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New Wine in Old Bottles: Cleveland Composers Guild goes Baroque

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by Mike Telin

Although it is often said that you cannot put new wine in old bottles — or wineskins, on Friday, March 25 at 7:30 pm in Kulas Music Hall at Baldwin Wallace University, the Cleveland Composers Guild will show that it can be done.

“New Wine in Old Bottles” features recently composed works by Guild members — new wine — performed by Burning River Baroque’s Malina Rauschenfels (Baroque cello,viola da gamba, and voice), Paula Maust (harpsichord), and guest David Ellis (Baroque cello, viola da gamba, and bass gamba) — old bottles.

“I don’t think the Composers Guild has ever collaborated with an early music group,” Guild president Margi Griebling-Haigh said during a recent telephone conversation. “We were just brainstorming, as we do in Guild meetings, about what projects we would like to pursue in the future. This idea came up and everyone thought it was interesting. So we thought ‘Let’s branch out and see what it’s like to write for gamba and harpsichord.’” [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque tells
the “Other Side of the Story”

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by Mike Telin

Curating thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts has become a calling card for the innovative, Cleveland-based ensemble Burning River Baroque.

In the past year, soprano Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust have presented “Suppressed Voices: Music of the Banished” which featured music by Johann Rosenmüller —  a German who escaped to Italy after being imprisoned for homosexuality — and Peter Philips, who was imprisoned as a Catholic in Anglican England, then later fled to the Spanish Netherlands. “Destructive Desires” examined works by Couperin, Rameau, Jacquet de la Guerre, Caccini, Eccles, and Courbois under the light of the #MeToo era.

On Wednesday, March 20 at Glo, Rauschenfels and Maust will be joined by Sarah Lynn, baroque flute, and Glenna Curren, baroque cello, in a concert titled “The Other Side of the Story.” The program, which draws on ancient mythology, literature, and Biblical passages, highlights characters whose viewpoints are underrepresented.

Presented by Fresh Perspectives, the evening includes a 6:45 pm pre-concert talk with host Devin Hinzo and musician Zach Manzi. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque: “Destructive Desires” (Oct. 20)

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by David Kulma

Burning River Baroque’s October 20 performance at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights was a case study in thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts. Titled “Destructive Desires” and framed by informed program notes and remarks, the performance invoked the ongoing #MeToo movement. Soprano and Baroque cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust also spoke about their own thoughts and experiences, bringing the feminist slogan “The Personal Is Political” to life.

[Read more…]

Burning River Baroque examines old works under #MeToo lens

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Everyone agrees, it’s a deeply troubling time. Where we disagree: which parts are troubling, and how to respond to those troubles — a question artists continue to grapple with.

Some see their art as an important refuge, something that’s both pure and purifying. Others feel art should dig into the noise, perhaps as a way to understand it more deeply.

The latter mindset informs the most recent program from Burning River Baroque. In three concerts this weekend, Malina Rauschenfels (Baroque cello, soprano) and Paula Maust (harpsichord) will examine works by Couperin, Rameau, Jacquet de la Guerre, Caccini, Eccles, and Courbois under the light of the #MeToo era. They’ll also compare texts from those pieces with lyrics from some of today’s pop music to see what has changed, and what hasn’t.

Rauschenfels and Maust will bring “Destructive Desires” to St. Alban Episcopal Church on Saturday, October 20 at 7:30 pm, then to the sanctuary at Lakewood Congregational Church on Sunday, October 21 at 2:00 pm. A donation of $10-20 is suggested, and Sunday’s proceeds will benefit YWCA Greater Cleveland. An earlier house concert will take place on Friday, October 19 beginning at 7:30 pm in Cleveland Heights — details here on how to attend.

[Read more…]

Burning River Baroque to present “At a Crossroad: Will You Live, Love, or Die?”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Malina Rauschenfels PC Tom HugheyAsk about something musically outside the box, and Malina Rauschenfels has probably done it. Yes, she’s played a work for cello with two bows. Yes, she’s performed as a dancing violinist. And yes, of course she’s premiered an upside-down flute duet — her own composition.

So when it comes to singing and playing an instrument at the same time, well that’s nothing for this vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, who co-directs Burning River Baroque along with harpsichordist Paula Maust.

Rauschenfels and Maust will bring that ensemble’s program of French Baroque cantatas and harpsichord solos — titled “At a Crossroad: Will You Live, Love, or Die?” — to three venues in Cleveland from Friday through Sunday. They’ll visit Historic St. John’s Episcopal Church on May 18 at 7:30 pm, Heights Arts on the 19th at 7:00 pm, and Mary Queen of Peace Church on the 20th at 4:00 pm, before heading to Berkeley, California for a performance on June 6.

[Read more…]

Burning River Baroque: “Suppressed Voices” at Lakewood Congregational (March 23)

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by David Kulma

Burning RIver BaroqueA stylish concert of Baroque music called “Suppressed Voices: Music of the Banished” took place in the intimate Chapel at Lakewood Congregational Church on Friday night, March 23. Burning River Baroque’s program featured music by three banished composers little performed today — and the ubiquitous Handel, represented by his cantata about a Roman political exile.

[Read more…]

Twisted Fate: Famed and Forgotten Female Composers — Burning River Baroque at St. Alban’s (Sept. 17)

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by Nicholas Jones

For its 2016 season-opener on September 17 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Burning River Baroque assembled a fascinating and diverse program of music by women composers, both “famed and forgotten.” The pieces they chose — spanning ten centuries! — gave a taste of what gems lie beyond the patriarchal canon, particularly in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque to examine
the “colorful lives of composers”

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by Daniel Hathaway

BRB-RoomSinger and cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust will be featured in Burning River Baroque’s next pair of performances, entitled “Forces of Good and Evil: the colorful lives of composers” on Saturday, January 23 at 7:30 pm at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights, and Sunday, January 24 at 3:00 pm at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Old Brooklyn. (Note correct dates!)

The program centers around the idea that music transcends the personal traits of its creators — that whether composers were virtuous in their private lives like Henry Purcell (who was still capable of writing scatalogical rounds) or Tarquinio Merula, who was apparently a difficult employee and was censured for “indecency manifested towards several of his pupils,” their music “remains exquisite enough to stand the test of time,” as Maust writes in her program notes.

The program begins with the good guys: Purcell’s If music be the food of love, and French cello virtuoso Jean Barrière’s Sonata in c minor from his second book of sonatas, composed between 1733 and 1739. Barrière escapes close personal scrutiny because little is known about his life, which “seems to have been quite ordinary,” Maust says, adding that Barrière was the first to compose entirely idiomatic cello music during the first half of the 18th century. [Read more…]

Musical life after the holidays:
a cornucopia of January concerts

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by Daniel Hathaway

Bronfman-FWM-TCONow that winter has finally arrived and the excitement of the holidays has subsided, it’s tempting to burrow in and hibernate for a few weeks. But there’s plenty to do during January. Let’s have a look at some of what the month has to offer, beginning with orchestra concerts.

Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra are back at work early in the month with a round of all-Beethoven concerts from January 7-9 featuring pianist Yefim Bronfman (left) in the third piano concerto, and Bronfman and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in the Choral Fantasy. Soprano Barbara Hannigan will be featured in the U.S. premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you on January 14 and 15, sharing a program with Dmitri Shostakovich’s fourth symphony. On Saturday the 16th, Robert Porco will lead the annual Martin Luther King Jr Celebration, followed by a Severance Hall Open House on Monday the 17th from 12 Noon to 5 pm. Community ensemble performances will be bracketed by the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus (12:30) and Youth Orchestra (4:15). The Cleveland Philharmonic will host its own MLK Observance at Tri-C Metro Auditorium on Sunday, January 17. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque: “A Voice in the Wilderness” at Trinity Lutheran Church, Ohio City (October 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Trinity-Lutheran-Berghaus-photoOn Friday, October 17, Burning River Baroque — Peter Lekx, violin, Malina Rauschenfels, soprano and cello & Paula Maust, organ — presented the first of three performances of sacred German baroque music in an especially appropriate venue. Trinity Lutheran Church, a 19th century Gothic edifice in Ohio City, was built by a German congregation and houses a distinguished 1955 Rudolph von Beckerath neo-baroque organ. [Read more…]

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