack into the conversation, and the idea of starting a new music festival in the city was born. Beginning on June 7 and running through June 10, the inaugural Re:Sound Festival of new music will feature twenty-seven musical acts across seven concerts at five venues.
“An aspect of the festival we like to emphasize is just how new the music is,” Noa Even said during a telephone conversation. “All of it is from 2000 or later, so it’s truly a showcase of what people are creating today, improvised and composed. ‘New music’ encompasses so many styles and influences, and hopefully the Festival will capture that diversity.”
The performers were chosen from a pool of over 100 applicants who responded to the organizing committee’s call for proposals. Those included soloists and existing chamber music ensembles ranging from duos to sextets, as well as composer/performers and experimental artists.
by Mike Telin
For the most recent installment of No Exit’s year-long celebration of Dadaist composer Erik Satie, the ensemble commissioned seven composers to write new works representing their own take on Satie and how his music has shaped their own musical universe. On Friday, April 8 in the acoustically pleasing SPACES gallery, No Exit presented the second of three performances featuring the new compositions. The Satie-inspired musical sandwich also included works by Heinz Holliger, Georges Delerue, and Buck McDaniel. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Although Erik Satie’s Vexations consists of a single page of manuscript, the composer included the following statement: “In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.”
Beginning on Monday, April 4 at 8:00 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, No Exit will present the first of three area concerts featuring Satie’s incomparable work. The concerts are the second installment in the ensemble’s year-long celebration of the music, mind, mirth and mayhem of the original musical Dadaist, who lived from 1866 to 1925. The program will be repeated on Friday, April 8 at SPACES and on Saturday, April 16 at Heights Arts. Both concerts will begin at 8:00 pm. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Creating mutually beneficial partnerships is the key to survival for arts organizations. As a result of seed grants from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, FiveOne Experimental Orchestra (51XO) and Ensemble Theatre have formed a strategic partnership that will allow both organizations to better serve their community-building goals.
The partnership will be celebrated at Ensemble Theater on April 8 and 9 at 7:30 pm when 51XO presents “Art Music in the Dark.” The program will feature classical musical works, all of which have been composed since 2010, accompanied by projected video art, largely manipulated in real time using iPad apps. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Since 2008, the Cleveland-based music collective FiveOne Experimental Orchestra (51XO) has built a sizeable audience base because they have never steered away from their mission to experiment. Part of the ensemble’s draw is their passion for presenting of concerts in non-traditional venues. “We feel more at home in a post-industrial setting,” 51XO’s executive director Jeremy Allen told ClevelandClassical.com during a recent interview. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“We feel more at home in a post-industrial setting, and we’re happy to have found Rising Star Coffee Roastery,” Five One Experimental Orchestra executive director Jeremy Allen said during an interview. “We always try to create a unique concert experience in collaboration with a non-traditional venue that benefits all parties — there are Rising Star patrons that are yet unfamiliar with what 51XO is all about, and I’m sure some of our fans will be newly introduced to this fabulous coffee roastery that’s right here in our great city of Cleveland.”
On Saturday March 5 at 8:00 pm, 51XO will perform works by Nico Muhly, Greg Pattillo, John HC Thompson, Jeremy Allen, Buck McDaniel, and Sarah Kirkland Snider, plus a new “experiment” conceived of and led by 51XO’s Tracy Mortimore at Rising Star Coffee Roastery, 3617 Walton Avenue, Cleveland. The concert is presented as part of the 2016 NEOSonicFest. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
NEOSonicFest planned a big agenda for its fourth concert at CSU’s Waetjen Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24. The Cleveland Chamber Symphony brought works by five “Young and Emerging Composers” to life under music director Steven Smith; Liza Grossman and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra reprised Stefan Podell’s Concerto for Two Violas and Orchestra with Lynne Ramsey and Jeffrey Irvine; and the two orchestras played side-by-side under Smith’s direction in a performance of Bernard Rands’ London Serenade to honor the memory of CCS founder Edwin London. [Read more…]