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Studio Espressivo’s Piano Portraits traces the history of the piano

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by Mike Telin

When Allison Hillier was starting her graduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, she needed to find a place that was within walking distance of the school. While apartment hunting in nearby neighborhoods, Hillier found herself walking through Little Italy. “I heard opera coming from restaurants, and I thought this is a really vibrant community. There’s a lot going on,” she recalled during a recent Zoom conversation.

After finding an apartment that she loved, she asked if it was alright for her to bring her piano. “They told me: ‘This is a quiet house, so maybe not. Although we have a commercial space available at the Murray Hill Galleries. Would you like to put your piano there?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

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Stars in the Classics cabaret: a melting pot of music, visual art, and dance

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by Stephanie Manning

If you’ve driven past the Cleveland History Center, you’ve likely spotted a memento from Euclid Beach Park. The large, colorful carousel visible through the glass windows entertained visitors at the lakefront amusement park until its closure in 1969.

Jodi Kanter has fond memories of visiting as a child. “My grandfather and my father worked there as teenagers,” she said. “And I think my father ran the carousel at one time.”

For the past year, Kanter has been helping memorialize the Park through music, via a commission from composer Chris Neiner. And on Saturday, September 28 at 4:00 pm, M.U.S.i.C. – Stars in the Classics will present the world premiere of the final movement at Praxis Fiber Workshop. [Read more…]

Cleveland Composers Guild at Fairmount Presbyterian (Jan. 21)

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by Sicily Xiao

On January 21, a serene Sunday afternoon, the Cleveland Composers Guild curated the second concert of its 2023-2024 season at Fairmount Presbyterian Church. The program, dedicated to cutting edge chamber music compositions, included the 1st prize winner of the Guild’s 11th Collegiate Composition Contest.

The concert began with Ty Alan Emerson’s Pan Songs played by percussionist Dylan Moffitt on a version of the modern steelpan which avoided precise tuning, resulting in a distinctive harmonic and spatial system. The emphasis on sound, color, and rhythm beautifully showcased Emerson’s concepts. In the second movement, Moffitt traded mallets for brushes, more commonly used in jazz, adding a layer of flexibility to the timbral palette.

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No Exit: a conversation with composer Chris Neiner

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This weekend, No Exit continues their series of concerts featuring world premieres by Robert Honstein, Victoria Cheah, and Connie Converse. Performances are on Friday, April 14 at 7:00 pm at Heights Arts and Saturday, April 15 at 7:30 pm at Kent State University.

The program also includes the world premiere of Chris Neiner’s Time Machine Hyperboles. I caught up with the Cleveland-based composer by phone and began our conversation by asking him to expand on his composer note, where he says: “….it’s a long title for a short piece, but it captures the underpinning duality of the music and its non sequitur behavior.”

Chris Neiner: The piece has two distinct types of music. One is very fast — kinesthetic and rambunctious. The other is the opposite — very slow and drawn out, fragile and quiet. Going back and forth between the two is almost like a movie with jump cuts between different kinds of music.

Mike Telin: You do compare it to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project to present Alia Musica Pittsburgh

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Composer and conductor Federico Garcia-De Castro was 12, living in his native Colombia, when a left-leaning politician named Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa was shot and killed at an airport in Bogotá.

“He was part of a whole political party that was exterminated one by one,” Castro said during a recent interview. “Estimates range from 3,000 to 5,000 people.”

Among all the killings, that one in March of 1990 left the biggest mark on Castro. “He was a very charismatic leader who was picking up more and more steam,” the musician said of Jaramillo. “I remember that I was very shocked and disturbed.” Years later, after seeing a documentary, he decided to write a piece in homage to that leader.

The new music ensemble Alia Musica Pittsburgh, which Castro directs and conducts, will perform his Memoria for soprano, violin, cello, guitar, and percussion this Sunday, October 27 at 7:00 pm at the Bop Stop. The free program also includes works by John Arrigo-Nelson, James Ogburn, Kerrith Livengood, and Bowling Green faculty composer Marilyn Shrude, and will serve as the season opener and kickstarter launch for the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project.

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Music in the Circle Series debuts at Mixon & Gartner (July 11 & 14)

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by David Kulma

Classical music concerts in Cleveland usually thin out in July as festivals outside the city get under way, most notably The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season. So it is a welcome turn of events to see a new international summer festival supported by University Circle institutions arrive for two weeks in mid-July. I attended the first weekend of Music in the Circle concerts that brought musicians from around the world to the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, July 11 and to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Sunday, July 14. [Read more…]

New “Music in the Circle” series debuts in University Circle in July

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by Daniel Hathaway

University Circle seemed to be firing on all cylinders last month — on Saturday, June 8, for example, in addition to hosting Parade the Circle, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival and Cleveland International Piano Competition were producing simultaneous events at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra was packing Severance Hall for Jason Mraz down the street.

July is a different matter, and several U.C. institutions have joined forces to inject a new series into the calendar this year designed to keep performances flowing and to increase access to classical music. We spoke with Israeli pianist and recent CIM graduate Or Re’em, who is Music Director for Music in the Circle, an international summer music festival, to find out what’s in the plans.

Re’em had previously been involved with Judson Manor’s intergenerational program that houses CIM students in University Circle’s celebrated retirement community (read a New York Times feature here). “When the festival idea came up, Judson generously offered to sponsor visiting artists in their guest apartments,” he said. “That made it possible to invite artists from South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel. The program grew bigger than I originally expected.” [Read more…]

NEOSonicFest: a look back at the beginning, and a peek at what’s on tap in 2019

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When a festival runs for long enough, it becomes interesting to look back and remember that it wasn’t always a staple of the local culture. At one time, it was entirely new.

“Last weekend,” Daniel Hathaway wrote in April of 2014, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony “burst suddenly into bloom like a crocus after a long winter with the first of two concerts anchoring its promising new enterprise, NEOSonicFest…”

Back then, music director Steven Smith had been thinking for years about how to keep the name and activities of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony alive, as Mike Telin reported in our very first preview of NEOSonicFest. The retirement of the orchestra’s founder, Edwin London, and the end of its residency at Cleveland State University had slowed the group’s momentum.

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