by Daniel Hathaway

ON THIS WEEKEND:

Les Délices continues its live, premiere run of the Baroque opera The White Cat on Saturday at 3 and 7:30 and Sunday at 3 at the Breen Center, and CIM Opera Theater and New Music Ensemble repeat their Pocket Operas program on Sunday at 4 in Mixon Hall.

Orchestra concerts this weekend include the Akron Symphony with the flamenco dance Alice Blumenfeld and the Korean Three Drum Dancers (E. J. Thomas Hall Saturday at 8), and Lauren Berry and Connor Bogart solo in Broadway favorites with Carl Topilow and Cleveland Pops at Severance.

Visiting musicians will be hosted by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society (Berta Rojas, pictured, Saturday at 7:30 at Plymouth Church) and No Exit (The Unheard-of Ensemble exploring climate change with composer Christopher Stark and video artist Zlatko Ćosić at Spaces Gallery  Saturday at 8).

On Sunday at 1 at the Cleveland History Center, the Cleveland Arts Prize will celebrate African American History and Culture and its own 60th anniversary with pianist Dianna White-Gould, violist Christopher Jenkins, cellist Kahri Joyner, poet Raja Belle Freeman, and tenor Cornelius Johnson. The weekend concludes Sunday at 4 with Stars in the Classics’ spring cabaret at the Church of the Western Reserve. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ON TODAY:

Faculty and student musicians at Youngstown State and Oberlin are featured in a trio of performances today.

YSU’s Music at Noon features select woodwinds from the Dana School of Music.

This evening, the Dana Trio — Misook Yun, soprano, Sean Yancer, horn, and Caroline Oltmanns, piano — perform “Beyond Auf dem Strom,” featuring commissioned music by James Wilding, Margaret Griebling-Haigh, Cara Haxo, and Elliot Bark, and the preview of a work by Andres Weinkemeyer in advance of its future premiere.

And an Oberlin Faculty Recital by the Verona Quartet (pictured) — Jonathan Ong and Dorothy Ro, violins, Abigail Rojansky, viola, and Jonathan Dormand, cello, with pianist Peter Takacs — includes Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 9 and Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2, with an introduction by Professor Vladimir Ivantsov of the Russia and East European Studies Department. You can watch a live stream. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

They moved my station!
Beginning today, Monday, March 28, WCLV, Ideastream Public Media’s classical music service, will migrate from 104.9 FM to 90.3 FM. This frequency change will extend classical music access to approximately 1 million additional listeners. National Public Radio news will now come from WKSU, which will begin broadcasting at 89.7 and 104.9 on March 28. Click here to read more about the changes, which are designed to expand coverage for the region.

Eric Charnofsky is spending his two-hour Monday slot on WRUW radio in the company of Karl Goldmark, James Primosch, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Jacob Druckman. Join him for the internet feed at 2 pm.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, and for the first time in a long while, Oberlin’s jazz faculty will share the stage with their students in the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in a side-by-side from Finney Chapel. The program featuring music by Ray Brown, Marian McPartland, Ivan Lins, and Jay Ashby will be livestreamed. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Events in Ukraine are on everyone’s mind, but musicians are engaging with the crisis through consciousness-raising and fundraising performances.

Oberlin Conservatory Faculty pianists Scott Cuellar, Peter Takács, Tony Cho, Yulia Fedoseeva and Haewon Song, clarinetist Richard Hawkins, French hornist Jeff Scott, bassoonist Drew Pattison, violinists Francesca dePasquale and David Bowlin, violist Kirsten Docter, cellists Dmitry Kouzov and Andrei Ionita, bassist Derek Zadinsky and members of the Verona Quartet will play a benefit concert tonight at 7:30 in Oberlin’s First Methodist Church. Donations will be directed to UNICEF Ukraine, Red Cross Ukraine, and Razom.

The CIM Orchestra will perform at Severance Music Center tonight under Carlos Kalmar in a program featuring pianist Jacob Bernhardt in Prokofiev’s Third Concerto, as well as the first outing of a new piece by CIM’s Keith Fitch, Charles Ives’ amusing The Unanswered Question (the Druids have no comment) and Vaughan Williams’ Fourth Symphony. [Read more…]

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

[Read more…]

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…]