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Cleveland Chamber Choir shines with music to mark the hours and seasons (Oct. 25)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Often called The Vespers, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil reaches for something beyond an evening service. Its fifteen movements, rooted in Russian Orthodox chant, rise and surround like incense — not to display magnificence, but to deepen the mystery. Rachmaninoff was so fond of the work that he requested the fifth movement, the Nunc dimittis, be sung at his funeral.

On Friday evening, October 25, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, directed by Gregory Ristow, presented this monumental work in Trinity Cathedral — a resonant space of tradition and calm, where the beauty of the setting matched the beauty of the sound.

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Cleveland Chamber Choir: music to mark the hours and seasons

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by Mike Telin

This week, Cleveland Chamber Choir invites you to join them by candlelight for a concert of two works that take listeners on a musical journey from sunset to sunrise, and winter to spring.

On Friday October 24 at 7:30 pm at Trinity Cathedral, Gregory Ristow will lead the Cleveland Chamber Choir in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil and Reena Esmail’s A Winter Breviary.

The program will be repeated on Saturday at 7:00 in Fairchild Chapel in Oberlin. Charles Edward McGuire, PhD, from Oberlin College & Conservatory, will present a pre-concert talk 45 minutes prior to each performance. Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available online.

“In the traditional Eastern Orthodox All-Night Vigil service, prayers and chants would have been spaced through the entire night from just before sunset to just before the rising of the sun,” CCC artistic director Gregory Ristow said during a Zoom conversation. “But the service that Rachmaninoff would have had in mind combines all the prayers that would have been said through the night into one service.”

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BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir: “I Believe!” (May 17)

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by Peter Feher

Trust in a higher purpose is part of what’s sustained BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir for many seasons now.

So it was fitting that the two local ensembles came together in a concert titled “I Believe! Knitted Voices of Justice and Faith” on May 17 at Trinity Cathedral. The evening not only marked major milestones for BlueWater and CCC — their 15th and 10th anniversaries, respectively — but also spoke to a shared mission. Making classical music more accessible is a priority for both organizations, whether through pay-what-you-wish performances or programming that forges new connections.

Saturday’s concert paired Margaret Bonds’ Credo and Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c in a righteous demonstration of belief that swelled to fill the magnificent space of Trinity.

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Cleveland Chamber Choir celebrates tenth birthday

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 pm in Trinity Cathedral, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir present “I Believe! Knitted Voices of Justice and Faith,” with conductor Daniel Meyer and soprano Katherine Jolly. The program includes Margaret Bonds’ Credo and Mozart’s “Great” Mass in c. Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available at the door and online.

The concert also marks the culmination of the tenth anniversary season for Cleveland Chamber Choir. We spoke to CCC’s president, Melissa Vandergriff, who helped found the Choir in 2015 along with the ensemble’s first artistic director, Scott MacPherson. We also spoke to ensemble member and executive director Kira McGirr as well as Gregory Ristow, who became the group’s second artistic director in August 2023. [Read more…]

Soprano Katherine Jolly, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and Cleveland Chamber Choir unite for “I Believe!”

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by Stephanie Manning

Since joining the Oberlin Conservatory voice faculty in 2019, soprano Katherine Jolly has kept up with her performing career. But doing so usually takes her outside of Northeast Ohio.

“ I travel a lot for my outside engagements,” she said in a recent interview. So, being the featured soloist on a program with both the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir “is pretty special.”

On Saturday, May 17 at 7:30 pm, the two local ensembles will collaborate to present “I Believe! Knitted Voices of Justice and Faith.” The concert at Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral concludes both groups’ anniversary seasons: the 15th for BlueWater and the 10th for the Chamber Choir. Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available online, and the event will also be live streamed. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir & HaZamir: music by Rossi at West Shore Unitarian Church (Mar. 2)

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by Daniel Hathaway

“I spent a week in Mantua one afternoon” sounds like a standup comic’s putdown of a hopelessly boring city. No such thing on Sunday afternoon, March 2, when Gregory Ristow, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, and members of HaZamir Cleveland youth choir, presented “Synagogue and Salon” at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church.

Conceived as a week-long walking tour through Mantova, the program was designed to better understand the complex musical world of Jewish violinist and composer Salamone Rossi. During their virtual progress through the Italian city that was ruled for 400 years by the wealthy Gonzaga family, the audience heard some 30 pieces of music by Rossi and his contemporaries, as well as examples of the popular and folk music of the streets, all excellently performed by the 24-voice choir and 8-piece instrumental ensemble of bowed and plucked strings with percussion and chamber organ.

Rossi, who lived from around 1570 to around 1628 — on the cusp of the Renaissance and Baroque periods — produced a vast quantity of music. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to feature works by Salamone Rossi

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland Chamber Choir will devote its midwinter concerts to the music of the prolific Italian Jewish composer and violinist Salamone Rossi, a transitional figure who bridged the Renaissance and Baroque periods and was equally at home in the worlds of Jewish liturgical and Italian secular music. Like his contemporary Claudio Monteverdi, he was employed at the court of the Gonzaga family in Mantua.

Artistic director Gregory Ristow will lead the Chamber Choir and youth choir HaZamir in “Synagogue and Salon” on Saturday, March 1 at 8:00 pm at Congregation Mishkan Or in Beachwood, and Sunday, March 2 at 4:00 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River. Admission is pay-what-you-can.

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Cleveland Chamber Choir At Cleveland School of the Arts (Dec. 20) 

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by Peter Feher

Handel’s Messiah wasn’t the only oratorio you could hear in Northeast Ohio over the Holiday season. The Cleveland Chamber Choir offered a brilliant, bracing alternative with two performances of David Lang’s the little match girl passion, December 20 and 21 at Cleveland School of the Arts.

Friday’s concert saw expert singing in service of sincere emotion, vividly realizing this stark Christmas story adapted from Hans Christian Andersen.

There’s no trace of a happy ending in Andersen’s original 19th-century fairy tale. The titular character in “The Little Match Girl” freezes to death on New Year’s Eve after being kicked out of the house by her father, losing her slippers in the street, and failing to sell any matches to passersby who can’t spare so much as a penny. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: “Little Match Girl Passion”

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by Mike Telin

Cleveland Chamber Choir will present a program centered around David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion on December 20 and 21 at the Cleveland School of the Arts. Artistic Director Gregory Ristow has curated a playlist of Christmas music to precede Lang’s piece — a modern day retelling of the 1845 Hans Christian Andersen story influenced by J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion — and followed by his own arrangement of Good King Wenceslas, the classic Christmas Carol about supporting those in need.

In a recent interview Ristow said, “The Little Match Girl Passion has become a piece that’s performed a lot around the holidays — a time that a lot of us take a moment to stop and think about people who are in need and our and society’s role in supporting them.” The concerts are presented in partnership with Northeast Ohio Food Bank. Register for free tickets for the 7:30 pm performances here.

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“Meditations and Mysticism” opens Cleveland Chamber Choir season (Oct. 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It somehow seemed wrong to clap and cheer at the end of Cleveland Chamber Choir’s “Meditations and Mysticism” program on October 26. Less a concert than an administering of musical healing, the event left us feeling more like sitting quietly and sipping measured breaths to prolong our newfound tranquil state.

In a program of ten carefully conceived and sequenced musical episodes, artistic director Gregory Ristow brought a politically weary crowd some much-needed spiritual succor and peace through music. [Read more…]

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