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Earth and Air: String Orchestra at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights (Nov. 1)

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by David Kulma

Five Novembers ago, David B. Ellis organized a lecture-concert with six string-playing friends. Its focus was Arnold Schoenberg’s decadent 1899 tone poem Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4. This experience bore fruit a year later with the birth of Earth and Air: String Orchestra. On Friday, November 1 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Ellis opened its fifth season with Schoenberg’s 1917 string orchestra version of Transfigured Night in a program titled “Splendor Falls on Everything Around.” Giving this obsessive piece context, he paired it with music by Gustav Mahler and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. [Read more…]

Earth and Air String Orchestra: “A Purely Lyrical Process” (October 6)

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by Mike Telin

Earth-And-Air-Alex-BelisleThe musical splendor of the Russian Empire filled the nave of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights last Friday when conductor David Ellis led his young Earth and Air String Orchestra in a program titled “A Purely Lyrical Process,” featuring music of and inspired by Tchaikovsky. Ellis approached each of the evening’s three works with a relaxed style, drawing expressive phrases that ebbed and flowed from his players. [Read more…]

Earth and Air: String Orchestra to present “Norwegian Melodies”

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by Mike Telin

Earth-&-Air-ConcertIf you were to ask any classical music enthusiast to list some works by Edvard Grieg, most people would name his Piano Concerto and the incidental music he composed for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. But there are hidden gems to be enjoyed.

On Friday, February 3 at 7:30 pm in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Earth and Air: String Orchestra and director David B. Ellis will continue their second season with a concert titled “Norwegian Melodies: Music by Edvard Grieg.” The program features three of the composer’s lesser-known compositions — Two Nordic Melodies, Op. 63, Two Melodies, Op. 53, and Two Elegiac Melodies, Op. 34 — as well as the popular Holberg Suite, Op. 40. [Read more…]

String Orchestras: Earth and Air at St. Paul’s (Nov. 4), & BlueWater Chamber Orchestra at Pilgrim (Nov. 6)

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by Mike Telin

earthandairWhen we think of the works of Felix Mendelssohn, a few that immediately come to mind are his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the “Italian Symphony,” and the Violin Concerto, as well as several pieces of chamber music. On Friday, November 4 in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, the talented Earth and Air: String Orchestra, under the direction of David B. Ellis, led a program of lesser-known but equally engaging works by the composer titled “Mendelssohn String Symphonies — Part I.” The evening included three works which the composer wrote between the ages of 12 and 14. [Read more…]

Earth and Air: String Orchestra — conversations with Solomon Liang and Megan-Geoffrey Prins

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by Mike Telin

liang-prinsWhen we think of the works of Felix Mendelssohn, a few that immediately come to mind are his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the “Italian Symphony,” and the Violin Concerto, as well as several pieces of chamber music.

On Friday, November 4 at 7:30 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Earth and Air: String Orchestra, under the direction of David B. Ellis, will present a program of lesser-known but equally engaging works, “Mendelssohn String Symphonies — Part I” will include early symphonies by Mendelssohn, as well as the Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Strings, written when the composer was 14 years old.

“I knew that the concerto existed, but I didn’t know a lot about it until David asked me to play the solo part,” violinist Solomon Liang said during a recent telephone conversation. “I’m really excited to have the chance to perform it.” [Read more…]

Earth and Air: String Orchestra plays John Luther Adams at St. Paul’s (Jan. 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

EASO-012916-BelisleThe music of John Luther Adams, perhaps one of the most widely-appreciated of contemporary composers, has been performed with some frequency in Northeast Ohio. His Drums of Winter, Wail, Inuksuit, and Veils and Vesper have recently been heard in venues ranging from concert halls to Lake View Cemetery. On January 29, David B. Ellis conducted his new Earth and Air: String Orchestra in Adams’s In the White Silence in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]

Earth and Air: String Orchestra to present John Luther Adams’s
In the White Silence

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by Mike Telin

Earth and Air BelisleWhen conductor David B. Ellis chose to call his new ensemble Earth and Air: String Orchestra, the name called out for a program dedicated to music inspired by nature. On Friday, January 29, beginning at 7:30 pm in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, audiences will have the rare opportunity to experience composer John Luther Adams’ In the White Silence when Ellis leads Earth and Air in the 75-minute work.

Cleveland is no stranger to John Luther Adams’ works. Many may remember the composer’s Veils and Vesper and Inuksuit, two lengthy immersion pieces that the Cleveland Museum of Art staged at Historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City and at Lakeview Cemetery in September of 2014. [Read more…]

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