by Emmy Hensley
“I’ve been composing things, in a sense, all my life,” cellist and composer Akua Dixon said during a recent interview. “As an African American musician growing up studying classical music, I feel that I can offer a specific view that not many people have thought about.”
Commissioned by CityMusic Cleveland, her string quartet We the People will be premiered on Friday, November 18 at 7:00 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop by violinists Susan Britton and Eunho Kim, violist Yael Senamaud-Cohen, and cellist Trevor Kazarian.
The free concert, titled “Perspectives for String Quartet,” reflects on the theme of Justice, Equality, and Freedom. The program also includes Arvo Pärt’s Psalom, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Pisachi (Reveal): Six Epitomes for String Quartet, and Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F.
Writing We the People has served as an opportunity for Dixon to reevaluate what justice, equality, and freedom have meant throughout history. “Everything is a matter of opinion, and there are two sides to each coin,” she said. “When I started thinking about the theme, I looked into the Constitution’s Preamble. I read about the intent of setting up this particular democracy, as well as the interpretation of it by the people who founded it — and those who were not included in it. I feel that it’s a great time to have dialogue and to listen to the side of so many people of color and women — all the people that haven’t had a chance — and what they have to say about these topics.”
A clarinet and a string quartet are the traditional components of a clarinet quintet, an instrumentation that has spawned widely performed works by composers such as Mozart, Brahms, and Coleridge-Taylor.
The next program from CityMusic Cleveland was dreamed up by Miho Hashizume, and stems from two of the violinist’s experiences over the past few years: teaching strings in Slavic Village, and encountering the poetry of Cleveland-born writer and activist Weatherspoon.
Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is already a production in itself. The music alone, not to mention the circumstances of its composition, is a lot to untangle.
The Christmas season appeared to still be in full swing at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus on January 21. Merry wreaths, festive trees, and twinkling lights filled the cavernous space three weeks into the new year. The evening was a chilly one, and most audience members chose to keep their coats on as they settled into their seats for CityMusic Cleveland’s captivating chamber program, “Tales and Scenes
CityMusic Cleveland has always been on a mission. This season, the group is staying true to its community vision — music for everyone, and concerts for free — even if performances look a little different in 2021. The programming is slimmed down from chamber orchestra to chamber music, and there’s an increased emphasis on new works (each program this season features a world premiere).
After greeting an in-person audience the night before at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, a mixed quartet from CityMusic Cleveland performed for an audience unseen on Saturday, May 15, thanks to the live-streaming capabilities of the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
On December 6, CityMusic Cleveland continued its season-long chamber series celebrating 100 years of the 19th amendment with “Baroque Reflections,” streamed live from the Maltz Performing Arts Center.