by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND: 

A whopping 19 events are listed in our calendar from Friday through Sunday, including pairs of performances by BlueWater Chamber Orchestra (soloists Afendi Yusuf and Amy Zoloto pictured) and Cleveland Chamber Choir, ensembles that are celebrating their 15th and 10th anniversaries this season.

Click here to read an interview with Ladonna Woods, widow of BlueWater founder Carlton Woods, and here to watch a brief video of Cleveland Chamber Choir and youth choir HaZamir Cleveland rehearsing a Salamone Rossi psalm at Congregation Mishkan Or (concert preview here).

Let’s cut to the chase and send you directly to our Concert Listings page for details and ticket information for these and other performances this weekend. Enjoy the richness and depth of classical performances in Northeast Ohio!

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Cleveland Institute of Music announced on Thursday that Tito Muñoz, former music director of The Phoenix Symphony and former assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra, has been appointed interim principal conductor of the CIM Orchestra from next fall through the 2026-27 academic year. Read a press release here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

• Kenneth Bean conducts Oberlin Sinfonietta in works by David Ludwig, Igor Stravinsky, and George Enescu (7:30, Warner Concert Hall)

• Tenor Jonathan Pierce Rhodes and violinist Alan Choo star in Apollo’s Fire’s Classical Sparks (7:30, First Methodist, Akron)

• Music Director Franz Welser-Möst (pictured) returns from medical leave to lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos and Beethoven’s Third Symphony (7:30, Severance Music Center)

• The CIM Black Student Union presents a Benefit Concert for the Black Student Union’s Student Assistance Fund (7:30, Mixon Hall).

Visit our Concert Listings page for details and ticket information for these and other performances.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Cleveland Institute of Music has announced that Jessie Montgomery will headline the school’s 2025 Young Composers Program. Read more here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

In conjunction with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Picasso and Paper exhibition, guitarist Pipo Romero makes his Cleveland debut in a 7:30 concert at Transformer Station.

Visit our Concert Listings page for details and ticket information for these and other performances.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has made significant changes to its regulations around federal grant applications — stating that grant recipients may not “operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’(DEI). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

At 7:00 pm, Federated Church Performing Arts Series presents Voices From the Other Side with Steven Smith, conductor, Gabrielle Haigh, soprano, and eight Erie Coast Cellists. Read a preview here.

At 7:30 pm, LCCC Signature Series presents Annie Jacobs-Perkins, cello, and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra joins Sameer Patel, conductor, and Viviana-Zarah Baudis, piano, in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center.

Visit our Concert Listings page for details and ticket information for these and other performances.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas’ brain tumor has returned, and the 80-year-old intends to lead his final performance in April. Read the story from the Associated Press here, and his personal statement here.

Roberta Flack, the magnetic singer and pianist whose intimate blend of soul, jazz and folk made her one of the most popular artists of the 1970s, died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 88. Read the New York Times article by Giovanni Russonello here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at ​​7:30 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society presents tenor JR Fralick & Friends — Christine Fuoco, piano, Steve Sang Koh, violin, Lembi Veskimets, viola, and Khari Joyner, cello in works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Frank Bridge & Richard Strauss. The concert will also be live streamed here.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP) has announced the lineup for its upcoming Re:Sound Festival, scheduled for May 16 and 17. Click here to view the announcement.

Cuyahoga Arts & Culture’s Board of Trustees will hold a regular meeting on Tuesday, February 25, in the 2nd Floor Learning Commons of the Louis Stokes wing of the Main Cleveland Public Library. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra, led by Douglas Droste, features soprano Kate Tiemens in Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a nostalgic setting of words by James Agee (7:30 in Gamble Auditorium)

Also tonight, British composer/conductor Thomas Adès (pictured) joins mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in the U.S. premiere of the co-commission America: A Prophecy, plus Jean Sibelius’s The Oceanides, Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra Mar, and Charles Ives’ Orchestral Set No. 2 (7:30 at Severance Music Center, repeated at 8 pm Saturday). Read a preview interview with Sasha Cooke here.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other forthcoming concerts.

LOCAL HEADLINES:

CIM’s concert calendar expands with the launch of a new conductor-less chamber orchestra. Read the Cleveland Institute of Music press release here.

The Cleveland Orchestra to display costumes from Marvel Studios’ Black Panther and perform live film score. Read the Cleveland Orchestra News story here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

• 12 Noon – Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert. Five Lakes Chinese Music Ensemble.

• 7:30 pm – Drummer and bandleader Nate Smith fuses his original compositions with everything from jazz and R&B to hip-hop and pop in Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other forthcoming concerts.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

One of the few items to pop up on a search for events that took place on this day in classical music history was the death of Italian madrigalist Orazio Vecchi in 1605 at the age of 54 in Modena. That got me thinking about alternative ways of observing some historic milestones. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon, organist Daesean Lawson (pictured) plays works by J.G. Walther, J.S. Bach, & Fela Sowande on the Tuesday Noon series at the Church of the Covenant. Click here for the live stream.

And tonight at 7:30 in Stull Recital Hall, Oberlin Conservatory presents Linking Legacies with tenor Cornelius Johnson, violinist John McLaughlin Williams, cellist Khari Joyner, & pianist Diana White-Gould in music by Joyner, James Lee III, Ulysses Kay, H. Leslie Adams, Dolores White, Margaret Bonds, & Uzee Brown Jr., plus the traditional spiritual, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other forthcoming concerts.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

February 18 marks the birth of Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos in Athens in 1896. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

On this Presidents’ Day holiday, Heights Arts is holding an Open Rehearsal of its forthcoming program, Bach and his Art of Fugue, featuring The Blossom Quartet (Stephen Tavani and Yun-Ting Lee, violins, William Bender, viola, and Dane Johansen, cello). It happens at Heights Arts at 3 pm, and admission is pay-what-you-can.

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other forthcoming concerts.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

Leaving little time for rehearsals after finishing a piece of music is a classic move throughout the history of composers. But for some reason it doesn’t always turn out well.

Such was the misfortune of Giacomo Puccini with Madama Butterfly, which was premiered in its original version on this date in 1904 at La Scala in Milan. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Fifteen events are in the works for these two days, many in celebration of Valentine’s Day Weekend!

On Saturday:

BW Opera presents Speed Dating Tonight! (3 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA, repeated at 7 pm & Sunday at 3 pm), Cleveland Jazz Orchestra marks the weekend with Sinatra and Gershwin (7 pm, Music Box Supper Club), Wayne Center for the Arts presents Jinjoo Cho, violin, Max Geissler, cello, and Hyunsoo Kim, piano (7 pm in Wooster), Firelands Symphony plays love songs (7:30 pm, Sawmill Creek in Huron), the Youngstown Symphony presents Shakespeare in Love (7:30 in Stambaugh Auditorium), and Fabio Luisi conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Silvia Colasanti’s Time’s Cruel Hand with countertenor Tim Mead (Thursday’s performance pictured above by Roger Mastroianni), and Bruckner’s Seventh (8 pm at Severance).

On Sunday:

BW Opera repeats Speed Dating Tonight! (3 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA), Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Youth Chorus give their Winter Concert (3 pm at Severance), Sounds of St. James presents a Festival of Sacred Music (3 pm, St. James, Lakewood), Heights Chamber Orchestra features oboist Frank Rosenwein (3:30, Gilmour Academy), CIM New Music Ensemble plays music by Margaret Brouwer (4 pm in Mixon Hall), the Covenant Sunday Artist Series hosts French organist Vincent Grappy (4 pm, Church of the Covenant), Canton Symphony spotlights violinist Konrad Kowal (3 pm, Zimmerman Symphony Center), and The Cleveland Orchestra plays scores by John Williams led by Keith Lockhart (7:30 at Severance).

Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other forthcoming concerts.

INTERESTING READS:

The current turmoil at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. has engendered considerable news coverage and commentary, but many articles are sequestered behind paywalls and accessible only to subscribers. [Read more…]