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Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble at the Cleveland Museum of Art, April 9

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by Mike Telin

Koh-IyerDescribed by The New York Times as “a hotbed of contemporary-classical players” and a “rural experimental haven,” Oberlin College and Conservatory will exemplify those quotes when it plays host to a week-long residency by Oberlin alum violinist Jennifer Koh and composer, jazz pianist, and writer Vijay Iyer.

The week will culminate in a performance by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Timothy Weiss on Sunday, April 9 at 2:00 pm. The concert, in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, will include Clint Needham’s Chamber Symphony as well as a workshop performance of Trouble, Vijay Iyer’s new concerto for violin and chamber orchestra. The program will also be presented in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall on Friday, April 7 at 8:00 pm.  [Read more…]

Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble at Transformer Station (March 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Quince

There may be more vocal techniques to explore in addition to the sighs, slides, hums, whistles, heterodyning, Spanish tongue-twisters, and keening that the four women of Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble produced with larynxes, mouths, lips, and teeth on Wednesday, March 22 at Transformer Station. But selections from works by eleven composers gave an ear-opening introduction to state-of-the-art vocal chamber music, a field that’s still evolving. [Read more…]

The Border Woods at CMA:
a conversation with Frode Haltli
& Emilia Amper

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By Mike Telin

Frode-Amper-et-alWhen the Osa Festival in Voss, Norway commissioned Norwegian composer and accordionist Frode Haltli to write a full concert-length work, he knew he wanted to compose a piece that would combine the improvised qualities of traditional Scandinavian folk music with classical, notated music. “From Edvard Grieg on, a lot of Norwegian composers have been interested in traditional music, and used it as a source of inspiration,” Haltli said during a telephone conversation from Norway.

On Wednesday, March 29 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium, the Cleveland Museum of Art will present Frode Haltli’s The Border Woods (Grenseskogen). The performance will feature Frode Haltli (accordion), Emilia Amper (nyckelharpa), and Eirik Raude (percussion).

“I love the sound of the nyckelharpa,” Haltli said, “and Emilia is one of the great folk musicians in Scandinavia. [Read more…]

CMA: Quince to perform at Transformer Station March 22

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by Mike Telin

QuinceHow do you describe a vocal ensemble made up of three sopranos and one mezzo that is dedicated to the commissioning and performance of contemporary vocal music? “If I only had ten seconds I’d say that we’re a string quartet for voices,” Amanda DeBoer said during a telephone interview. On Wednesday, March 22 at 7:30 pm, the Cleveland Museum of Art will present Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble (Amanda DeBoer, Elizabeth Pearse, and Carrie Henneman Shaw, sopranos, and Kayleigh Butcher, mezzo-soprano) at Transformer Station.

DeBoer said that when Quince was first formed, it was a battle to differentiate themselves from other a cappella groups. “We realized right away that there was not a lot of repertoire for unaccompanied treble voices. You have a lot of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque choral traditions, but we weren’t trying to be an early-music ensemble — we wanted to sing contemporary repertoire.” [Read more…]

Organist Emmanuel Arakélian at the Cleveland Museum of Art (February 19)

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by Timothy Robson

Arakelian-EmmanuelFrench organist Emmanuel Arakélian made his local debut on Sunday afternoon, February 19 at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. The Avignon native, born in 1991, is currently studying organ with Olivier Latry and Michel Bouvard at the Paris Conservatory. His Cleveland program featured an intriguing mix of well-known standards and transcriptions, as well as a new work by the young French composer Grégoire Rolland. [Read more…]

Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble at CMA: a conversation with conductor Gregory Ristow

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by Jeremy Reynolds

RistowContinuing a collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art that began in 2014, Oberlin Conservatory’s Contemporary Music Ensemble (CME) will give the third of four performances this season on Sunday, February 26 at 2:00 pm in CMA’s Gartner Auditorium. While student vocalists have long performed with CME, the upcoming concert is the first time that a museum program by the Ensemble will be dedicated to vocal music.

The program, under the direction of Gregory Ristow, will include Harrison Birtwistle’s Entr’actes and Sappho Fragments, as well as  Oberlin Professor of Composition Stephen Hartke’s Tituli.

Ristow is now in his second year as director of vocal ensembles at the Conservatory. An Oberlin alumnus, he earned his doctoral of musical arts in conducting from the Eastman School of Music.

Ristow also conducts the Interlochen Singers and has previously led the Houston Foundation for Modern Music, and the Voices chamber choir in Rochester.

We caught up with Ristow by phone recently to discuss the upcoming performance and learn more about the program. [Read more…]

CMA celebrates Philip Glass’s 80th with screenings of the Qatsi Trilogy

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by Mike Telin

Trilogy“Philip Glass is turning 80 on the 31st of this month, and I thought that was certainly cause for tipping the cap to one of the most famous composers of our time,” said Tom Welsh, Cleveland Museum of Art’s Director of Performing Arts, during a recent telephone conversation. “As a composer, Glass had a real impact on the whole world — not just in classical music, but everything — and I thought that was worth recognizing.”

Beginning on Friday, January 27 and continuing through Sunday, CMA and the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque will celebrate Glass’s 80th birthday with a presentation of The Qatsi Trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi by filmmaker Godfrey Reggio with landmark musical scores by Glass. [Read more…]

The Crossing: David Lang’s Lifespan at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Jan. 6)

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by Daniel Hathaway

lifespanWhat promised to have all the elements of a wacky gallery happening — three musicians blowing, whistling, and breathing onto an ancient, suspended rock — became a surprisingly engaging experience last Friday in Gallery 218 of the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]

Save the dates: January events to log in your classical music calendar

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by Daniel Hathaway

gaffigan-jamesFormer assistant conductor James Gaffigan will return to the podium at Severance Hall from Thursday, January 5 through Saturday, January 7 to lead The Cleveland Orchestra and pianist Kirill Gerstein in Bernard Hermann’s Suite from Psycho, Arnold Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, the original, jazz band version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Performances include Thursday and Saturday evenings, a Friday matinee and a Fridays@7 event.

From January 6-8, the Philadelphia-based vocal ensemble, The Crossing, will give sixeen performances of David Lang’s Lifespan in Gallery 218 — the glass house that rises above the Cleveland Museum of Art’s East Boulevard façade. Surrounding a 4-billion-year-old rock suspended from the ceiling, three vocalists will whistle and breathe, moving the rock like a pendulum, “a poetic form of wind erosion” (read a preview here). Performances are scheduled for Friday at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 7:45 and 8:30 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday on the hour from noon to 4:00 pm. Weigh in on your experience by sharing your own comments on the ClevelandClassical.com Facebook page. [Read more…]

Philadelphia vocal trio to perform David Lang’s Lifespan at CMA

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by Mike Telin

crossingBeginning on Friday, January 6 at 4:00 pm, three members of the award-winning Philadelphia-based choir, The Crossing, will present the first of sixteen performances of David Lang’s Lifespan, a fifteen-minute work for three or more whistlers, in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gallery 218, East Wing Glass Box. See our concert listings page for additional performance dates and times.

In his artist statement for the composition, Lang writes: “Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla asked me to work with them for a major 2014 retrospective of their work in Philadelphia, this time on a piece that would represent an encounter between musicians and a four-billion-year-old rock, one of the oldest intact rocks remaining in the world. For this piece I imagined that the musicians would use their breath and their voices to challenge and threaten the suspended rock, in the way that the forces of nature have been challenging it for the previous four billion years.”

Yes, you read that correctly. During each performance, an approximately 4 billion year-old rock — found during a geological dig in Alberta, Canada — will hang from the gallery ceiling while the vocalists whistle and breathe, subtly moving the Hadean-period rock like a pendulum. [Read more…]

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