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Preview: First NEOSonicFest concert to feature Geoffrey Peterson’s The Edmund Fitzgerald

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by Mike Telin

Edmund-FitzgeraldNEOSonicFest opens on Friday, March 28 at 7:30 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Hall, when Steven Smith leads the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in a program that features Ed London’s Melodrama and Federico’s Follies. The concert also includes Geoffrey Peterson’s The Edmund Fitzgerald, a concerto for piano and strings with Nicholas Underhill as soloist, and special guests Verb Ballets, Richard Dickinson, choreographer.

Geoffrey Peterson’s concerto chronicles the tragic shipwreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior in November, 1975. Its four movements are entitled “Embarkment,” “The Gales,” “Six-Fathom Shoal” (“We’re holding our own”) and “Entombment-Dirge”. The concerto makes use of several musical quotes. The first is Spanish Ladies, an English sea chantey, which appears in both the first and third movements. The second is the funeral march theme from the second movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, which is heard in the fourth movement of the concerto. In addition, a chime is rung 29 times during the final bars of the piece to memorialize the men who lost their lives.

[Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s NEOSonicFest debuts with six concerts from March 28 through April 6

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by Mike Telin

London-EdSince its founding in 1980 by the late composer and Cleveland State University professor Edwin London (left), the Cleveland Chamber Symphony has remained true to its core mission of performing and promoting new music that “dares to explore”. This week the Grammy Award-winning orchestra enters a new phase in its life when it takes on the role of organizer and host of NEOSonicFest, a festival of new music.

“We’re very excited about it,” said Cleveland Chamber Symphony music director Steven Smith during a recent telephone conversation. “We’ve been thinking about how to keep the name and activities of CCS alive over the past several years. We thought the idea of concentrating our activities into a specific period of time would give a greater focus on what CCS does.”

NEOSonicFest opens on Friday, March 28 at 7:30 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Hall, when Steven Smith leads the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in a program that features Ed London’s Melodrama and Federico’s Follies. The concert also includes Geoffrey Peterson’s The Edmund Fitzgerald, a concerto for piano and strings with Nicholas Underhill as soloist, and special guests Verb Ballets, Richard Dickinson, choreographer.

[Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Chamber Symphony and Verb Ballets at BW, June 13

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by Robert Rollin

CCS-at-BW-WellerThe Cleveland Chamber Symphony conducted by Stephen Smith resumed its Verb Ballets collaboration last Thursday evening, June 13, in Baldwin Wallace University’s Gamble Auditorium. The concert, titled “Music that Dares to Explore,” presented four interesting and relatively new pieces, one of which was a world premiere. Two of the performances involved the Verb Ballets.

The most ingratiating piece was BW composer-in residence, Clint Needham’s Urban Sprawl. The only piece utilizing the full ensemble complement, Urban Sprawl is, in the words of the composer, “a funky, jazzy, kitschy, and hopefully fun ode to suburban life.” Needham got the idea for the piece when he and his wife were house hunting and viewed the insides of strange houses with crazy wallpaper, hideous paint colors, abortive do-it-yourself projects, and oddball tobacco smells. He wrote his piece visualizing the inhabitants dancing a quirky new dance he called the “Urban Sprawl.”

The raucous, yet transparently-bright textures using intervals and harmonies evoking Copland’s Americana works, proved a fertile mine for the six Verb Ballets dancers’ talents. [Read more…]

Harpist Jocelyn Chang, 59

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The community of Cleveland freelance musicians and advocates for new music lost a treasured colleague and friend on Friday, November 19, 2010 when harpist Jocelyn Chang passed away at the age of 59.

Jocelyn performed in many contexts with her husband, flutist and composer Michael Leese, and was a longtime member of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. An obituary by Donald Rosenberg was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on November 24. A memorial concert will be held in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University on Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 2:00 pm.

We invite Jocelyn’s many colleagues and friends to post a memory or a tribute by leaving a comment here (click on the link above). At Michael Leese’s request, memorial donations may be made to the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, c/o The Music Settlement, 11125 Magnolia Drive, Cleveland, OH 44106.

The following images were provided by Steve Eva from a photo shoot with the Chagrin Studio Orchestra at Christmas, 2008. The organizers of the memorial concert are creating a slideshow. If you would like to contribute an image, please see the comment below for details.

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