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Cleveland Chamber Choir: a conversation with Gregory Ristow

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by Daniel Hathaway

The next pair of concerts by Cleveland Chamber Choir this weekend will be led by Gregory Ristow, associate professor of conducting and director of vocal ensembles at Oberlin Conservatory, who has been appointed acting artistic director of the ensemble following the mid-season announcement of founding director Scott MacPherson’s retirement.

The program, “Of Sound Mind: From Darkness into Light,” explores the universality of grief and sorrow, helping us to embrace our common humanity in the struggles we individually and collectively experience. Free performances will take place on Saturday, February 18 at 7:30 pm at St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills and on Sunday, February 19 at 3:00 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in Cleveland. A pre-concert talk with Oberlin musicologist Charles Edward McGuire will begin 30 minutes prior to each performance.

After their Cleveland concerts, the Choir will perform at the 2023 National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association in Cincinnati later this month. Of the hundreds of choirs from across the country that auditioned, CCC was one of 28 choirs invited to perform, and will send 32 singers to perform two 25-minute performances to thousands of attendees.

I reached Gregory Ristow by telephone to chat about the repertoire for this weekend, and began by asking how much input he had into the program. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir with McDowall and guest singers at CSU (Feb. 27)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland Chamber Choir’s hosting of choruses from Kent State and Cleveland State Universities in a joint concert on February 27 in CSU’s Waetjen Auditorium might have been reminiscent of multi-choir powwows from one’s schooldays, but the quality of repertoire, the level of singing, and efficient stage management raised the event to impressive heights.

The catalyst for this particular concert was a visit by British composer Cecilia McDowall, several of whose works were programmed, including the premiere of her On the Air (Dear Vaccine), and culminating in a massed choir performance of her 2016 piece The Presence. Along the way, we also heard McDowall’s Brightest Star, De Profundis (Night Raid), Regina coeli, and When Time is Broke: Three Shakespeare Songs.   [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir hosts composer Cecilia McDowall

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by Mike Telin

During the pandemic, the anxiety caused by an unknown future and the longing to return to normal have been beautifully expressed by thousands of people around the globe who participated in the Global Vaccine Poem project. Lines from these poems served as the inspiration for British composer Cecilia McDowall’s On the Air (Dear Vaccine).

Commissioned by the Cleveland Chamber Choir, the work will receive its premiere on Saturday, February 26 at 7:00 pm at Amasa Stone Chapel and on Sunday, February 27 at 5:00 pm at Waetjen Auditorium under the direction of Scott MacPherson. The program, “Cecilia and Her World,” will feature nine of McDowall’s works along with music by composers who have influenced her style.

Joining CCC will be choirs from Cleveland, Kent, and Youngstown State Universities as well as Case Western Reserve University. A pre-concert talk, “In Conversation: Cecilia McDowall with Charles Edward McGuire,” will begin 45 minutes before each performance. Both concerts are free. Click here to download the program and here for COVID-19 protocols.

The Global Vaccine Poem project is the brainchild of David Hassler, director of Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center, and Tyler Meier, executive director of the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center. So far, the project has received over 2,200 poems from people in 118 countries and every state in the U.S. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: “The Personal Muse” (May 18)

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by David Kulma

The Cleveland Chamber Choir has a bold tagline: “More than Music!” The final program of their fourth season, a collaboration with the Cleveland Composers Guild, clearly reflected this progressive mandate. Pairing living, local composers with works by British and American women, artistic director Scott MacPherson curated a delightful, satisfying evening titled “The Personal Muse” at Fairmount Presbyterian Church on Saturday, May 18. [Read more…]

The U.K.’s Marian Consort at St. John’s Cathedral (Oct. 19)

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by Nicholas Stevens

To speak of our era as one of unlimited access to global cultures is to imply — often inaccurately — that availability necessarily leads to familiarity. In the cases of art forms with deep roots in a particular place, no amount of streaming audio or video can stand in for the kind of live exposure that knocks one backward with the full force and physical presence of the new. How fortunate for Northeast Ohioans, then, that the Cathedral of St John the Evangelist invited the Marian Consort to Cleveland as the penultimate stop on their first North American tour. Their concert of music inspired by the Virgin Mary spanned centuries of sacred music in the English choral tradition. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to mark Shakespeare’s 400th on April 23

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by Daniel Hathaway

ClevelandChamberChoir-112115Accidental discoveries you make when you’re drawing up plans for a program sometimes send you off on a new tack. Scott MacPherson had long been contemplating a concert of British choral music for the second concert of the Cleveland Chamber Choir’s inaugural season and wanted something “on the vigorous, peppy side” to balance the “rich, sonorous” music he already had in mind.

“In Sweet Music Is Such Art: Celebrating British Choral Music” will take place on Saturday, April 23 at 7:30 pm in the sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights.

“We had performed Cecilia McDowall’s Aurea luce on our first concert in November”, MacPherson said, “so I wrote to her and asked if she had anything along those lines. She told me that her When Time is Broke: three Shakespeare songs had just been premiered by the BBC Singers in January and that the first movement might be just what what I was looking for.” [Read more…]

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