by Carlyn Kessler, Special Contributor
On Friday night, May 23, a quartet of Cleveland Orchestra musicians — Isabel Trautwein and Katherine Bormann, violins, Sonja Braaten Molloy, viola, and Tanya Ell, cello — performed at Mahall’s, a combination restaurant, bar, and vintage bowling alley with a friendly, Brooklyn-esque atmosphere.
Seated in the open concert venue, audience members of all ages enjoyed the quartet’s repertoire ranging from Brandenburg concertos to Mozart and even crowd-pleasing Beatles arrangements of Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby. The atmosphere was that of a casual summer concert — the room was filled with chairs, but passersby also enjoyed the music from the outside, leaning over the rails to catch a glimpse of the packed venue.
The four intrumentalists would intersperse their “sets” with comments, focusing on themes such as vibrato or repetition, with “pop quizzes.” (Watch a video clip here.) [Read more…]
The Cleveland Orchestra performed a concert at Lakewood Civic Auditorium last Saturday evening, May 24, the last of fifteen free public events in its 2014 neighborhood residency, “At Home in Lakewood.” The featured soloist was the orchestra’s principal trombone, Massimo La Rosa, and music director Franz Welser-Möst conducted. The event was broadcast live on WCLV 104.9 FM, streamed through the orchestra’s own website, and recorded by IdeaStream WVIZ/PBS for telecast on Friday, May 30 at 9:00 pm. Excitement ran high as the 2,000 seat Civic Auditorium filled to capacity well before curtain time.
As The Cleveland Orchestra makes the final preparations for its second annual Northeast Ohio neighborhood residency from May 17-24 in Lakewood, (a complete listing of dates and times can be found