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Meyer crafts special online concert for BlueWater Chamber Orchestra

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by Daniel Hathaway

In a normal season (remember those?), Daniel Meyer would describe his job as music director and conductor of the Erie Symphony, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and the Lakeside Symphony. Since COVID hit, things have changed. “I’ve apparently become a film producer,” he told me in a recent telephone conversation. “That’s a skill set I didn’t know I had before the pandemic, but it’s helped justify our existence.”

Having already established a good relationship with Erie’s public radio and television stations, Meyer and the Symphony leapt at the invitation to produce eight hour-long programs over the course of the season in lieu of in-person concerts. “That forced us to get creative and explore some very interesting repertoire.” [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra builds bridges with Verb Ballets

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by Daniel Hathaway

A chance meeting at Lakeside — where Verb Ballets was performing and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra artistic director Daniel Meyer was auditioning for a job — has resulted in the first collaboration between the two organizations. Although the original idea was for an in-person performance, the pandemic forced the project online.

Not such a bad thing, as it turns out. “Building Bridges Together,” which debuted as a video production on November 21, combined the strengths of two fine Cleveland performing arts organizations in a beautifully edited virtual event — bringing them into the same performing space for the first time through digital means. [Read more…]

BlueWater & Verb Ballets collaborate — at a distance

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Saturday, November 21, two Cleveland institutions will come together in a collaborative project without ever having been in the same room.

“Building Bridges Together” is a joint project between BlueWater Chamber Orchestra (Daniel Meyer, artistic director) and Verb Ballets (Margaret Carlson and Richard Dickinson, artistic directors). The program includes performances of Heinz Poll’s Adagio for Two Dancers, set to a famous piece attributed to Albinoni, and Michael Escovedo’s Broken Bridges, choreographed to Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony. In between, BlueWater will play Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz.

The program, pre-recorded at the Shore Cultural Center in Euclid, will debut at 7:30 pm on November 21 and remain available to ticket holders for 24 hours.

Speaking from his home in Pittsburgh, Daniel Meyer, who also conducts Pennsylvania’s Erie Philharmonic and Westmoreland Symphony, as well as Ohio’s summertime Lakeside Symphony, said that the idea of working with a dance company came to him when he was auditioning for the Lakeside job. “That happened to be the same weekend Verb was in residence at Lakeside, and I was deeply impressed,” he said. “If I got hired, I definitely wanted to continue the tradition of working with this group.” [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra at Plymouth Church (Feb. 1)

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by David Kulma

During Daniel Meyer’s short tenure as artistic director and conductor of BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, the ensemble has risen to a new level of quality. On Saturday, February 1 at Plymouth Church, Meyer and his ensemble performed an excellent program titled “A Classical Feast,” focusing on music from the late 18th century.

[Read more…]

BlueWater: chatting with violin soloists Ken Johnston and Emily Cornelius

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Two founding members of BlueWater Chamber Orchestra will partner as soloists this weekend, when conductor Daniel Meyer and the ensemble perform “A Classical Feast” at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday, February 1 at 7:30 pm.

Concertmaster Ken Johnston and principal second violin Emily Cornelius will play the Op. 13 Symphonie Concertante in G by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who is remembered as the first known classical composer of African origin. One of his contemporaries was Mozart, whose Symphony No. 40 in g closes Saturday’s program. And in between those two works, soprano Laura Pedersen will be featured in Beethoven’s concert aria Ah, Perfido! Tickets are available online.

Johnston and Cornelius have known each other for at least ten years — BlueWater celebrates its own decade in 2020 — but this will be their first time appearing together as soloists. “At this point, she and I are old friends,” Johnston said by telephone last week. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for her musicianship. I think we share the same sense of humor in a lot of ways, and that comes across.”

[Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra at Pilgrim with Jinjoo Cho (Nov. 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra played the second of two identical weekend programs on Sunday afternoon, November 24 on the free Arts Renaissance Tremont series, a performance that featured violinist Jinjoo Cho in a spirited reading of the Tchaikovsky Concerto, and rarely heard works by Robert Schumann and Thomas Adès with Daniel Meyer at the helm. [Read more…]

BlueWater: violinist Jinjoo Cho to play the Tchaikovsky Concerto

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Violinist Jinjoo Cho was born in Seoul and lives in Montreal, but you could easily say she’s from Northeast Ohio. She moved here as a teenager and enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s young artist program, and she didn’t leave the area until last year, when she joined the faculty of the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.

Her time living in Cleveland saw her career take off. Cho won a major competition (International Violin Competition of Indianapolis), made an important solo debut (Carnegie Hall), took on teaching positions (CIM and Oberlin Conservatory), and founded and continues to run a summer festival (ENCORE Chamber Music in Gates Mills).

Cho has been featured by many of the area’s prominent ensembles and presenting organizations — and she’s still adding to that list. She will play Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto this weekend in her first appearances with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, led by Daniel Meyer.

[Read more…]

Arts Renaissance Tremont turns twenty-nine this season

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by Mike Telin 

Since its founding in 1991, Arts Renaissance Tremont (ART) has been a cultural pillar in that West Side Cleveland neighborhood. And from the beginning, the organization has made its home at the historic Pilgrim Congregational UCC. Under the tireless direction of its founder and director Chris Haff-Paluck (left, with Jinjoo Cho), with assistance from a group of dedicated board members and volunteers, ART has remained true to its vision of keeping concerts free of charge.

On Sunday, October 13 at 3:00 pm, ART will kick off its 29th season with a recital by cellist Darrett Adkins and pianist Cicilia Yudha. Their program will feature works by Janáček, Kodály, Messiaen, and Chopin.

“Twenty-nine years — who knows where all the time has gone?” Haff-Paluck said during an interview, noting that the Tremont neighborhood was very different in the early ‘90s. “There are so many restaurants and galleries now, but it wasn’t that way back then. People wanted arts programs to be happening in the neighborhood.”

[Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra at The Temple-Tifereth Israel (Sep. 15)

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by Robert Rollin

Last Sunday afternoon, September 15, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, under conductor and artistic director Daniel Meyer, opened its season with an imaginatively varied concert at The Temple-Tifereth Israel. Amitai Vardi was featured in Srul Irving Glick’s The Klezmer’s Wedding, a delightful one-movement piece for clarinet and string orchestra.

[Read more…]

BlueWater and Amitai Vardi celebrate Jewish music in season opener

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by Jarrett Hoffman

There’s something poetic about the way BlueWater Chamber Orchestra will open its tenth anniversary season next week. Israeli-American clarinetist Amitai Vardi, a member of BlueWater since the ensemble’s beginning, will solo in Srul Irving Glick’s The Klezmer’s Wedding on Sunday, September 15 at The Temple-Tifereth Israel. That’s part of a 3:00 pm program led by Daniel Meyer that will celebrate Jewish music.

The Klezmer’s Wedding is an important work for Vardi: he gave the North American premiere of the concerto version in 2004 at the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival with members of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Glick, who has been celebrated for his contributions to Jewish music, passed away in 2002 in his native Toronto. “The way that he captures klezmer music in the concert hall, as opposed to within a klezmer band, is unique, beautiful, and a lot of fun,” Vardi said. He also pointed out the composer’s authentic handling of Jewish music, saying that this concerto could easily be part of a Jewish wedding. “When I’m playing it, I definitely imagine walking around though the guests and wailing a klezmer tune.” [Read more…]

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