Darl Schaaf Archives - Cleveland Classical

Broadway School of Music & the Arts: Brass & Bubbly — and a farewell

May 8, 2025 by Mike Telin

by Mike Telin

Since 1983, the Broadway School of Music & the Arts has been providing the Slavic Village neighborhood with one-on-one instrumental and voice lessons, with a focus on community arts education and outreach.

On Friday, May 9 at The Darl Center for the Arts, you can help support the school’s activities by attending Brass & Bubbly. The evening will feature a 7:30 pm concert by the Factory Seconds Brass Trio, made up of Cleveland Orchestra members Jack Sutte (trumpet), Richard Stout (trombone), and Richard King (horn). The program will include music by Jacques Arcadelt, J.S. Bach, Arthur Frackenpohl, Maurice Bardin, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Amy Beach, and Joel Love.

Before and after the concert guests are invited to tour The Darl Center’s personal art collection of owner Darl Schaaf. The event will also celebrate the retirement of Barbara Bachtell, BSMA’s long-time executive director. Click here for tickets and more information.

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Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra wraps up season with emotional performances (May 4)

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Spring is always the season of farewells for the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO). Twenty-nine of the middle- and high school musicians who performed in Mandel Concert Hall on Sunday pinned a white flower to their black attire — signifying that as graduating seniors, their time with the group would shortly come to a bittersweet end.

The May 4 concert at Severance Music Center also bid farewell to COYO’s music director Daniel Reith, who has led the ensemble since the fall of 2022. Sunday’s event left both students and conductor with plenty to be proud of.

[Read on…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Duo Chinoiserie (Apr. 26)

by Kevin McLaughlin

Sometimes a concert surprises and disorients its audience so completely that you have to be reminded of what you signed up to hear. Duo Chinoiserie, pairing guitarist Bin Hu and guzheng virtuoso Jing Xia, had that effect on Saturday evening, April 26, at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

Presented by Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, the duo’s program of works — some written and others arranged for them — traced an imaginative arc across centuries, continents, and traditions, in a marvelous comingling of sonic possibilities.

[Read on…]

CIM Opera Theater: Don Giovanni (Apr. 23)

by Peter Feher

It’s hard not to be enamored with Don Giovanni, Mozart’s supreme realization of passion, danger, and desire in music. And CIM Opera Theater made falling in love with this 1787 masterpiece the most natural thing thanks to a splendid production at Playhouse Square last week.

Taking the stage of the Mimi Ohio Theatre on Wednesday, April 23, for the first of two performances, the largely student cast seemed to be discovering the drama afresh. The story of the cad and lecher Don Juan has been told countless times, but the Italianate version that Mozart crafted with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte remains the most viscerally immediate, even centuries later.

[Read on…]

Cleveland Orchestra brass and percussion celebrate Akron’s 200th in ambitious Tuesday Musical program (Apr. 22)

by Stephanie Manning

There are very few American cities who can count themselves as having an official fanfare. But now, Akron is one of them.

To celebrate the city’s 200th anniversary, Tuesday Musical commissioned composer Peter Boyer to write Festive Fanfare (For Akron’s Bicentennial). More than a concert piece, a recording of the four-minute fanfare will soon be made available for open-access use at Akron civic events. On April 22, a packed house heard it live for the first time as part of a wide-ranging program by the brass and percussion players of The Cleveland Orchestra.

“Kid — candy store,” Boyer said from the stage at E.J. Thomas Hall, gesturing to himself and then the musicians to describe his excitement. [Read on…]

Conductor Kazuki Yamada’s stylish Cleveland Orchestra debut features Elgar, Mozart, and pianist Francesco Piemontesi (Apr. 24)

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Edward Elgar’s first symphony was a long time coming. But once the British composer finally put pen to paper at age 51, audiences at the time simply couldn’t get enough. But tastes change, and that rapturous response in 1908 couldn’t guarantee eternal success. The piece has now settled into relative obscurity for many American orchestras.

Today, Britain is still the most likely place to hear Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 — so it made sense that The Cleveland Orchestra’s performance on April 24 should be led by the conductor of a British ensemble. City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra music director Kazuki Yamada ascended the Severance Music Center podium, making his assured and elegant Cleveland Orchestra debut.

Elgar’s symphony is unconcerned with quaint, pastoral English scenes — instead, it’s often stormy, celebratory, and in-your-face, sometimes all at once. On Thursday, Yamada confirmed his reputation for passion and expressivity as a conductor in his interpretation of the symphony.

[Read on…]

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