by David Kulma
The Cleveland Chamber Choir has a bold tagline: “More than Music!” The final program of their fourth season, a collaboration with the Cleveland Composers Guild, clearly reflected this progressive mandate. Pairing living, local composers with works by British and American women, artistic director Scott MacPherson curated a delightful, satisfying evening titled “The Personal Muse” at Fairmount Presbyterian Church on Saturday, May 18. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
Composer Natsumi Osborn remembers the first time she read October Danger, a poem by her friend Anabelle Clark.
“It’s very descriptive and kind of mystical,” Osborn said during a telephone conversation. “It evoked in my head the kinds of images and feelings that I always want to evoke in my music.”
Osborn went on to set that text to music with her choral work Autumn Reflections, for which she won the Cleveland Composers Guild’s 2019 Collegiate Composition Contest. She’s currently finishing up her second year at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she studies composition with Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Elizabeth Ogonek.
In two concerts this weekend, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, under the direction of Scott MacPherson, will perform works by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild, including Osborn’s Autumn Reflections, and pieces by American and British women composers — details below.
by Nicholas Stevens
The question has long troubled poets, playwrights, musicians, and visual artists: how best to activate collective memory through art, especially when the events in question constitute the darkest hour in recorded history? As part of their New Opera Works {NOW} Festival, Cleveland Opera Theater and its collaborating partners recently ventured an answer in the form of a new opera: Verlorene Heimat (“Lost Homeland”) by composer Dawn Sonntag.
by Mike Telin
Although composer Dawn Sonntag was well-versed in writing art song, vocal chamber music, and works for chorus, there was one thing missing from her catalogue of works for the voice — an opera. “I wanted to compose one but I had not found a libretto that I connected with,” the Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Hiram College said during a telephone conversation.
Then one night during dinner with her mother-in-law, that changed. “I knew she had been born and spent part of her childhood in East Prussia, but I didn’t know why she had left. So I asked her and she told me the whole story. And when I was listening to it I thought, this is it!”
On Saturday, January 27 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Center for the Performing Arts, Cleveland Opera Theater will present the Cleveland premiere of Dawn Sonntag’s Verlorene Heimat (“Lost Homeland”) as part of the company’s {NOW} Festival. Presented in collaboration with the Cleveland Composers’ Guild, the opera is based on the true story of the East Prussian refugee family of Christa Neuber Kuske (1937 – 2012) and the Jewish-Ukrainian girl they sheltered.
by Mike Telin
More often than not, the creation of a new opera is a lengthy process. While composers such as Mozart and Rossini were able to dash off operas in record time, new titles can go through a long gestation period.
Beginning later this week, Cleveland Opera Theater will present its second annual {NOW} Festival featuring performances of new opera works at various stages of development, including readings, workshops, and staged productions. {NOW} is presented in collaboration with The Cleveland Composers’ Guild, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, and the Maltz Center for the Performing Arts. All events are free and open to the public (some require registration). Following each performance audiences will have the opportunity to engage with the creative teams and performers during talk-back sessions.
{NOW} begins on Friday the 26th at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Center with a reading of Obie award winner and Garcia Lorca scholar Caridad Svich’s new libretto based on Lorca’s last play, Bernarda Alba. [Read more…]