ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Belgium’s Vox Luminis choir makes third visit to Cleveland

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Having on earlier tours performed twice on the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Lionel Meunier and his Belgian choir Vox Luminis will open this season’s Cleveland Museum of Art Performing Arts Series at Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, October 24 at 7:30 pm with an all-Bach program.

ClevelandClassical.com’s Nicholas Jones wrote that on October 31, 2014, Vox Luminis “presented a beautifully crafted program that was at once passionate and serene.” This writer reported that the choir’s April 26, 2017 concert was “flawlessly sung,” “made dramatic use of the cathedral space,” and featured “meticulous tuning and vocal blend” in a program of “sober but exquisitely beautiful music.”

Those earlier programs featured laments (Domenico Scarlatti’s 10-voice Stabat Mater) and funeral music (including Purcell’s musical obsequies for Queen Mary). Sensing that the repertoire might be perceived as a bit dour, Meunier said to the audience in 2017, “I have to confess: we do have happier programs!”

The Belgians will prove that on Wednesday with their concert of five Motets by Johann Sebastian Bach, part of a tour which will include the ensemble’s first Bach performances in the United States (above, rehearsing in Kansas City). [Read more…]

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

by

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…]

CIPC Announces 2018 Prizes in Young Artists Competition

by

by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC YA FInalists 2018

Customarily, the Cleveland International Piano Competition announces its winner late in the evening of its final round, which this year featured concertos with the Canton Symphony Orchestra on Friday evening, June 8 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. But for the Young Artists Competition this time around, CIPC kept its competitors and followers in suspense until an awards ceremony the following evening at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Here are the results (L-R: Shuan Hern Lee, Hao Wei Lin, Eva Gevorgyan, Xiaoxuan Li, Yunchan Lim, JiWon Yang):

JUNIOR DIVISION
First Prize ($10,000): Eva Gevorgyan (13, Russia)
Second Prize ($5,000): Yunchan Lim (13, South Korea)
Third Prize ($2,500): Hao Wei Lin (13, Taiwan)

SENIOR DIVISION
First Prize ($25,000): Xiaoxuan Li (16, China)
Second Prize ($10,000): Shuan Hern Lee (15, Australia)
Third Prize ($5,000): JiWon Yang (16, South Korea) [Read more…]

“Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” — a conversation with his daughter Jamie

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Jamie BernsteinIn a year when arts organizations across the globe have looked back on the life of Leonard Bernstein, it’s easy to lose sight of what his centennial might mean to one of his own children.

Jamie Bernstein will give a personal look at the maestro, composer, pianist, and father in “Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” this Sunday, May 6 at 2:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, as part of the Tri-C Classical Piano Series.

“It provides an all-around portrait of my dad, which you wouldn’t necessarily get in a more traditional concert of his works,” Jamie said during a phone interview. “As I say in my narration, it’s like a guided tour inside my father’s insomniac brain. And it has some fun surprises in it too.”

[Read more…]

Tallis Scholars in “War and Peace” at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Apr. 13)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Tallis Scholars

In their most recent appearance at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Peter Phillips’ renowned British vocal ensemble, Tallis Scholars, dedicated a program of sacred Renaissance music — with a couple of modern insertions — to those who lost their lives in the First World War from 1914 to 1918.

[Read more…]

Tallis Scholars to reflect on World War I at the Cleveland Museum of Art

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Press_Photo-06_TallisScholars_credit-Nick-Rutter“The war to end all wars” — if only that were true. Known as simply the World War up until the late 1930s, the international disaster we now call WWI came to an armistice a century ago, after claiming over 16 million lives.

A concert this week at the Cleveland Museum of Art will commemorate those lost in that conflict. Embarking on their 71st tour to North America, director Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars — the British vocal ensemble whose specialty is sacred music of the Renaissance — will bring “War and Peace” to Gartner Auditorium on Friday, April 13 at 7:30 pm, as part of the Museum’s Performing Arts Series.

L’Homme Armé (“The Armed Man”), a secular song that was popular in Renaissance France, will open Friday’s concert. “It’s a real battle cry,” Peter Phillips said in a phone call from London. “We all go for it — even I sing in it. That’s a pretty noisy start.”

[Read more…]

Wu Man and Huayin Shadow Puppet Band at CMA (Mar. 21)

by

by Nicholas Stevens

Wu-Man

“There are more things in heaven and earth,” Shakespeare wrote in the voice of the iconic character Hamlet, “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The line has supernatural overtones in context, but the essential message — that the staggering variety and abundance of the world defies comprehension — applies just as well to human cultural production. As Wu Man and the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band demonstrated last week at the Cleveland Museum of Art, even the traditional music of a single country can yield practices and sounds that seem universes, rather than mere miles or years, apart.

[Read more…]

Pipa virtuoso Wu Man and the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band to visit Cleveland Museum of Art

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Wu-ManDeep in the Huayin County in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, in a rural village at the foot of Mount Hua — it was there that pipa player Wu Man first heard the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, a family of farmers with an artistic tradition over 300 years old, passed down through generations.

On Wednesday, March 21 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, Wu Man will combine her virtuosity on the pipa with the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band’s unique blend of sounds — shouting vocals, lutes, fiddles, traditional instruments like the yueqin, banhu, and erhu, clappers, small and large gongs, and the battering of a wooden bench. Together they’ll sing and play about life in remote China through old-tune traditional music with shadow puppetry.

Wu Man described the music of the Shaanxi Province as a far cry from the elegant, urban, tea-house style that is popular where she grew up, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, near Shanghai.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble at Cleveland Museum of Art (March 4)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin CMEOn Sunday afternoon, March 4 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Tim Weiss and his Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble once again made seemingly easy work out of several challenging scores. It must be every composer’s dream come true to have their creations brought to life by an ensemble that can play at such a high level of precision and understanding. Surely that sentiment was shared by the good-sized audience. [Read more…]

Les Délices to present “Dido’s Lament”: a conversation with Baroque harpist Maria Christina Cleary

by

by Mike Telin

Cleary-MariaDebra Nagy’s latest Les Délices creation, “Dido’s Lament,” will view the famous queen of Carthage from three emotional and musical perspectives. The tragic story of Dido, who was famously deserted by the Trojan warrior Aeneas, is based on Book 4 of Virgil’s classical epic The Aeneid. The program will include excerpts from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Cavalli’s Didone, and Montéclair’s La Mort de Didon.

The concerts, held on Saturday, March 10 at 8:00 pm in Lakewood Congregational Church, and on Sunday, March 11 at 4:00 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, will feature soprano Clara Rottsolk, harpist Maria Christina Cleary, oboist Debra Nagy, violinists Julie Andrijeski and Scott Metcalfe, violist Allison Monroe, viola da gambist Jaap ter Linden, and harpsichordist Eric Milnes. Tickets are available online.

On Saturday at 3:00 pm at the Bop Stop, the ensemble will present “Instrument of the Angels,” an LD@Play family concert. Registration is recommended.

In an email Debra Nagy said that she is thrilled to bring Maria Christina Cleary from Milan, Italy for these performances.

[Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us