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CityMusic Cleveland: Stefan Willich on music and medicine

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Willich-Stefan“It is truly striking that there are so many people interested and highly proficient in both music and medicine,” conductor and physician Stefan Willich said in a recent conversation. Speaking from his home in Berlin, the artistic director of the World Doctors Orchestra first pointed out the precise structures of the two fields.

“Medicine is based on natural scientific laws and formulas, and music is based on mathematical composition. But then of course you add subjectivity and emotion. The musical interpreter will load a composition with his personality, and as a patient, you wish for a doctor that has empathy for you and makes you truly feel good caring for you. And both fields include quite extreme emotions — in medicine dealing with disease or even death, and in good art covering lots of different emotional states.”

Beginning on Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30 pm at St. Jerome Church in Collinwood, principal guest conductor Stefan Willich will lead CityMusic Cleveland in five free concerts of music by Mozart, Wagner, and Schubert, featuring concertmaster Miho Hashizume, principal violist Jonathan Bagg, and soprano Chabrelle Williams. See our Concert Listings for additional times and locations. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland with Tessa Lark at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus (Oct. 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Corigliano-Lark-StIn an unusual example of regifting, Avner Dorman and CityMusic Cleveland bestowed an early 80th-birthday present on John Corigliano on Friday evening, October 20 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus: a performance of his own ‘Red Violin’ Concerto, the solo part commandingly played by Tessa Lark. The composer flew in from New York for the occasion and gave some introductory notes from the church’s ornate pulpit. [Read more…]

CityMusic celebrates John Corigliano’s 80th: a conversation with Avner Dorman, Tessa Lark, and the composer himself

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by Daniel Hathaway, Jarrett Hoffman, and Mike Telin

Corigliano-J-Henry-Fair“I knew this was John Corigliano’s 80th birthday season and I really wanted to do something special to celebrate that,” CityMusic Cleveland Artistic Director Avner Dorman said during a telephone conversation. “We thought about showing the film The Red Violin and playing the score. Then we realized that performing the concerto would be more artistically satisfying.”

CityMusic opens its 14th season when Avner Dorman leads a program that celebrates the 80th birthday of composer John Corigliano. The program will include his “The Red Violin” Concerto, featuring Tessa Lark, as well as Robert Schumann’s Overture to Genoveva and Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish.” The first of five area performances will take place on Wednesday, October 18 at 7:30 pm at St. Jerome Church in Cleveland. Click here for additional time, days, and locations.

“I’m excited about this program, and the fact that we managed to put it all together is extraordinary,” Dorman said. “I’m sure this is going to be a huge hit with our audiences. [Read more…]

CityMusic: “What’s on David Bowie’s Playlist” at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple (March 19)

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by Robert Rollin

BowieOn Sunday, May 19 at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple, CityMusic Cleveland, under the direction of Avner Dorman, performed an excellent concert that brought insight into pop icon David Bowie’s many inspirations. Bowie’s own songs, juxtaposed with Richard Strauss’s “Im Abendrot” (In the Twilight) from his Four Last Songs, were the highlight of the concert. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland to explore “David Bowie’s Playlist” in five concerts

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by Mike Telin

BowieWhen David Robert Jones, a.k.a. David Bowie, passed away in January of 2016, the English singer, songwriter, actor, and popular-culture icon left the world with a prodigious artistic canon. With a career dating back to 1962, Bowie was constantly reinventing himself. That raises the question — what and who were his artistic inspirations?

In the first of five concerts, beginning on Wednesday, March 15 at 7:30 at St. Jerome Church in Cleveland, audiences will be able to discover some answers to that question when Avner Dorman leads CityMusic Cleveland in “What’s on David Bowie’s Playlist?” [Read more…]

CityMusic to play Viennese music with horn soloist Elizabeth Freimuth

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by Mike Telin

freimuth-elizabethEvery New Year’s day, people around the globe tune in to hear the Vienna Philharmonic perform music by Johann Strauss I and II. Beginning on Wednesday, December 7 at 7:30 pm in Christ Episcopal Church in Shaker Heights, guest conductor Stefan Willich will lead CityMusic Cleveland in five concerts featuring Viennese music by the Strauss family that you’d be likely to hear at the Musikverein.

The program will include Strauss the Junior’s Lagoon Waltz and Pizzicato Polka and Strauss the Senior’s Zampa Galop and Radetzky March. Check our concert listings page for times and venues of the four additional performances that run through Sunday.

The concerts will also include the Waltz from Der Rosenkavalier by the unrelated Richard Strauss, as well as that composer’s Horn Concerto No. 2, featuring Elizabeth Freimuth as soloist. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland at Fairmount Temple with violinist Sayaka Shoji (Oct. 19)

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by Robert Rollin

SHOJI-SLast Wednesday night, October 19 at Fairmount Temple, CityMusic Cleveland kicked off its 13th season with an exceptional concert intermingling Classic, Romantic, and 21st-century works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Avner Dorman, the orchestra’s music director. The highlight was a magnificent performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto by stellar soloist Sayaka Shoji. [Read more…]

Sayaka Shoji returns to CityMusic Cleveland for performances of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto

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by Mike Telin

SHOJI-SCityMusic Cleveland, under the direction of music director Avner Dorman, will kick off its season this week with a program featuring Dorman’s After Brahms — Three Intermezzi, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with soloist Sayaka Shoji, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. The first of five area performances will be presented on Wednesday, October 19 at 7:30 pm at Fairmount Temple. See our Concert Listings page for additional times and locations.

Prior to Shoji’s appearances with CityMusic in October of 2015, she spoke with ClevelandClassical.com and talked about her childhood, her passion for jazz, and her fascination with all things connected to the ‘70s. The following is a reprint of that interview.  [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: a conversation with violin soloist Tessa Lark

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by Mike Telin

LARK-Tessa“There are some challenging spots in the concerto, but it’s worth all of the effort. The melodies, as you would expect in Dvořák, are just sublime, the kind that never leave your ear,” violinist Tessa Lark said during an interview.

Beginning on Wednesday, May 11 at 7:30 pm at Mentor High School Performing Arts Center, CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Avner Dorman, will present the first of five area performances of Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto featuring Tessa Lark. The program will also include Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Op. 26 and the Symphony No. 3, ”Scottish.” Check our Concert Listings for times and locations of additional performances.

We caught up with the 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient by telephone in Danville, Illinois, where she was performing Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Danville Symphony. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: a conversation with soprano Jeanine De Bique

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by Mike Telin

DeBique_JeanineAs a young girl growing up in the Caribbean, soprano Jeanine De Bique had no idea that it was possible to make a living as an opera singer. “I come from Trinidad and Tobago, where you are surrounded by music all day long. Whether it’s classical music, calypso, soca, or chutney, it’s always around you,” De Bique said during a Skype conversation from Barbados.

“When I finished high school at 18, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I thought about being a lawyer or physiologist, but my voice teacher asked me if I wanted to pursue music. I had no clue that you could have a career in opera. When a country doesn’t have any means for you to see an opera — where people are doing that as their job — you have no idea that those jobs exist.” [Read more…]

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