by Nicholas Stevens
In a Northeast Ohio music world recently energized amid multiple anniversary seasons, ensembles have faced the challenge of honoring their histories while plunging headlong into the future. Leave it to No Exit new music ensemble, ten years young this season, to prove itself among the most forward-thinking of all. In a concert of world premieres on Saturday, February 16, the chamber collective played a program defined more by promise than by pomp.
by Alice Koeninger
The Happy Days Lodge welcomed musicians from The Cleveland Orchestra with special guest Eric Wong into its wide-beamed hall on Tuesday, July 17, at 7:00 pm. Hosted by the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the concert was a lovely and relaxed program full of color and brightness. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
“Attending an experimental music concert is almost like a spectacle,” composer and instrumentalist Chris Auerbach-Brown said during a recent telephone conversation. “You watch and listen to the musicians do amazing things and play very difficult music, but there’s often a strong dividing line between the performers and the audience.” On Saturday, September 17 at 8:00 at SPACES Gallery, Auerbach-Brown will attempt to blur that line when he and his Quiet Trance Ensemble host their first Community Jam Session. The event is free, and all you need to do is bring a noise-making device of your choosing and be ready to make music.
“I want to get the audience involved with the creation of the music because it gives them an ownership of the process,” Auerbach-Brown said. “And the musicians I’ve chosen to work with are all great improvisers who can pretty much take any noise, and turn it into music.” [Read more…]
Mike Telin
MOCA Cleveland will launch the first edition of a new music competition on Thursday, April 10 beginning at 8:00 pm, when student composers from Cleveland State University and Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music compete for the title of “Avant-Garde Idol.” The contestants are Zach Albrecht, (BW), Joshua Fadenholz, (CSU), Nathaniel Frank, (BW), Sean Hussey, (BW), Jacob Kingzett, (CSU), James Kunselman, (BW), Aubrie Powell, (BW), Buck McDaniel, (CSU) & Neal Todten, (CSU).
The competition is the brainchild of Chris Auerbach-Brown, MOCA’s Media Program Manager, who in a recent telephone conversation said he came up with the idea while thinking of ways to present contemporary music to audiences in different contexts rather then the traditional sit and listen format. “My thought was to take a pre-existing popular television show model and apply it to a contemporary music concert, and this is what I came up with.” [Read more…]