by Mike Telin
With December 8 marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, many celebrations are being held in his honor. On Sunday, November 22 at 4:00 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Institute of Music faculty, alumni, and students will observe the occasion with a Jean Sibelius 150th Anniversary Concert.
Performers will include soprano Emily Stauch, violinists Mari Sato, Kimia Ghaderi, James Thompson, and Virginia Wolf Lewis, violist Jessica Pasternak, cellist Carlyn Kessler, and pianists Linda Jones and Sean Schulze.
“I grew up in a family with a lot of classical music playing in the house, including Sibelius, who was one of my parents’ favorite composers,” said Emily Stauch, who spearheaded the concert. “My mother would even clean the house while listening to Sibelius.” [Read more…]
Many times in life an event sparks the beginnings of an idea. For Groupmuse founder Sam Bodkin, that event was his first hearing of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, Opus 133 in December of 2008. “I had never seriously listened to classical music before, and the piece shattered all of my preconceptions about what the genre was. It opened up an entirely new universe that had existed beside my own for so long but that I had never accessed, despite the fact that both my parents have always been classical music lovers.”