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CityMusic Cleveland with Groundworks at St. Stan’s (Feb. 27)

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by Peter Feher

Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is already a production in itself. The music alone, not to mention the circumstances of its composition, is a lot to untangle.

CityMusic Cleveland brought out the complexities of the piece in a multimedia performance on February 27 that incorporated dance, cinematography, and even the atmosphere of the venue.

A long white sheet hung from the vault to the floor and obscured the altar at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus on Sunday. The setting was sacred, and Messiaen’s inspiration was pointedly religious (his work quotes from the Book of Revelation), but there was something secular to the setup. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Dawn of a Revolution (June 30)

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by Mike Telin

ChamberFest Cleveland wrapped up its seventh season with an excellent concert on Saturday, June 30 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. “Dawn of a Revolution” included works by Claude Debussy, a world premiere by Sebastian Chang, and a musical tapestry woven with inspired new choreography by David Shimotakahara. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: a conversation with GroundWorks’ David Shimotakahara

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by Alice Koeninger

A recent phone conversation with David Shimotakahara, Executive Artistic Director of GroundWorks DanceTheater, was as much about his upcoming collaboration with ChamberFest Cleveland as it was about the process and source of creativity.

GroundWorks is about to kick off its 20th season with its second collaboration with ChamberFest in a June 30 concert at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. “Dawn of a Revolution” spans centuries of music from Beethoven to Alberto Ginastera, connected by the common thread of György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata for solo piano, selections of which are distributed throughout.

“I don’t think I would call the dance itself ‘Dawn of a Revolution,’” Shimotakahara said with a laugh, “but it works from the music side, referring to these breakthroughs of ideas, these moments of musical revolution.” The concept was created by ChamberFest’s own Frank and Diana Cohen, who were interested in finding a way to showcase these different, significant pieces from the chamber music canon. [Read more…]

Cryptogenic Infrastructure Fantasy: composer Sebastian Chang explains all

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by Mike Telin

Every composer has their own way of approaching their craft. “When I write a piece, whether it’s for orchestra or chamber ensemble, I want everybody to have a moment in the spotlight,” Sebastian Chang said during a telephone conversation. “Most of the time that works out great and results in something that is fun to play. But when Alex asked me to write a timpani part, that pretty much changed everything.”

On Saturday, June 30 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, clarinetist Franklin Cohen, violinist Diana Cohen, timpanist Alexander Cohen, and pianist Roman Rabinovich will perform the world premiere of Chang’s Cryptogenic Infrastructure Fantasy (CIF) as part of ChamberFest Cleveland’s season finale. “Dawn of a Revolution” will also include Debussy’s Violin Sonata, and David Shimotakahara’s choreography of selections from Ligeti, Beethoven, Ravel, Pärt, Shostakovich, and Ginastera, performed by GroundWorks Dance Theater. Tickets are available online.

Chang, who serves as pianist and resident composer for the Louisville Orchestra, began writing CIF with a mission to correct an injustice that orchestral timpanists often experience. “They usually rest for 300 bars, then play a single note just to punctuate a big moment. They don’t get a lot of time in the spotlight and I wanted to fix that with this composition.”

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland — Season Seven: In Search of Freedom

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by Mike Telin

Chamberfest LogoSince ChamberFest Cleveland’s inaugural season in 2012, Festival co-artist directors Diana and Franklin Cohen have taken the concept of thematic programming to new heights. (It’s) About Time (2013) explored elements of time as related to the musical experience. Last season’s theme, Cycles: Phases! reflected on the complexity of the human experience at each stage of life.

This season ChamberFest will consider the concept of freedom — an essential ingredient to the creative process. Beginning of June 14 and continuing through June 30, In Search of Freedom will explore the range of freedom in music, with nine concerts in a variety of venues.

In addition to violinist Diana Cohen and clarinetist Franklin Cohen, this year’s roster of returning artists will include violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley, Alexi Kenney, and Amy Schwartz-Moretti, violinist/violist Yura Lee, cellists Julie Albers, Clive Greensmith, and Oliver Herbert, bassist Nathan Farrington, and pianists Zoltán Fejérvári, Roman Rabinovich, and Orion Weiss. Making their ChamberFest debuts are violinist Noah Geller, violists Matthew Lipman and Tanner Menees, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, flutist Lorna McGhee, and singer Amanda Powell.

[Read more…]

Akron Symphony & GroundWorks Dance collaborate in Orff’s Carmina Burana (May 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ASO-Carmina-BuranaCarl Orff intended his immensely popular “Scenic Cantata” Carmina Burana to be a staged work with dancers rather than just a concert piece — the form in which we usually encounter it today. On Saturday, May 7 at E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony and Chorus joined with David Shimotakahara’s GroundWorks Dance, Ballet Excel Ohio, the Dance Institute at the University of Akron, soprano Grace Kahl, tenor Timothy Culver, baritone Brian Keith Johnson, and the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Choir in a performance that splendidly fulfilled the composer’s original vision. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony’s
Carmina Burana:
a conversation with
David Shimotakahara

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by Mike Telin

Shimotakahara-DavidNext to the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, there is no work for chorus and orchestra more recognizable than Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The first and last movements, both titled Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World), begin with the popular “O Fortuna,” which has been used a countless number of times in commercials and cinema. But what served as inspiration for David Shimotakahara’s new choreography for Carmina Burana are the arias for solo soprano from the work. “She’s like the axis, she is Fortuna. She is the omniscient center of the universe.”

On Saturday, May 7 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Christopher Wilkins will lead the Akron Symphony in Orff’s powerful score, featuring Shimotakahara’s new choreography performed by GroundWorks Dance Theater. The program will also include Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront.   [Read more…]

Violins of Hope project creates an unprecedented coalition of Cleveland cultural institutions

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by Daniel Hathaway

WeinsteinWhat may be the largest group of Cleveland cultural institutions ever to circle their wagons around a single project will come into play this fall when Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, The Cleveland Orchestra, Facing History and Ourselves, Ideastream, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage join together to present Violins of Hope Cleveland.

Four months of concerts, exhibitions, screenings, lectures, theatrical productions, and educational offerings will center around the extraordinary collection of violins amassed by Tel Aviv violinmaker Amnon Weinstein, instruments that managed to survive the Holocaust.

Weinstein, who emigrated from Eastern Europe to open a violin shop in Palestine in 1938, learned after World War II that some four hundred of his family members had perished under the Nazis. Later, he heard a heartfelt account from a survivor who had brought an instrument in for restoration of what the violin and its music had meant to Jews during those horrific days. In 1996 — and now recognized as one of the finest violinmakers in the world — Weinstein decided to put out a call for Holocaust-era violins. To date, he has restored nearly fifty such instruments to playing condition, a collection he dubbed “Violins of Hope.” [Read more…]

Groundworks Dance Theater to present premiere of House of Sparrows with the Aeolus Quartet at the Breen

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by Mike Telin

Aeolus-QuartetOn Friday, March 20 and Saturday, March 21at 7:30 pm, GroundWorks DanceTheater will bring its Spring concert series to the Breen Center for the Performing Arts at St. Ignatius High School. The performances will include the world premiere of The Rub, choreographed by artist-in-residence Robert Moses, and the reprise of Current Frame, choreographed by artistic associate Amy Miller (in collaboration with Kathryn Wells Taylor, Gary Lenington, Felise Bagley and Damien Highfield). The evening will also include the world premiere of House of Sparrows, choreographed by Groundworks executive artistic director David Shimotakahara in collaboration with New York-­based Aeolus Quartet, and Austin-based composer Steven Snowden.

House of Sparrows is set in scenes inspired by letters and photographs illustrating the upheaval of domestic life during the Civil War through individual experiences. “The development of the project was a collaborative process,” Aeolus Quartet violinist Rachel Shapiro said during a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Review: ChamberFest Cleveland — Ghost Opera at Kulas Hall, CIM (June 28)

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by Mike Telin

GO-Dancers

Ghosts from the past, the present and the future were brought to life on Saturday, June 28 in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. But these were not the ghosts made famous by Charles Dickens but rather, through a 4,000 year-old Chinese tradition, where humans, spirits of the past and future and nature communicate with one another. All of this happened during ChamberFest Cleveland’s spectacular production of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera for String Quartet and Pipa, [Chinese lute] with Water, Stones, Paper and Metal. Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet nearly 20 years ago, ChamberFest added another dimension to the haunting work with the world premiere of inventive and stylistically sensitive choreography by Groundworks Theater artistic director David Shimotakahara. [Read more…]

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