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Cleveland Chamber Choir At Cleveland School of the Arts (Dec. 20) 

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by Peter Feher

Handel’s Messiah wasn’t the only oratorio you could hear in Northeast Ohio over the Holiday season. The Cleveland Chamber Choir offered a brilliant, bracing alternative with two performances of David Lang’s the little match girl passion, December 20 and 21 at Cleveland School of the Arts.

Friday’s concert saw expert singing in service of sincere emotion, vividly realizing this stark Christmas story adapted from Hans Christian Andersen.

There’s no trace of a happy ending in Andersen’s original 19th-century fairy tale. The titular character in “The Little Match Girl” freezes to death on New Year’s Eve after being kicked out of the house by her father, losing her slippers in the street, and failing to sell any matches to passersby who can’t spare so much as a penny. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, January 8, 2024

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by Jarrett Hoffman

FOUR MUSIC MAJORS TO BE CUT, DANA SCHOOL OF MUSIC TO UNDERGO “IMMEDIATE REORGANIZATION”:

As Youngstown State University shared in a statement on its Facebook page yesterday:

Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music is NOT closing, contrary to social media posts.

Four consistently low-enrolled majors, which have had approximately 12 graduates in the past five years, will be sunset this academic year. These majors include Bachelor of Arts in Music, Bachelor of Music in Composition, Master of Music in Composition and Master of Music in Jazz Studies. Students currently enrolled in these four majors will be able to graduate from their designated major. This step in Taking Charge of Our Future aligns with the Ohio Department of Higher Education’s review of duplicative and low-enrolled programs. 

The Dana School of Music will undergo an immediate reorganization to enhance and rejuvenate the school to better serve students and improve the marketability of graduates. This reorganization allows the university to re-envision and differentiate the undergraduate and graduate programs in Music Education and Music Performance as well as continue to support Music Recording and community initiatives, including the YSU Youth Orchestra.

YSU continues to value the Dana School of Music and the impact it has on the university and the surrounding community.

According to an article by Denise Dick in The Business Journal, over the weekend a petition began to circulate online urging people to “Save the Dana School of Music” and to attend a peaceful protest outside YSU’s Tod Hall on Wednesday, January 10 at 4:00 pm.

The petition also links to the website save-Dana.com, where the enrollment figures cited by the University are disputed and the findings of the analytics firm hired by the University are questioned.

[Read more…]

The Crossing: David Lang’s Lifespan at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Jan. 6)

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by Daniel Hathaway

lifespanWhat promised to have all the elements of a wacky gallery happening — three musicians blowing, whistling, and breathing onto an ancient, suspended rock — became a surprisingly engaging experience last Friday in Gallery 218 of the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]

Philadelphia vocal trio to perform David Lang’s Lifespan at CMA

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by Mike Telin

crossingBeginning on Friday, January 6 at 4:00 pm, three members of the award-winning Philadelphia-based choir, The Crossing, will present the first of sixteen performances of David Lang’s Lifespan, a fifteen-minute work for three or more whistlers, in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gallery 218, East Wing Glass Box. See our concert listings page for additional performance dates and times.

In his artist statement for the composition, Lang writes: “Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla asked me to work with them for a major 2014 retrospective of their work in Philadelphia, this time on a piece that would represent an encounter between musicians and a four-billion-year-old rock, one of the oldest intact rocks remaining in the world. For this piece I imagined that the musicians would use their breath and their voices to challenge and threaten the suspended rock, in the way that the forces of nature have been challenging it for the previous four billion years.”

Yes, you read that correctly. During each performance, an approximately 4 billion year-old rock — found during a geological dig in Alberta, Canada — will hang from the gallery ceiling while the vocalists whistle and breathe, subtly moving the Hadean-period rock like a pendulum. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony collaborates with Tuesday Musical and Sō Percussion (October 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

so-wine-bottlesAs Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins put it in his speech to the audience in E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday, October 15, the Orchestra’s program featured “not wasps, not birds, and not planets.” [Read more…]

Sō Percussion to join UA Percussion Ensemble and Akron Symphony in concerts this week

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by Mike Telin

It’s all aboso-percussion-onstageut Sō Percussion in Akron this week. On Wednesday, October 12 at 7:00 pm in Guzzetta Recital Hall, Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting will team up with the University of Akron’s Percussion Ensemble for a performance of Steve Reich’s groundbreaking composition Drumming as part of Tuesday Musical’s FUZE series.

Then on Saturday, October 15 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Sō Percussion will join Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony in Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s man made for percussion quartet and orchestra. The evening will also include Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Overture to The Wasps, Tan Dun’s Secret of Wind and Birds, and Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Lang and Wilkins will present the concert’s “Preview from the Podium” at 7:00 pm. [Read more…]

Sō Percussion to join Akron Symphony in David Lang’s man made on October 15

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by Mike Telin

so-man-made-with-langOn Saturday, October 15 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Sō Percussion will join Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony in Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s man made for percussion quartet and orchestra. Lang and Wilkins will present the concert’s “Preview from the Podium” at 7:00 pm. The concert is presented in collaboration with Tuesday Musical Association.

Written for Sō Percussion, man made was commissioned by London’s Barbican Center and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The ensemble premiered the work at the Barbican with the BBC Symphony in May of 2013. The American premiere was given in October of 2014 by Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic. During the 22-minute piece, Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting will snap twigs and strike everything from wine bottles to a steel drum, a trap set, xylophones, and “found” instruments. View a trailer here. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art announces 2016-2017 Performing Arts schedule

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by Daniel Hathaway

onete-donnaThe new performing arts season at the Cleveland Museum of Art begins on Wednesday, September 21 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium with a concert by Dona Onete, the septuagenarian singer-composer from the state of Pará in the Amazon, who merges indigenous rhythm and dance with African, European and Caribbean traditions in a style called carimbó chamegado*. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art announces 2016-2017 Performing Arts schedule

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by Daniel Hathaway

onete-donnaThe new performing arts season at the Cleveland Museum of Art begins on Wednesday, September 21 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium with a concert by Dona Onete, the septuagenarian singer-composer from the state of Pará in the Amazon, who merges indigenous rhythm and dance with African, European and Caribbean traditions in a style called carimbó chamegado*. [Read more…]

Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival Concert One (April 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BW-Motet-Choir-LangFriday evening’s opening concert in Gamble Auditorium showed how swiftly the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival is evolving in this, its 86th year and its second season under new management. Works by Eric Whitacre, David Lang, and Moses Hogan joined a single work by Johann Sebastian Bach on a concert splendidly sung by the BW Motet Choir under festival director Dirk Garner. [Read more…]

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