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Week Two at ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Mike Telin

Week Two of ChamberFest Cleveland is packed full of events. As the Festival’s executive director Jessica Peek Sherwood says — “there is something for everyone.”

On Monday, June 15, “Celebrating Frank” is everyone’s opportunity to pay tribute to Franklin Cohen, the founding father of ChamberFest Cleveland. His professional highlights include his tenure as Principal Clarinet of The Cleveland Orchestra and 50 years on faculty at CIM. Cohen’s colleagues, alumni, friends, and musical family will share the stage to say thank-you.

Week two will also welcome three artists who will be making their ChamberFest debuts on Wednesday, June 17.

[Read more…]

Percussionist Jeff Stern debuts at ChamberFest

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by Mike Telin

“I wasn’t sure if music was even going to stick until I found myself enthralled by percussion,” Jeff Stern said during a telephone conversation.

“It suits me in a lot of ways, particularly because it has so many options in the kinds of instruments you can play, and the kinds of music and musical settings that it lends itself to.”

On Wednesday June 17 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, Stern, who serves as Instructor of Percussion at the Peabody Conservatory as well as the executive director, co-artistic director, and founding percussionist of  the two piano, two percussion group the icarus Quartet, will make his ChamberFest debut.

I began our conversation asking him how he will fit into a Spanish Baroque trio sonata. [Read more…]

Oboist Izaiah Cheeran makes ChamberFest debut

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by Mike Telin

From a young age, Izaiah Cheeran had a fascination with music — which eventually led him to the oboe.

Next week, Cheeran — who was appointed second oboe/English horn of the Philadelphia Ballet in 2024 while still an undergraduate at Curtis — will make his ChamberFest Cleveland debut.

Already in his burgeoning career, Cheeran has made appearances with the Atlanta Symphony, Opera Philadelphia, Quad City Symphonies, and Carnegie Hall’s NYO-USA. He has attended the Music Academy of the West and the Pacific Music Festival, and later this summer will be a fellow at Tanglewood.

We caught up with the ChamberFest Rising Star by Zoom at his home in Minneapolis.

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Benjamin Yusupov: ChamberFest Cleveland’s Composer-in-Residence

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by Mike Telin

Benjamin Yusupov, ChamberFest Cleveland’s Composer-in Residence, is Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Israel Soloists Chamber Orchestra, founded by him in 2015. He also serves as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Hakfar Hayarok Youth Symphony Orchestra and as Composer-in-Residence of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

During a Zoom call from his home in Kfar Saba, Israel, Yusupov said that he received the invitation to ChamberFest from the co-artistic directors Diana Cohen and Roman Rabinovich.

“Roman has played many of my pieces. He performed my piano concerto with the Haifa Symphony and he’s also played my solo piano piece, Crossroads No. 2, that will be performed at the festival in Cleveland. So Roman and his wife Diana are my good friends.”

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ChamberFest takes its audience on a journey in “Songs, Signs, and Souvenirs” (June 28)

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by Stephanie Manning

During this year’s ChamberFest, the “Lost and Found” theme showed up in all kinds of ways. Sometimes that meant performing recently-unearthed works from historic composers like Mozart and Chopin. Sometimes it referred to an emotional resonance, as when Judith Markovich’s music told the story of the grief and loss of a son.

But the listener has a role to play in this as well. As ChamberFest’s past Board chair Rebecca Carmi reminded the audience on June 28, getting “lost” in the music is also an experience to strive for. Thankfully, the engrossing final concert of ChamberFest’s 2025 season — held in Severance Music Center’s Reinberger Chamber Hall — provided plenty of opportunities.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Sing Hallelujah!” (June 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Sometimes the only thing that connects works in a concert is that they all appear on the same program page. That certainly characterized the mix of two Brahms songs, the premiere of a violin and piano work, a “repetitive music” classic for duo pianists, and a well-known piano trio that were featured in ChamberFest Cleveland’s sold out program “Sing Hallelujah!” on June 26 in Mixon Hall.

Johannes Brahms was partial to works that explore the lower, more mellow range of voices and instruments, as represented here by a pair of songs. Throughout both Gestillet Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied, mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, violist Kim Kashkashian, and pianist Amy Yang produced rich, expressive musical lines that projected beautifully into the hall. The “Sacred Crib Song” was especially endearing for quoting the well-known 14th-century Christmas song “Joseph lieber, Joseph mein,” a little joke referring to the work’s dedicatee, Joseph Joachim.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Starry Night” (June 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On June 21, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Starry Night” at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls. The program’s nocturnal theme included works by ChamberFest composer-in- residence Errollyn Wallen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Arnold Schoenberg.

The performance of Wallen’s Dervish for cello and piano was spellbinding. Like a trained actor, cellist Oliver Herbert took on a distinct persona: intensely expressive, earthy, and rapturous. Pianist Roman Rabinovich was not merely a counterpart, but a force that Herbert seemed at times either to resist or to be swept up by. Together, the duo sustained an inward intensity that made Wallen’s music feel at once intimate, expansive, and hypnotic.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Variations on Love and Loss” (June 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, June 20, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Variations on Love and Loss.” Complemented by a friendly acoustical space and a convivial throng, the program spanned a wide emotional range, from deep grief to luminous joy.

Witold Lutosławski and fellow composer Andrzej Panufnik originally performed Lutosławski’s Paganini Variations in cafés around Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, where public concerts were banned.

The duo wrote it partly to showcase their talents, and pianists James (Zijian) Wei and Roman Rabinovich brought fearless bravura to the work. The performers tore through each variation, trading volleys of octaves and whiplash runs. It was part sorcery, part acrobatic display — and entirely exhilarating. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “A Musical Feast” at Heights Theater & in Nate’s World (June 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland’s season theme of “Lost and Found” extended to the choice of venue for its program “A Musical Feast” on June 14.

Heights Theater opened in 1919 as a motion picture theater with 1,200 seats. Renamed Coventry Theater, then Centrum, it eventually closed in 2003. The space was repurposed as a church, following a period as a comedy club, and is now being used as a performance venue.

The sound carries well, but the large space has an odd acoustic which suits some styles of music better than others. [Read more…]

ChamberFest: a conversation with violist Kim Kashkashian

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by Mike Telin

There are certain musicians who you can’t believe have never been to ChamberFest Cleveland. Case in point: Kim Kashkashian.

“Diana Cohen has been asking me for years,” the celebrated violist said during a Zoom conversation. “We know each other from Marlboro, and when I was in the Baltimore area I knew her father Frank very well. So we’ve all been friends for decades.”

On Thursday, June 26 in Mixon Hall, Kaskashian will be featured in Brahms’ Two Songs for alto, viola, and piano. On Friday, June 27 in Harkness Chapel she’ll be part of the ensemble who will be playing Brett Dean’s viola quintet, Epitaphs. And on Saturday, June 28 in Reinberger Chamber Hall she’ll take part in Brahms’ Piano Quintet in f. Tickets for all performances are available online.

That third program will also include György Kurtág’s Signs, Games, and Messages for solo viola. Kashkashian said that she’s had a long association with the composer and his music.

[Read more…]

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