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ChamberFest Cleveland celebrates season finale on the dance floor (June 29)

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by Stephanie Manning

After a whirlwind three weeks of concerts, ChamberFest Cleveland ended this year’s season with a dance party. And not just any dance party: Aaron Jay Kernis’ joyfully eccentric 100 Greatest Dance Hits, which fully embodies the thematic mix of “Sacred and Profane.”

But while the Kernis gives classical forms an injection of the profane — the music associated with the here-and-now, our day-to-day life  — the June 29 program also reveled in the traditionally sacred. It opened with J.S. Bach’s dignified Concerto No. 1 in d, played in a combination that swapped harpsichord for piano and traded a string orchestra for a quartet, plus bass.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Night Moves” at Disciples Church (June 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It was nice to finally hear one of ChamberFest Cleveland’s “Sacred and Profane” concerts (“Night Moves” on June 28) in a religious setting — Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights — since it helped the “sacred” music resonate (in more ways than one). As the home of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concerts, it’s a well-loved space to experience chamber music.

It turns out, though, you don’t necessarily need a church — or even voices — to convey the spirituality of the opener, Palestrina’s 1572 motet, Dominus Jesus in qua nocte.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: a four-course meal during “Innocence and Experience” (June 26)

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by Stephanie Manning

ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 26 concert had stiffer competition than usual, with The Cleveland Orchestra simultaneously performing for Wade Oval Wednesdays right down the street. But you wouldn’t have known it from the packed house that filled Mixon Hall that evening at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

The program, titled “Innocence and Experience,” marked the long-awaited festival debut of guitarist Jason Vieaux. (Although the venue was no doubt familiar to him — he’s taught at CIM since 1997.) Vieaux and his fellow musicians kicked off the program with Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D, a lively piece with the subtitle “Fandango.”

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ChamberFest Cleveland: Lost in Paradise (June 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The theme of the June 21 ChamberFest concert may have been “Paradise Lost,” but the performances and repertoire were of such high caliber, there was nowhere you would rather have found yourself.

A joyful noise opened the concert. J.S. Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen featured soprano Sarah Shafer and trumpeter Brandon Ridenour in a sparkling account of the cantata Bach liked so much that he designated it as suitable for performance “in ogni tempo” — at any time.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Rite of Spring” on the summer solstice (June 20)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On June 20, the day when the two warm seasons join, ChamberFest Cleveland put on a program that was more about springtime than summer.

Titled “Rite of Spring” — for Stravinsky’s ballet and the stem-winder of an arrangement for two pianists and two percussionists that ended the concert — tonight’s program was distinctly light in mood, including silly songs by Bernstein and P.D.Q. Bach, a couple of tearjerkers by Dvořák and Kurt Weill, and dance music by HK Gruber and Martinů.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: transporting listeners into “Other Worlds” (June 22)

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by Stephanie Manning

Hearing the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” was not on my ChamberFest Cleveland bingo card. But Brandon Ridenour had other ideas.

“Antonio Vivaldi was the Paul McCartney of his time,” the trumpet player told the audience at the festival’s June 22 concert. Accompanied by string quartet, Ridenour brought his arrangements of both the Beatles and the Baroque to the program — titled “In Other Worlds” — and made a pretty strong case for the connection between 18th-century opera and 1960s pop.

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At last, Jason Vieaux to make ChamberFest Cleveland debut

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by Mike Telin

This week guitarist Jason Vieaux will make his long-awaited ChamberFest Cleveland debut, appearing in three separate concerts. “We’ve tried for many years, but it always conflicted with other dates that I already had on my calendar. So it’s really great that we can finally do something together.”

On Wednesday, June 26 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of  Music, Vieaux will play Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D (“Fandango”). The piece is one of the most popular works in the guitar chamber music repertoire and one that he’s recorded with the Escher Quartet.

Why is it so popular? “My guess is that it’s because of the third movement — the famous Fandango that gets played on radio stations around the country. But I think what really brings it over the top is when the cellist plays the castanets. It’s just one of those works that presenters like to program.”

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ChamberFest goes outdoors with “Music on the Path” (June 16)

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by Max Newman

The 2024 edition of ChamberFest Cleveland has already seen a variety of wonderful events since its opening on June 12. However, the June 16 musical celebration of “CFC at the Nature Center: Music on the Path,” was the perfect addition to ChamberFest’s diverse programming and undoubtedly put a smile on the faces of all who attended.

Centered around the parking lot of the Nature Center, the sunlit late-morning event at Shaker Lakes had an inviting, family-friendly atmosphere. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: the first taste of “Sacred and Profane” (June 12)

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by Peter Feher

Like any good introduction, opening night at ChamberFest Cleveland this year left you wanting more. The sold-out concert on June 12 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall was a chance to savor a little of what the 2024 festival has to offer.

The theme behind this year’s programming, “Sacred and Profane,” was front and center for the first concert. So was the overriding idea that guides ChamberFest every season: bringing together great musicians and great music. Wonderfully, these aims aligned on Wednesday in an arresting performance of Claude Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane featuring harpist Bridget Kibbey. It was the shortest work of the evening, but also the standout.

In exploring the fundamental dichotomy between heaven and earth, eternity and reality, the spirit and the body, Debussy was simply trying to demonstrate everything that a modern harp could do. He had been commissioned by a French manufacturer to write a showpiece for the company’s new instrument, yet the resulting work wasn’t strictly contemporary when it premiered in Paris in 1904.

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ChamberFest: an evening of fantastic tales (June 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Bridget Kibbey did on Saturday what harpists rarely get to do: she stole the show. No mean feat when sharing the stage with the other bright and esteemed performers who regularly appear as part of ChamberFest Cleveland — particularly during “Fantastic Tales,” the third concert of this year’s season, which took place on June 15 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Kibbey was also lively with the microphone, giving an engaging introduction to André Caplet’s 1924 Conte Fantastique (Fantastic Tale). After the performance, she mingled among the crowd — not so much a star gesture as a genuine one that made her performance even more memorable.

Given that André Caplet orchestrated and conducted some of Debussy’s works, many associate the two composers. To say Caplet’s musical language is impressionist-adjacent is partly true but hardly encapsulates his unique, ahead-of-his-time voice.

Kibbey made the most of Caplet’s action-packed work — part harp concerto and part tone poem, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Masque of the Red Death.

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