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Cuarteto Casals returns to Cleveland Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

Founded in 1997 at the Escuela Reina Sofía in Madrid, Cuarteto Casals quickly garnered international attention by winning first prize at the London International String Quartet Competition and the International Brahms Competition. The Quartet is also the recipient of a prize from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust.

On Tuesday, November 12 at 7:30 pm at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church, Cuarteto Casals — violinists Abel Tomàs and Vera Martínez, violist Cristina Cordero, and cellist Arneau Tomàs —  will return to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society stage with a program that features works by Mozart, Gubaidulina, and Brahms. Tickets are  available online.

I caught up with Cristina Cordero and Arneau Tomàs by Zoom in California, where the Quartet was about to begin a U.S. tour. I began our lively conversation by asking for their thoughts on Mozart’s String Quartet in D, “Hoffmeister.”

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Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Imani Winds go all out with Michelle Cann (Oct. 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Imani Winds has mastered the art of extemporized risk-taking. If most of the notes on Tuesday, October 15, were predetermined, the specialness was in what was not on the page. It’s what one aspires to hear from the best chamber music performances and in jazz: aligned individual and group invention, conversational interplay, courage of dynamics, tempos, and timbres edging on extremes — music-making never again to be heard in exactly the same way.

Flutist Brandon Patrick George, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mark Dover, horn player Kevin Newton, and bassoonist Monica Ellis were joined by pianist Michelle Cann — a potent spark of invention in her own right — in a program of varied, but logically grouped works by Paquito D’Rivera, Lalo Shifrin, Francis Poulenc, and Valerie Coleman. Ellis described the evening’s sequence as “concentric circles” coinciding in Paris, or at least in a French aesthetic.

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Cleveland Chamber Music Society continues its 75th anniversary season with Imani Winds and pianist Michelle Cann

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by Mike Telin

For pianist Michelle Cann, returning to Cleveland always feels like coming home. “It was such a significant part of my life, having done my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music,” she said. “I just love the city and I have so many memories, both musically and personally, that it always feels so great to be back.”

On Tuesday, October 15 at 7:30 pm at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church, Cann will join the Imani Winds for a Cleveland Chamber Music Society concert that will include works by Paquito D’Rivera, Lalo Schifrin, Valerie Coleman, and Francis Poulenc. Tickets are available online.

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Chanticleer opens CCMS season with an ode to nature (Sept. 24)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Chanticleer’s widely-varied program “Music of a Silent World” opened the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s 75th season on Tuesday, September 24 at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights.

Throughout the two-hour performance, Chanticleer brought a lovely and well-blended group sound, faultless intonation, and an extraordinary stylistic range — from German romantic to Sondheim. Tim Keeler is the group’s Music Director, and Chanticleer performs without a conductor. Their remarkable group sound is a tribute to the lovely mixture of predominantly lighter male voices — six countertenors, three tenors, and three baritones/basses.

This program centered around selections from Majel Connery’s song cycle The Rivers Are Our Brothers, whose declamatory lyrics readily identified the messengers (“I am the air,” “I am a cloud,” “I am a river”). [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Chanticleer to open 75th Season

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by Mike Telin

In 1949 a small group of like-minded individuals came together to bring ensembles of the highest quality to Cleveland for chamber music performances. And thus, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society was born.

On Tuesday, September 24 at 7:30 pm at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church,  CCMS will launch its 75th anniversary season with a concert by the celebrated all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer. “Music of a Silent World,” will feature Majel Connery’s The Rivers are Our Brothers, a new arrangement of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, Lawrence’s The Weather, and I miss you like I miss the trees by the ensemble’s composer-in-residence Ayanna Woods. A gala reception will follow the performance. Tickets are available online.

I caught up with tenor and assistant music director Matthew Mazzola and baritone Matthew Knickman on Zoom and began our conversation by asking why they are excited about this nature inspired program.

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Fall Preview: Anniversaries & New Beginnings

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by Daniel Hathaway

While compiling our master calendar for 2024-2025, we noted some milestones to celebrate among Northeast Ohio’s musical organizations and at least one new arrival on the scene to mention.

The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra (pictured in 1938) begins its 90th season this year, with a November concert at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, a holiday concert at Judson Manor in December, and an anniversary performance at Severance Music Center in March.

For its 75th season, Cleveland Chamber Music Society will host only six ensembles at Disciples Church rather than the usual seven, but No. 6, the Jerusalem Quartet, will perform all 15 of Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets in five April concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art. CCMS’s season begins with Chanticleer on September 24 and includes concerts by the Imani Winds with pianist Michelle Cann, Cuarteto Casals, flutist Emmanuel Pahud with pianist Alessio Bax, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Garrick Ohlsson at Disciples (May 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland audiences have recently enjoyed a double dose of Garrick Ohlsson’s piano wizardry. After stepping in for Igor Levit with The Cleveland Orchestra in March, Ohlsson returned to close out the Cleveland Chamber Music Society season with a predictably wonderful recital at Disciples Christian Church on Tuesday, May 7. The four works on his program — a Beethoven sonata, a Schubert fantasy, a contemporary Australian piece, and a Chopin triptych gave the large audience plenty to rave about.

Beethoven’s Sixth Sonata is something of an entremet among the three works of his Opus 10. Shorter and lighter in spirit than its siblings, it made a delightful curtain raiser. Ohlsson played the opening movement with an elegant clarity, inviting his listeners to join in the fun he was obviously having. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society concludes season with Garrick Ohlsson

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by Mike Telin

“This is going to sound like a commercial, but coming to Cleveland — and the wider area — is always one of the high points of my artistic life,” Garrick Ohlsson recently said by telephone. And the pianist has performed in Northeast Ohio enough times to make that claim. He has been a regular soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra for some time and has performed on Akron’s Tuesday Musical and Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series. And he has already been to the area twice this calendar year — first making a return engagement with the Canton Symphony, then replacing Igor Levit with The Cleveland Orchestra..

One Tuesday, May 7 at 7:30 pm at Disciples Christian Church, Ohlsson will revisit the Cleveland Chamber Music Society with a program that features the music of Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin. Tickets are available online.

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Polenzani & Drake
on Chamber Music Society (Apr. 9)

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by Kevin McLaughlin 

I’ve been enjoying watching the tenor Matthew Polenzani’s masterclasses on YouTube. There’s one at Ravinia from a few years ago where he approaches students like a shy visitor, then gently teaches like he performs — guilelessly and penetratingly.

It was this sort of unaffected honesty that Polenzani brought to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Disciples Christian Church on Tuesday, April 9, in a recital program of Schubert, Schumann, Finzi, and Ives. Out of keeping with the series’ regular fare of string quartets and instrumental chamber music, the freshness was doubly felt.

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Dover Quartet at Cleveland Chamber Music Society (Mar. 12)

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by Daniel Hathaway

On March 12, near the beginning of their 14-city North American tour, the Dover Quartet returned to Cleveland to plumb the depths of a rich selection of programmatic pieces on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights.

The audience was swelled by a large contingent of students from the Elyria High School Orchestra, who listened attentively from the church’s balconies and received a first-class lesson in ensemble playing from one of the finest string quartets in the business.

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