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The Crossing at CMA: choir & organ, commission & dedication

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Three members of Philadelphia-based chamber choir The Crossing visited the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2017 to perform David Lang’s Lifespan, a piece that could be crudely described as people blowing and whistling at a rock.

“It sounds like the dumbest thing ever, but it’s a really great piece,” Donald Nally, who heads up The Crossing, said during a recent telephone conversation. Lifespan had caught the eye of CMA director of performing arts Tom Welsh, who then wanted to continue the relationship by bringing the entire choir to Cleveland.

It was a tragic event the following year — the passing of a beloved figure in the local music community, Robert G. Schneider, from complications following a car accident — that gave rise to an idea about what the museum and the ensemble could do together, in Schneider’s memory, around his two great passions of choir and organ.

On Friday, March 25 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium, The Crossing and organist Scott Dettra will give the premiere of Stacy Garrop’s In a House Besieged, commissioned by Welsh and CMA. The program also includes Lansing McLoskey’s The Memory of Rain and Arvo Pärt’s Salve Regina. Tickets are available here.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art
to present Wu Wei, sheng

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Wu Wei, the Chinese-born, German-based virtuoso of the free reed instrument known as the sheng, discovered the instrument in, of all places, an animated film.

“It told a famous Chinese story about someone who cannot really play this instrument,” he said during a recent interview on Zoom. “There is a queen who wants to have 300 sheng players perform together. So sheng players are requested, and one volunteer decides to make a fake sheng and just gesture with his body, as if he’s playing,” Wu Wei said, swaying back and forth on camera to demonstrate.

Rest assured, when a man carrying a sheng enters the stage of Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Friday, March 11 at 7:30 pm, he will be someone who knows a thing or two about how to play it.

An internationally-renowned sheng virtuoso who teaches at the Shanghai Conservatory, Wu Wei is also considered the instrument’s leading avant-garde figure, having dedicated a significant portion of his career to expanding its repertoire through arranging, commissioning, and composing.

[Read more…]

Fatoumata Diawara makes her visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Balance is a key word in describing singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor Fatoumata Diawara.

There’s her music, where she aims to respect her Malian roots while embracing international influences.

There’s her love of pop music, contrasted with her lyrics, which can venture into heavy subjects — the antithesis of bubblegum.

And there’s the fact that, against those sometimes dark lines of text, she radiates joy onstage.

Clevelanders were deprived of that music and that stage presence two years ago, when Diawara’s trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art was canceled. So it was good news when her name appeared on the lineup for the Museum’s Performing Arts Series this season: she’ll finally make her visit to Gartner Auditorium next Wednesday, March 2 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available here.

[Read more…]

CMA’s Performing Arts: Behind the Beat video series

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by Mike Telin

When the performing arts world came to a sudden halt back in March, Tom Welsh, director of performing arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, began to think about how to respond.

“After the shutdown there was a dash to develop online content,” Welsh said during a recent telephone conversation. “That sparked the Museum staff to create the curatorial video series On My Mind. So I stepped back and thought, instead of just inviting musicians to play on-screen, why not talk to them and hear what they have to say about how they’re confronting the situation and feeling in this weird moment.”

Hosted by Welsh, Behind the Beat features artists who have direct connections to CMA, and highlights the Museum’s rich legacy of music.

In Episode 1, Welsh speaks with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet. “Aleksandra’s new work Antennae was to have been premiered at CMA at the end of March, so that piece was the first big casualty of COVID-19,” Welsh said. After returning to Serbia, Vrebalov phoned Welsh, telling him that she had gotten in touch with Harrington, and had re-written a short excerpt from Antennae for string quartet. “That was Kronos’ first online-only production.” [Read more…]

Contestants announced for 2020 Cleveland International Piano Competition

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Contestants have been announced for the 2020 Cleveland International Piano Competition, which takes place at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Severance Hall from July 26 to August 9.

Here are the numbers: Piano Cleveland, the presenting organization of the Competition, received 242 applicants from 28 nations. And the 29 chosen contestants, ages 20-32, represent 12 countries: Brazil, China, Croatia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and the United States.

At stake is the Mixon First Prize of $75,000, which also comes with a Carnegie Hall debut, three years of management services, and a recording on the Steinway & Sons label.

[Read more…]

CONCERT CANCELLED
Cleveland Museum of Art: a conversation with Fatoumata Diawara

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Note: due to flight cancellations, this performance has been cancelled.

Fatoumata Diawara aims for a particular balance in her music: respect for her Malian roots, and enthusiasm for international influences. Another balance? The singer and guitarist loves pop, which you can hear in her songs, but listeners should expect her lyrics to venture into heavy territory. And yet — another balance — when she’s onstage, she radiates joy.

The fascinating and thoughtful Diawara — who will perform at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, February 26 at 7:30 pm — picked up the phone last week in Lake Como, Italy. And when someone tells you they’re at Lake Como, there’s only one possible response.

Jarrett Hoffman: It’s so beautiful there!

Fatoumata Diawara: It’s a special place, very peaceful.

JH: I imagine that it’s also a great place to write music.

FD: Of course! It’s so nice when you take your guitar to the lake — you get inspiration right away. [Read more…]

Contemporary Guitar Duo FretX to play at Transformer Station 

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by Mike Telin

There are many reasons musicians decide to form an ensemble. For the contemporary guitar duo FretX, Mak Grgic and Daniel Lippel, it was the need to borrow an instrument. “I first met Mak through Peter Robles of Serious Music Media,” Lippel said during a telephone conversation. “He needed to borrow an electric guitar for a performance. I knew Peter and he hooked him up with me. We started talking and Peter suggested that we play a duo concert sometime and we thought it was a cool idea. The thing is, Mak lives in Los Angeles and I’m in New York, so this is a both coasts duo. The logistics have a way of framing the nature of the group, but it’s working out.”

On Monday, February 24 at 7:30 pm at Transformer Station, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts Series will present FretX. The concert will include works by Courtney Bryan, Laura Schwartz, Gity Razaz, Miroslav Tadić, Daniel Lippel, and Helmut Lachenmann. Tickets are available online.

Recognizing the fact that there were already plenty of great guitar duos in the United States, on the advice of Robles, the two guitarists decided to go in a different direction. [Read more…]

Safaafir with Hamid Al-Saadi: Iraqi music at CMA (January 29)

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by Nicholas Stevens

When UNESCO made its first list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, it welcomed Kabuki theatre, Sardinian folksong, and dozens of other media into a globe-spanning canon. These, the committee declared, stood out among the untold multitudes of human creative practices. Among them ranked the Iraqi maqam, in which poetry, chamber music, and lighter songs flow into extended, semi-improvised performances. As the ensemble Safaafir and singer Hamid Al-Saadi recently proved to Northeast Ohioans, the centuries-old coffeehouse art form still holds the power to thrill. [Read more…]

CMA: “Journey to the Heart of the Iraqi Maqam”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Amir ElSaffar has had the type of musical career that you can imagine laid out as a board game: a winding path with important points along the way where he’s taken on new instruments, absorbed new genres, and crossed the globe to research musical practices more deeply.

He began as a classical trumpeter growing up in Chicago, the son of an Iraqi immigrant father and an American mother. And he has since found his way to jazz, Arabic music, composition, and Iraqi maqam, a centuries-old tradition of highly structured, semi-improvised compositions sung to Classical Arabic and colloquial Iraqi poetry.

The foremost purveyor of that tradition is Hamid Al-Saadi, who will join ElSaffar and the group Safaafir for “Journey to the Heart of the Iraqi Maqam” in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Wednesday, January 29 at 7:30 pm as part of the Museum’s Performing Arts Series. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Fretwork viol consort at CMA: “Music from the Age of Michelangelo” (Oct. 23)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Spare a thought for Fretwork: a recent tour of North America hit a snag when an airline cracked one of their violas da gamba. Instruments of this family constitute the entire toolbox of the group, a viol consort that presents the fraternal twin to the violin as though it had never lost its cachet. For many Northeast Ohioans, warm feelings for the group remain fresh after a late-October concert, part of a tour that pitted them against all too modern perils. In a careless, rushing world, their meticulous musicianship and willingness to let music unfold feel less like dusty artifacts than like emblems of a future worth fighting for. [Read more…]

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