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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 Museum of Art to present world premiere of Ergün’s Formare

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by Mike Telin

Since its inception in 2008, the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program has brought more than 80 international artists to Cleveland for residencies. For the program’s latest edition, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is partnering with the Foundation in the commissioning of six new works by composers from across the globe under the auspices of the Museum’s Performing Arts Series.

On Wednesday, May 8 at 7:30 pm in the Museum’s Ames Family Atrium, composer Cenk Ergün will present Formare, the second premiere of the series. The work is scored for female choir, children’s choir, harpsichords, and trombones. The hour-long concert is free.

Responding to questions by email, Ergün said that the work’s title, Formare, means “to form” in Latin, and refers both to the formation of sound, and to the positioning of the performers within the space. Ergün will use both the ground level and second-floor allées of the atrium.

“The four trombones are divided into pairs and placed on the west and east allées,” Ergün said. “Four of the twelve singers are spread across the north allée, and the other eight, along with three harpsichords and a children’s choir, are positioned evenly across the ground floor. [Read more…]

Threadgill’s Pathways with Zooid & Oberlin Ensemble at CMA (Jan. 11)

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by Nicholas Stevens

“The music as always speaks its own language.” In a program note for his new piece Pathways, Henry Threadgill names places and people who inspired him, yet declines to describe the music or the process behind it. Immersion in the 90-minute work feels like watching a non-narrative film in a familiar yet unknown language. What the committee for the Pulitzer Prize for Music recognized when they honored Threadgill in 2016 was the unique vitality of this invented language. In its world premiere outing on Friday, January 11, Pathways unfolded like a hive intelligence fleshing out its own original, complex definition of beauty.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Museum of Art Composers Cohort: “Find your inspiration here”

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by Mike Telin
Originally published on the Website of
The Collective Arts Network | Cleveland

Since its inception in 2008, the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program has brought more than eighty international artists to Cleveland for residencies. Now, and for the first time in its history, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) will make a serious commitment to the commissioning of new music in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation.

Over the next two years, the latest edition of the Creative Fusion program will result in the creation of six new works by composers from across the globe under the auspices of the museum’s Performing Arts Series. The composers—Luciano Chessa, Cenk Ergün, Aya Nishina, Sophie Nzayisenga, Henry Threadgill and Aleksandra Vrebalov—will travel to Cleveland, gain inspiration by immersing themselves in the museum’s collection and the city, and create compositions, three of which will be premiered in Cleveland in the spring of 2019 and three during the 2019–2020 concert season.

The scope and nature of the works in this series will be developed during the composers’ visits to the museum and the city. Discussions with curators and conversations with potential collaborators from across Cleveland’s creative community will steer the process, in close coordination with the museum’s performing arts staff. After this research phase, the composers will create their work on individually crafted timelines. Read the article on the CAN Journal

[Read more…]

Preview: Two concerts of Vietnamese music to feature Phạm Thị Huệ on June 14 and 19

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By Mike Telin

Pham-Thi-Hue-2For the past two and a half months, Vietnamese musician Phạm Thị Huệ has been presenting workshops with Cleveland area students about the traditional music of her country known as Ca trù, as part of the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program. During her stay, Phạm Thị Huệ’s host organization has been Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio. “It has been wonderful to be part of this program,” Huệ says “It has been great to meet the all of the other artists from other countries who are also here.”

On Friday, June 14 at 7:30 pm at the Spiritual Life Society (Old Church on the Green) in Hudson, Phạm Thị Huệ, voice, đàn đáy (long-necked trapezoid lute), and đàn tỳ bà (pear-shaped lute), joined by her 14-year-old daughter Nguyễn Huệ Phương, voice and phách (Vietnamese percussion instrument) will present a concert that will also feature a reception with a tasting of rare Vietnamese green and flower-scented teas. On Wednesday, June 19 at 7:00 pm at the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland in Shaker Heights, Huệ will present a solo concert of traditional Vietnamese music. [Read more…]

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