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CityMusic Cleveland: American Dreams (Feb. 5)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Stop the presses! Half of the originally advertised program will be different, CityMusic’s managing director Henry Peyrebrune announced prior to their February 5 concert at Fairmount Presbyterian. Works by Elliott Carter and John Coltrane were postponed for another day and replaced by gentler pieces by Alan Hovhaness and Henry Cowell.

Taken as a whole, America @ 250: American Dreams, centered on a question shared by many American composers in the mid-twentieth century: how to write music that feels rooted, timeless, and personal without leaning too heavily on European models. The answers varied widely, from Ernest Bloch’s consciously historical gestures to Copland’s open, optimistic language.

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CityMusic Cleveland celebrates Black Excellence (Oct. 19) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

“Celebrating Black Excellence” was CityMusic’s organizing theme for the latest of their 2023-24 season presentations, held at the sound-absorbent East Zion Baptist Church on Thursday, October 19.

You can quibble about how “Black” the program was, with a lineup that included Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto, selections from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance.

But as for “Black excellence,” there was an abundance. Works by Jessie Montgomery, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and William Grant Still each sparkled in smart, moving, and inspiring ways. And the three vocal soloists, all current students at Oberlin Conservatory, shone.

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Klezmer and Kreutzer 
with CityMusic (Mar. 16)

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by Stephanie Manning

Most clarinetists are no strangers to playing on all the different varieties of their instrument. But using three of them over the course of just one piece? That’s a little more unusual.

On March 16, Daniel Gilbert sat facing a packed crowd at the Temple Tifereth-Israel with a B-flat, A, and bass clarinet all laid out in front of him. The work he was about to embark on with conductor Joel Smirnoff and the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra was also a little unusual — but in a very intriguing way.

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CityMusic Cleveland: three concerts with clarinetist Daniel Gilbert

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by Jarrett Hoffman

In three concerts over the next three months from CityMusic Cleveland, one particular instrument, and one particular player, crop up several times.

Clarinetist Daniel Gilbert will be featured in “Explorations for Clarinet, Strings and Piano” (February 25), “The Visionary Clarinet” (March 16-19), and “Clarinet Dialogues” (May 13) — the outer two programs being chamber music collaborations, the middle one a solo appearance with the CityMusic Orchestra. Details of times and locations can be found here.

As is often the case with the best chamber music gatherings, family and friends play an important role here. The February program was put together by Gilbert and his wife, pianist Donna Lee, and it features a commissioned work titled Recitations and Dedications by a longtime friend of his: Gregg August (pictured below).
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CityMusic Cleveland: 
“Musical Matrix” (Oct. 2)

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by Peter Feher

CityMusic Cleveland has always been on a mission. This season, the group is staying true to its community vision — music for everyone, and concerts for free — even if performances look a little different in 2021. The programming is slimmed down from chamber orchestra to chamber music, and there’s an increased emphasis on new works (each program this season features a world premiere).

Cleverly, CityMusic’s latest concert led listeners through these changes one step at a time. “Musical Matrix” took transformation as its theme, and each piece on the October 2 program at the Maltz Performing Arts Center (the second of two performances) put its spin on the subject. [Read more…]

Church of the Western Reserve Concert Series: “Johannes Brahms: Late Works” (June 25)

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by Peter Feher

One instrument can make a world of difference. The clarinet took top billing on Friday, June 25, in a free chamber program at Pepper Pike’s Church of the Western Reserve, the first live performance back after more than a year for the CWR Concert Series.

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CityMusic Cleveland: “In Search of Peace” (May 15)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

After greeting an in-person audience the night before at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, a mixed quartet from CityMusic Cleveland performed for an audience unseen on Saturday, May 15, thanks to the live-streaming capabilities of the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

The program was worth repeating, especially for the finale, Amanda Harberg’s Lucas’s Garden. Inspired by the section of the family garden over which her son Lucas has free rein, the piece appeals with its directness of expression and its unique, varied language, conveying a thoroughly original sense of happiness in music.

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CityMusic plays Dorman premiere at St. Stanislaus (Mar. 16)

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by David Kulma

CityMusic Cleveland celebrated its 15th season with a powerful new piece by its music director Avner Dorman. His Third Violin Concerto was debuted in free concerts with soloist Sayaka Shoji in five different venues across the Cleveland area. I attended the fourth performance on Saturday, March 16 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus in Slavic Village. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland at Fairmount Temple with violinist Sayaka Shoji (Oct. 19)

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by Robert Rollin

SHOJI-SLast Wednesday night, October 19 at Fairmount Temple, CityMusic Cleveland kicked off its 13th season with an exceptional concert intermingling Classic, Romantic, and 21st-century works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Avner Dorman, the orchestra’s music director. The highlight was a magnificent performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto by stellar soloist Sayaka Shoji. [Read more…]

Review: Impressive debut by Avner Dorman with CityMusic Cleveland at Fairmount Church (October 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

DORMAN-Avner2CityMusic Cleveland celebrated the beginning of its tenth season with the debut of its new music director, Avner Dorman, on Wednesday evening, October 23 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights. Dorman skillfully led the 40-piece chamber orchestra in nuanced and nearly flawless performances of his own Concerto Grosso, Vivaldi’s Concerto for two oboes and two clarinets, Schubert’s Symphony No. 3, and the first of five different Mozart concertos with guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine.

Dorman noted both in written and oral notes that he intended to show off the talents of members of the orchestra as much as possible in his first concert, and that principally meant the ensemble’s wind section, whose excellence runs both deep and wide. The Vivaldi concerto boasted pairs of soloists — oboists Rebecca Schweigert Mayhew and Daniel Rios and clarinetists Daniel Gilbert and Ellen Breakfield Glick — who matched each other’s elegant tone perfectly, yet each pair provided cheerful sonic contrasts as oboes tossed phrases off to clarinets. As always, Vivaldi was infinitely resourceful within his time-honored formulas, and he snuck in a strangely arresting rhythmic pattern at the beginning of the last Allegro. Harpsichordist Peter Bennett added stylish decorations to the keyboard accompaniment. [Read more…]

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