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CIM New Music Ensemble plays Ives & Stewart (Sept. 30)

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by Peyton Avery

On Sunday, September 30, the Cleveland Institute of Music’s New Music Ensemble presented a concert in Mixon Hall featuring music by Charles Ives, in celebration of his 150th birthday, as well as works by Kulas visiting artist Curtis Stewart.

The program opened with Ives’ three movement String Quartet No. 2 performed by violinists Maude Cloutier and Amelia Korbitz, violist Ben Carter, and cellist Liam Battle. This piece, which took Ives six years to complete, portrays four men — represented by the ensemble members — who converse, argue, and eventually ascend a mountain together. [Read more…]

CIM New Music Ensemble: Cerrone the guest, Saariaho the dedicatee

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by Jarrett Hoffman

There are two main elements to the CIM New Music Ensemble’s program on Sunday, November 12 at 4:00 pm in Mixon Hall.

First there is the guest composer: Christopher Cerrone, who in the last decade has been both a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Rome Prize.

Second is the program’s dedicatee: Kaija Saariaho, who was considered one of the greatest living composers until her passing in June from brain cancer.

I reached the Ensemble’s director, Keith Fitch (pictured), to learn about how that idea came together, and how Cerrone and Saariaho mesh.

[Read more…]

CIM New Music Ensemble to feature guest composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate

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by Jarrett Hoffman

A swirl of CIM connections pervades the next program from the school’s New Music Ensemble, starting with the featured guest: Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate ’00, a composer and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma who is dedicated to the development of American Indian classical composition.

“Jerod has been on my list for quite some time,” New Music Ensemble director Keith Fitch said in an interview. “He’s a really interesting composer who’s carved a fascinating career, and who is representative of a community of musicians we don’t often hear from.”

Music from opposite ends of Tate’s career will bookend the program on Sunday, October 31 at 4:00 pm in Mixon Hall. Talowa’ Hiloha (Thunder Song) for solo timpani was written in 1997 when he was at CIM, while MoonStrike for string quartet and narrator was premiered in 2019. The role of narrator, who recounts three American Indian legends, will be played in this case by Tate himself.

[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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CIM New Music Ensemble: “L’Histoire du soldat at 100” (Oct. 26)

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by David Kulma

The purpose of a “New Music” ensemble seems obvious at first glance: to play recent music. But new music in an academic context like the Cleveland Institute of Music is actually about a specific tradition. It is an outgrowth of the high modernist, post-war avant-garde, and traces its lineage back to the second decade of the 20th century. So it is no surprise that the CIM New Music Ensemble’s director Keith Fitch chose to celebrate Igor Stravinsky’s 1918 L’Histoire du soldat on Friday night, October 26 in Mixon Hall. [Read more…]

CIM New Music Ensemble to celebrate “L’Histoire at 100”
with new film by Kasumi

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by Jarrett Hoffman

There’s nothing quite like Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. And there will really be nothing like the performance this Friday, October 26 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

The conservatory’s New Music Ensemble, directed by Keith Fitch, will celebrate the 100th birthday of that classic work with the premiere of a new film: a commission from Cleveland-based video artist Kasumi, to be played simultaneously with the music. (The concert is free, and will also be live-streamed.)

And if you’re at all familiar with the work of Kasumi, you know you’re in for a fascinating, perhaps harrowing ride.

The trailer gives a taste of her style, in which she splices together images from mid-century B-movies, commercials, and training films from the public domain — images which are “completely direct,” as Kasumi told us during an interview last year. “The acting is so bad and corny that it conveys emotion in shorthand — it becomes a symbol, like a stop sign. If you weave together these tiny gestures, you get all kinds of nuances of emotion.”

[Read more…]

NEOSonicFest: CIM New Music Ensemble at Bop Stop (April 7)

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by David Kulma

CIMNewMusicEnsemble2Concerts by CIM’s New Music Ensemble have such startlingly high levels of performance that it’s hard to remember that the musicians are, in fact, students. In their concert on Saturday night, April 7 at the Bop Stop as a part of this year’s NEOSonicFest, the ensemble gave immaculate performances of works selected from their 2017-2018 repertoire. [Read more…]

NEOSonicFest 2018 to present five concerts April 5 through 11

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by Mike Telin

CCS-Y&EC-040614Since 2014, the Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony has sponsored NEOSonicFest, a festival of new music performed by musicians from Northeast Ohio and beyond. The 2018 festival will run from April 5 through 11 (see below for concert dates and times).

Clarinetist Carol Robinson and trumpeter Nate Wooley will kick things off by performing selections from Éliane Radigue’s Occam Ocean on April 5 at MOCA. The composer describes her work as “an ongoing acoustic work with influences ranging from electromagnetic waves, to William of Ockham’s philosophies, to science fiction mythologies.”

The always creative No Exit will return to the Festival on April 6 at Heights Arts. The ensemble was founded by composer Timothy Beyer as an outlet for the commissioning and performance of contemporary avant-garde concert music. No Exit is committed to promoting the works of living composers, particularly the music of young and emerging artists who haven’t yet received either the opportunities or exposure of their better-known counterparts. (Works by Leo Ornstein, Ty Emerson, Per Nørgård, James Praznik, Andrew Rindfleisch & Tristan Murail).

[Read more…]

CIM New Music Ensemble features Fitch’s The Range of Light (Feb. 7)

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by Nicholas Stevens

FITCH-KeithIn a recent concert by the Cleveland Institute of Music’s New Music Ensemble, Keith Fitch — CIM’s composition department chair, and the ensemble’s director — demonstrated his penchant for effective curation. His own new composition, The Range of Light, illuminated the work and words of John Muir, a visionary in American history, and cast the other pieces on the program into sharp relief.

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CIM New Music Ensemble and baritone Dean Southern to perform new work by director Keith Fitch

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by Jarrett Hoffman

FITCH-KeithFor his New Music Ensemble’s biannual concerts, director Keith Fitch often builds programs around guest composers coming to the Cleveland Institute of Music. This year, the addition of a concert in February — one without a visiting artist — gives Clevelanders a further opportunity to hear new music, and provided Fitch extra programmatic flexibility.

“It gave me the freedom to put forward some works I might not otherwise have a chance to program,” Fitch said in a recent interview. Selections by Elliott Carter, Toru Takemitsu, and Frederick Fox came to mind — and to cap off the evening, the esteemed composer, who is head of CIM’s Composition department, looked to a new work in his own catalogue.

On Wednesday, February 7 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall, Fitch will lead the CIM New Music Ensemble in a free concert to include the director’s own The Range of Light. Joined by baritone Dean Southern, head of CIM’s Voice and Opera division, the Ensemble will give the 2017 work its second-ever performance.

[Read more…]

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