by Jarrett Hoffman
The second concert of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival brought another intriguing contrast of artists, from repertoire to presentation and videography.
Situated in front of several leafy houseplants, Jiyeon Kim, also known as Jiji, began her program of five short works with her own arrangement of Renaissance composer Claudia Sessa’s Occhi lo Vissi di Voi. Her performance was full of drama and sensitively paced, with extra-special moments achieved through her light touch.
Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival founder Armin Kelly was planning to celebrate the second decade of the event when the novel coronavirus crashed the party. “The 2020 shutdown was too close to our festival time to put an alternate plan together,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “So we put up one streamed concert, and that was our 20th anniversary season.”
There’s a fascinating and colorful gray area between jazz and contemporary classical music, as evidenced by this past summer’s album 