by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

June festival events continue on Saturday with Ohio Light Opera’s Sound of Music at 2 pm & Guys & Dolls at 7 (Freedlander Theater, College of Wooster), ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s “Voice of the Whale” at 7:30 (Cleveland Natural History Museum), and ChamberFest Cleveland’s “Fantastic Tales” (7:30 in Mixon Hall at CIM).

Also on Saturday, conductors Dr. Henry Panion, III and Matthew Jenkins Jaroszewicz (pictured) lead the Canton Symphony in Gospel Joins Symphony (7:30 in Umstattd Hall).

On Sunday, ChamberFest Cleveland goes al fresco with performances along the trails, youth activities, and food & beverages from EDWIN’s (11am to 1 pm, Nature Center at Shaker Lakes), ENCORE Chamber Music Institute stays indoors for “Earth Makes Us Equal” (3 pm, Harkness Chapel at CWRU), and carillonneur Keiran Cantilina plays classical, traditional, film, and popular music (6 pm, from the tower of St. Paul’s Church, Cleveland Hts.)

INTERESTING READ:

Organist Paul Jacobs laments in BBC News the decision to install another digital organ in the New York Philharmonic’s Geffen Hall during its most recent renovation. Read ‘Why Doesn’t New York’s Geffen Hall Have a Real Organ?” here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Two summer chamber music festivals will go head-to-head in 7:30 pm concerts this evening.

In Harkness Chapel at CWRU, ChamberFest Cleveland will present “Mystical Reveries,” featuring violinist Alexi Kenney (pictured) in Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Mystery Sonata, “The Annunciation,” along with works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Robert Schumann, John Adams & Johannes Brahms performed by a long list of his colleagues.

And in Warner Concert Hall at Oberlin, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute will present “Director’s Carte Blanche” with violinists Jinjoo Cho and Mathieu Herzog, and pianist Hyunsoo Kim performing works by George Frideric Handel (arr. by Johan Halvorsen), Edvard Grieg & Wolfgang Amadé Mozart.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Today, June 14, Naxos will release an album of Margaret Brouwer’s orchestral masterworks performed by Marin Alsop and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 2 pm, Ohio Light Opera debuts its 2024 production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music in Freedlander Theater at the College of Wooster, and puts the show into its summer rotation. Visit our Concert Listings for more information.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

June 13 marks anniversaries for Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chavez, who was born in Mexico City in 1899, and American composer David Diamond, who died in Rochester, NewYork in 2005. Although each of them have been championed by individual conductors, their music awaits wider attention.

A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music who taught for years at Juilliard, Diamond’s works — along with those of other mid-century tonal composers — were overshadowed by the rise of atonal music. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

On Sunday evening following the final round of the James Stroud Youth Classical Guitar Competition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the following winners were announced: Elle Davisson (16, first place), Micah Montgomery (14, 2nd place), Hilbert Chen (15, third place), and Preston Hong  (15, fourth place). Watch a video of the final round performances here.

Venue Change: The June 14 ENCORE Chamber Music Institute concert by Jinjoo Cho, Mathieu Herzog, and Hyunsoo Kim at the Oberlin Conservatory, originally scheduled for Kulas Recital Hall, has been moved to Warner Concert Hall. Senior Naturalist Dr. Chris Stanton from the Lorain County Metroparks will open the program with a talk reflecting the festival theme: Planet Earth. The concert program includes works by Handel/Halvorsen, Grieg and Mozart. Tickets are available online.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Composer Richard Strauss was born on this date in 1864 in Munich, and so was Polish composer and pianist Aleander Tansmann (in Lodz in 1897), American composer George Frederick McKay (in Harrington, WA in 1899) and American opera composer Carlysle Floyd (in Latta, SC in 1926). The sole departure was French organist and composer Théodore Dubois in Paris in 1924 at the age of 86. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday at 2 pm, the Cleveland Trombone Seminar brings a week of activities at CSU to a conclusion with chamber music & works for low brass choir conducted by Mark Lusk. At 7 pm, ENCORE Chamber Music presents the Verona String Quartet at Akron-Summit County Library in Akron. And at 7:30, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival presents Lorenzo Micheli, one-half of Solo Duo in Mixon Hall at CIM. At the same hour, Ohio Light Opera opens its 45th season with the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls at the College of Wooster (pictured: OLO’s previous production.)

On Sunday, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival presents solo recitals by Hao Yang at 1 pm, and Petra Polácková at 4 pm, and ends its 24th season with the final round and prize ceremony of the James Stroud Youth Competition at 6:30, all in Mixon Hall at CIM.

Also on Sunday, at 2 pm, Choral Arts Cleveland and Opus 216 perform Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem at Divinity Lutheran Church in Parma Hts., at 3 pm, ENCORE Chamber Music collaborates with the Cleveland Humanities Festival for works by Lili Boulanger, Kaija Saariaho, Ralph Vaughan Williams & Felix Mendelssohn in Harkness Chapel at CWRU, and at 4 pm, The Cleveland Opera repeats its program “Music for Orchestra… with a touch of voice” at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus.

For details, visit our Concert Listings page. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Featured artists performing in three June Festivals today include Randall Hawes, bass trombone of the Detroit Symphony, with pianist Kathryn Goodson (Cleveland Trombone Seminar at 5:30 in CSU’s Drinko Hall), the Olli Soikkeli Band — Olli Soikkeli, guitar, Brad Brose, rhythm guitar, Paul Sikivie, bass, and Evan Arntzen, clarinet & saxophone, in “Roma Jazz on a Starry Night” (ENCORE Chamber Music at 7:30 at Kendall Lake in Peninsula, Cuyahoga Valley National Park) and Nicolò Spera (pictured), 10-string guitar (Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival at 7:30 in Mixon Hall at CIM).

Also on tap for this evening: The Cleveland Opera presents Dorota Sobieska, soprano and Daniel Doty, tenor, with string orchestra conducted by Grzegorz Nowak in “Music for Orchestra… with a touch of voice” (7:30 at St. Ann Church in Cleveland Hts.)

NEWS BRIEFS:

Lakewood native David Conte, who is professor of composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, will be honored as 2024 Distinguished Composer by the American Guild of Organists at its convention this summer in San Francisco (June 30-July 4) . [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The 24th edition of  the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival begins today with the Semi-Final Rounds of the James Stroud Youth Competition at 10 am and 1:30 pm in Mixon Hall of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Fifteen competitors, ages 13 to 18 will vie for a place in the Final Round on Sunday evening.

And tonight at 7:30 in Mixon Hall, the first CICGF faculty concert will feature guitarist Jason Vieaux and violinist Mari Sato. Read a preview of the Festival here.

NEWS BRIEFS:

And then there were seven (summer music festivals) scheduled for June, not just the six we previewed last week. We just learned about the Cleveland Lutefest, which will run from June 23-29 at CWRU and feature 7:30 pm Harkness Chapel performances by Paul O’Dette (Sunday), Nigel North (Monday), Robert Barto & flutist Mara Winter (Tuesday), Xavier Díaz-Latorre (Wednesday), Bor Zuljan & Mara Winter (Thursday), and Catherine Liddell (Friday at 1 pm). A participant recital is scheduled for Friday at 7:30). More festival details and ticket information here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At noon, organist Jonathan W. Moyer will play the final Tuesday noon concert of the season at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle. His program begins with Arnold Schoenberg’s thorny Variations on a Recitative, continues with J.S. Bach’s hyper-contrapuntal Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her” & ends with Czech composer Petr Eben’s A Festive Voluntary (Variations on “Good King Wenceslas”), a witty take on a popular carol about the Czech monarch. Click here for the live stream.

CONCERTGEBOUW VIDEO:

The Amsterdam Concertgebouw has made a video available of the May 18 concert by the Jerusalem Quartet, an event that was reinstated after the ensemble’s first performance last month was canceled for security reasons. The program includes Paul Ben-Haim’s First String Quartet and Claude Debussy’s String Quartet in g. Watch it here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Russian-born double bassist and conductor Serge Koussevitzky died on this date in 1951 in Boston, where he had led the Boston Symphony for 25 eventful years.
[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS  WEEKEND:

SATURDAY: At 1 pm, Cleveland Orchestra trombonist Shachar Israel revives his week-long Cleveland Trombone Seminar with a solo recital in CSU’s Drinko Recital Hall (pictured: participants in 2016), and at 4 pm, CelloBello presents Astrid Schween & the Verona Quartet at Cleveland Violins. Saturday evening at 7, the third of four SheScores concerts featuring female and non-binary composers takes place in Mixon Hall at CIM, and at 8 pm, Cleveland POPS orchestra salutes the US Armed Forces at Severance Music Center.

SUNDAY: Afternoon performances at 3 pm include Heights Arts Close Encounters with oboist Frank Rosenwein and the Omni Quartet at Barrie Carriage House & the Euclid Symphony at Shore Cultural Center. At 3:30, Western Reserve Chorale sings songs of America at Church of the Saviour. 4 pm performances bring guitarist Nacho González Nappa & flutist Shea del Bosque to Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church for original arrangements of tango, Brazilian and Cuban music, and Local 4 Music Fund concludes its four-concert SheScores run at CIM’s Mixon Hall.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Beginning in June, the Cleveland Museum of Art will collaborate with Ideastream Public Media to present a new series, Third Thursdays, at Transformer Station. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Local 4 Music Fund  presents the second of four free She Scores concerts featuring music by underrepresented composers. Tonight’s program includes works by Chloe Arnold, Erin Busch, Gala Flagello, Karen Griebling, Alexis Lamb, Annick Odom, Rachelle Ryan, and Elizabeth Start. Emily Laurance will give a pre-concert lecture at 6 pm.

And tonight at 7:30, Mourning [A] BLKstar and Kaboom Studio Orchestra will present a joint concert at Baldwin Wallace University’s Kleist Center in Berea.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Associated Press notes that the late Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence will receive its US premiere by San Francisco Opera on June 1. Its characters “are living ghosts, traumatized survivors of a school shooting that occurred 10 years earlier, but the memory of which intrudes like an unwelcome guest on a wedding celebration taking place in the present. [Read more…]