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A guide to staying home and streaming videos of concerts

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Live streams, re-broadcasts, digital archives, and YouTube channels — here are some videos of performances to keep you occupied during social distancing.

Beginning locally, some performances are still taking place via live stream, without an audience. On Thursday, March 19 at 4:30 pm, Oberlin Conservatory will stream a faculty and guest concert from Stull Recital Hall. Flutist Alexa Still, cellist Mihai Tetel, and pianist Evan Hines come together in Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Játo (“Jet Whistle”) and Valerie Coleman’s 2019 Amazonia.

Piano Cleveland, the presenting organization of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, has announced a new weekly series called The Quarantine Concerts, to be streamed every Thursday at 7:30 pm from Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland. The first concert, on March 19, will feature pianist Yaron Kohlberg as well as the piano duo of Natsumi Shibagaki and Irwin Shung. Online audience members have the opportunity to offer their support directly to these artists by donating to Piano Cleveland’s Musicians’ Fund.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to present “We March On! Music of Social Justice”

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by Mike Telin

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. On June 3, 1970 that tragic event was commemorated when Robert Shaw led a community performance of the Cherubini Requiem in c at Kent United Church of Christ.

On Saturday, March 7 at 7:30 pm at Kent United Church of Christ, the Cleveland Chamber Choir will mark the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings with “We March On! Music of Social Justice.” Directed by Scott MacPherson, the concert includes music by Joel Thompson, Ethyl Smyth, Linda Kachelmeier, Catherine Dalton, and Natsumi Osborn. The program will be repeated on Sunday, March 8 at 3:00 pm at Cleveland’s St. Ignatius of Antioch Church. Charles Edward McGuire will give a pre-concert talk 45 minutes before the performances. The concerts are free.

The idea for creating a program around social justice music came about when a group from CCC attended a performance of Craig Hella Johnson’s passion cantata Considering Matthew Shepard at Bowling Green State University. “When we heard the song All of Us, we started talking about how we should sing it,” CCC alto and managing director Kira McGirr said by telephone. “We talked to Scott MacPherson and he said that if we could come up with a concert theme, he’d be happy to program it.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir at First Baptist (Dec. 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Countering the widespread practice of giving a half-hearted nod to Hanukkah during December choral concerts, Cleveland Chamber Choir dedicated an important chunk of this year’s “Holidays Old and New” programs to the Jewish Feast of Lights, which included this latest pair of annual commissions. At First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday, December 7, Scott MacPherson and his 24 professional singers interleaved Hanukkah music by Andrew Rindfleisch, Baruch J. Cohon, Samuel Adler, Judith Clurman, David Chase, and chorister Corey K. Rubin with pairs of old and new versions of Christmas pieces. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: a conversation with composer and chorister Corey K. Rubin

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“Holidays Old & New” describes Cleveland Chamber Choir’s performances this weekend in more than one way. The main thread that artistic director Scott MacPherson has woven through the program is the pairing of ancient and modern holiday works — from as far apart as the 14th and 21st centuries — that bear the same text. 

The other thread comes in the form of arrangements. That art form is all about old and new, but the emphasis is on the latter here: Hanukkah tunes arranged by Andrew Rindfleisch and Corey K. Rubin will receive their world premieres.

Performances take place on Saturday, December 7 at 7:30 pm at Lakewood Congregational Church, and on Sunday, December 8 at 3:00 pm at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland. Charles McGuire will talk about the program 45 minutes before both concerts. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir at St. John’s Cathedral (Nov. 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Conductor Scott MacPherson had two things in mind when choosing repertoire for Cleveland Chamber Choir’s first pair of concerts this season. The program had to reflect this season’s concentration on music by women composers, and the works needed to flourish in the lively acoustic of venues in Cleveland and Akron. The first performance, on Friday, November 8 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, scored high on both counts. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to present “Lux Caelestis” concerts this weekend

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by Daniel Hathaway

To begin its fifth season, the professional singers of Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir will present identical programs at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, November 8 at 7:30 pm, and at St. Sebastian Church in Akron on Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 pm.

“Our overall theme this season is ‘Women’s Voices Resounding,’” MacPherson said in a telephone conversation. “A good chunk of the repertoire is by women composers and poets. And the first pair of concerts will be given in memory of my dear friend Helen Tremaine Gregory, who passed away last winter. She was a businesswoman and philanthropist who sang in my town-gown Kent Chorale.”

When MacPherson puts a concert program together, he often begins with a central piece out of which companion works spring. “The centerpiece of these programs is Timothy Kramer’s Lux Caelestis, a piece he wrote for me when I was at Trinity University in San Antonio,” the conductor said. “I asked him for a piece we could sing on tour in Cologne Cathedral — one that was appropriate for a watery acoustic.” [Read more…]

Anna White & Katie Fowler in
Musings of a Singing Mother

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by Daniel Hathaway

When soprano Anna E. White and mezzo-soprano Katie Fowler (left to right) met in the Cleveland Chamber Choir four years ago, they discovered they had one major thing in common. Both were balancing careers as professional vocalists with their responsibilities as mothers with small children at home. Three and a half years later, the two have created Musings of a Singing Mother, a cabaret show that celebrates the joys and complications of their everyday lives.

“The concept of the working mother is not new,” White said in a recent telephone conversation, “but because we have to practice at home and prepare for our rehearsals at night, we can be working on a phrase in an Italian aria and finding ourselves changing a dirty diaper or consoling a crying child in the same room. Those lives exist side by side, and we decided to put them on the stage to show people what we do.”

Having already presented their show in Medina in June, the duo will give it a second performance on Saturday, July 27 at 7:30 pm at the Aurora School of Music, where both serve on the faculty. They’ll be joined by pianist Will Hamilton and cellist Faith Rohde. Admission is free. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: “The Personal Muse” (May 18)

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by David Kulma

The Cleveland Chamber Choir has a bold tagline: “More than Music!” The final program of their fourth season, a collaboration with the Cleveland Composers Guild, clearly reflected this progressive mandate. Pairing living, local composers with works by British and American women, artistic director Scott MacPherson curated a delightful, satisfying evening titled “The Personal Muse” at Fairmount Presbyterian Church on Saturday, May 18. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art debuts Cenk Ergün’s Formare (May 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland audiences had their first live encounters with the music of Turkish-born composer Cenk Ergün in March of 2016, when the JACK Quartet premiered his commissioned works Sonare and Celare in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Ergün’s second appearance at the Museum earlier this month came in the form of a Cleveland Foundation Creative Fusion project. On Wednesday evening, May 8, the composer (seated on the pavement above) unveiled his hour-long Formare, turning the Ames Family Atrium into a vast sound installation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir & Cleveland Composers Guild: a conversation with Natsumi Osborn

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Composer Natsumi Osborn remembers the first time she read October Danger, a poem by her friend Anabelle Clark.

“It’s very descriptive and kind of mystical,” Osborn said during a telephone conversation. “It evoked in my head the kinds of images and feelings that I always want to evoke in my music.”

Osborn went on to set that text to music with her choral work Autumn Reflections, for which she won the Cleveland Composers Guild’s 2019 Collegiate Composition Contest. She’s currently finishing up her second year at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she studies composition with Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Elizabeth Ogonek.

In two concerts this weekend, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, under the direction of Scott MacPherson, will perform works by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild, including Osborn’s Autumn Reflections, and pieces by American and British women composers — details below.

[Read more…]

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