by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today’s schedule: etudes for solo piano, an early-music send-off to Carnegie Hall, works for organ and viola by Black composers, and jazz voice & trumpet
•Today’s reading: Amherst Early Music and Oberlin BPI compared and contrasted, the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, and a heckler at the Met
•Today’s (meta) almanac: a look back at the early days of our Diary
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Tonight at 7:30 pm, harpist Parker Ramsay will play Johann Sebastian Bach’s Aria with Thirty Variations, popularly known as the Goldberg Variations, in a Bach’s Birthday Bash at Trinity Cathedral.
IN THE NEWS:
Applications are now open for singer-pianist team auditions for the 2022 edition of the Cleveland Art Song Festival, to be held at the Cleveland Institute of Music from May 23-28. In addition to masterclasses and a final concert, the event (which has been on hiatus thanks to the pandemic) features performances with the festival guest artists: soprano Tamara Wilson and tenor David Portillo, and pianists Warren Jones and Craig Terry. Read more here. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:
The big thing to mention is the official arrival of spring. For Cleveland, the Vernal Equinox arrives on Sunday at 11:32 am.
In his 1987 New York Times essay “Welcoming the Sun,” MacDonald Harris wrote about the importance of observing the day when the sun appears again, assuaging our fears that it just might not make it this time around. Gotta do something to celebrate!
Indoors events on Saturday include the Weilerstein Duo at Oberlin, CityMusic Cleveland at St. Stanislaus, and Apollo’s Fire at CIM.
On Sunday, organist and harpsichordist Christa Rakich takes on J.S. Bach’s Art of Fugue (complete) at the Church of the Covenant, Cleveland Chamber Collective performs “Music for America” in Ohio City, and Apollo’s Fire takes its “Virtuoso Bach and Vivaldi” program to Rocky River. (And a head’s up for Monday, when harpist Parker Ramsay will play Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Trinity Cathedral.
Check our Concert Listings for details. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Beginning today and running through the weekend, the 50th annual Lakeland Jazz Festival takes over the campus of Lakeland Community College. Click here for the complete schedule.
Friday’s agenda offers chamber music by CityMusic Cleveland in Lakewood, and the Euclid Quartet in Canton, orchestral music by Apollo’s Fire featuring violinist Francisco Fullana (pictured, preview here) in Shaker Heights, the Oberlin Orchestra at home with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and Cleveland Pops at Severance.
Plus a screening of CIM Opera Theater’s Dido and Aeneas project in Mixon Hall.
Check our Concert Listings for details. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Piano Cleveland, Cleveland School of the Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art will come together tonight at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA for a collaborative, multi-disciplinary performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. Details in our Concert Listings.
R.I.P. TIMOTHY ROBSON:
The sad news reached us yesterday of the unexpected passing of our longtime colleague and friend Timothy Robson, one of the first people I met when I came to work at Trinity Cathedral in 1977, and one of the original correspondents for ClevelandClassical.com when the website was founded in September of 2008. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
ON TODAY:
This week’s episode of Eric Charnofsky’s “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music” on WRUW radio from Case celebrates the birthday of Telemann, and includes a Monteverdi madrigal, a J.S. Bach Cello Suite performed on double bass, excerpts from Handel’s musical ode Alexander’s Feast, and a Divertissement by Lully. Click here to listen to the internet feed.
New York’s Metropolitan Opera is hosting a 70-minute Concert for Ukraine tonight at 6:00 pm, featuring its singers, orchestra, and chorus (pictured) led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin in music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, and Richard Strauss, culminating in the finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi will lead the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem. Click here at start time for the free internet stream (audio only). [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This weekend’s entries:
• Concerts at Oberlin, Severance Music Center, and Kent State, and on the road in Fairlawn and Coventry Village
• Coverage of reactions by the classical music community to the Russian invasion of Ukraine from The Violin Channel, and report of a construction miracle for the New York Philharmonic (Thank you, pandemic)
• Marking the birthdate of American choral conductor and composer Hall Johnson [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Today’s entries:
• Cleveland Orchestra matinee, piano concerts at Fine Arts Willoughby and U. of Akron, Chinese traditional music for sheng at CMA
• Touching announcement by Michael Tilson Thomas, controversial cancellation in Montréal
• A single summer concert brings today’s Almanac celebrations of Mendelssohn, J.S. Bach, Bobby McFerrin — and a large outdoor crowd — together in the Marketplace in Leipzig [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
12:00 pm – Trinity Brownbag Concert: Music and Meditation. Todd Wilson & Nicole Keller, organ & piano. Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering. Hybrid concert will also be livestreamed.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Every day brings news of the latest fallout for Russian artists from Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Catch up with this story (“Conductors Stand Down from Posts Amidst Russian Invasion”) on the Violin Channel. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
No live performances to raise up today, but Eric Charnofsky will host an homage to Ukraine on his WRUW radio show Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music from 2 pm to 4 pm, and at 7:30 pm, Les Délices will revisit works by women composers across the centuries in “Women’s Herstory,” the latest episode in its SalonEra series. Details in our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
English composer Henry Purcell may have been born on this date in 1659 (records are sketchy, to say the least), and in his brief 36-year career distinguished himself in a large body of music written both for church and theater after the restoration of the monarchy.
One of Purcell’s most popular works is his Dido and Aeneas, with a libretto by Nahum Tate based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid. [Read more…]