by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

Saturday is the 400th anniversary of the death of Dutch composer and organist Jan Pieterzoon Sweelinck (read more in the Almanac below), an occasion to be marked by a 4:30 pm Oberlin historical keyboard faculty and guest recital in Fairchild Chapel. The recital is part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the John Brombaugh meantone organ. See the detailed program and connect to a live stream here. (The Dutch government has honored the composer on a 25 guilder banknote, above.)

Also happening on Saturday: Carousel with the Chagrin Valley Studio Orchestra (repeated on Sunday), and the first of two Cleveland Philharmonic concerts in Westlake (the second is on Sunday at Cleveland State University).

Sunday is busy. Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra with cellist Alisa Weilerstein performing a Joan Tower concerto, and Joela Jones, the Orchestra’s keyboard principal playing her last concert before retiring. Harmonia features East European folk music at the Maltz PAC. The Parma and Suburban Symphonies play fall concerts in Parma Heights and Beachwood. And Dallas Symphony organist Scott Dettra solos with the Youngstown Symphony at Stambaugh Auditorium.

Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Expanding on its earlier article about travel visa problems experienced by the Danish Quartet, today’s New York Times print edition chronicled recent cancellations by conductor Thomas Dausgaard, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, Russian singers in the Met Opera’s Boris Godunov, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (a 10-city tour), as well as some cliff-hanger situations involving such artists as Lang Lang.

“Even in normal times, it can be difficult for visiting artists to obtain the visas they need to perform in the United States. Now they face even longer lines and staff shortages at American embassies and consulates around the world. The earliest available appointments for visa interviews in some cities are for next spring, months after some artists have scheduled performances.” Read the article here.

Another Times article that appears in print today follows up on the recent controversy involving University of Michigan distinguished composition professor Bright Sheng. Read Jennifer Schleussler’s A Blackface ‘Othello’ Shocks, and a Professor Steps Back From Class here, and a Times opinion piece, What I See in the Latest Blackface ‘Scandal,’ by John McWhorter here.

The Oberlin Conservatory is beginning a multi-year partnership with the Detroit Chamber Winds and Detroit’s Carr Center to commission composers to “explore the African diaspora through the lens of contemporary American chamber music.” Resonate will result in performances of works by Courtney Bryan, Michael Frazier, Adolphus Hailstork, Nathalie Joachim, George Lewis, Patrice Rushen, and Pamela Z. at the participating institutions, including Bowling Green State University College of Musical Arts, the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance, the Michigan State University College of Music, and Western Michigan University School of Music. Read a story by Cathy Parlow Strauss here.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

On October 16 1621, Dutch organist and composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck died in Amsterdam, where he spent his entire career, although his fame spread elsewhere. He was known in Germany for his mentoring of young organists and in England for his keyboard compositions, which found their way into the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. (A modern edition of this vast collection of keyboard music was co-edited by British musicologist William Barclay Squire, who was born on October 16, 1855.) [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS TODAY:

The Astralis Chamber Ensemble plays a program of music by Arthur Foote, Philip Glass, Jacques Castérède, Paul Patterson and Jacques Ibert at Messiah Lutheran Church in Fairview Park tonight at 7, and at 7:30, the Chagrin Valley Studio Orchestra moves to Chagrin Valley Little Theatre to continue its run of Carousel performances.

Also at 7:30, Oberlin Conservatory begins a Fridays @ Finney series featuring its large ensembles in a new rotation plan. The first program brings the Oberlin Orchestra (pictured) and Contemporary Music Ensemble to the Finney Chapel stage for a program of recent music conducted by Rafael Jiménez and Timothy Weiss.

As Erich Burnett writes on the Conservatory website, at the heart of the change is “an emphasis on more — and more diverse — repertoire, greater flexibility in terms of ensemble sizes, and increased performance opportunities for students,” as well as “an intentional shift in repertoire selection to be less reliant on works from the traditionally recognized Western canon and more focused on newer works by composers of wide-ranging cultural backgrounds and experiences.” Attend in person (it’s free) or watch the live stream.

Details in our Concert Listings.

APOLLO’S FIRE IN NYC:

Jeannette Sorrell will lead Apollo’s Fire and Singers in four performances of Handel’s Messiah with members of the New York Philharmonic on December 14, 15, 17, and 18 at Riverside Church in New York City. Popular soprano Amanda Forsythe is among the soloists. Planning a visit? Click here for ticket details.

INTERESTING READ:

The pandemic has upset travel plans for countless musicians, among them the Danish String Quartet. Read a story in the Los Angeles Times about the ensemble’s recent harrowing experiences in obtaining the necessary P1 visa to tour the West Coast this month. The quartet, who visit the U.S. three or four times each year, is scheduled to perform on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series in January, by which time (fingers crossed!) things should be operating more smoothly.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Exactly one year ago, the strings of The Cleveland Orchestra donned face masks and took their places behind widely-spaced individual music stands on the Severance Hall stage in a pre-recorded concert distributed on the Orchestra’s Adella streaming platform. Last night, the Orchestra gave their first in-person performance in the newly-named Mandel Hall since the pandemic shut public concerts down. Another step toward normality.

Speaking of concert halls, two celebrated performance venues opened their doors on October 15: Boston Symphony Hall in 1900, and the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco in 1932, the first municipally-owned opera house in the country. When San Francisco audiences return, they’ll be more comfortable, the management having replaced the original seats with more spacious ones to accommodate the bodies of 21st-century patrons.

Organists should take note of the birth on this date in 1868 of Hamilton C. MacDougall, who founded the American Guild of Organists in 1896 while teaching at Wellesley College from 1900-1925. With some 275 chapters and 12,000 members throughout the United States and abroad, the AGO has recently invested its energies into the recruitment and training of young musicians. Click here to watch Oberlin graduate Katelyn Emerson’s video A Reason to Practice, which she wrote, recorded, and produced for the American Guild of Organists’ Virtual Pipe Organ Encounter 2021.

Fans of new music in Latin America should celebrate the debut of Puerto Rican composer Rafael Apont-Ledée, born on this date in 1938. He studied in Madrid, and moved on to Buenos Aires to work with Alberto Ginastera before returning to his native Caribbean Island in 1965 to become one of the leaders in the new music movement of the 1960s. Listen to a compilation of four of his works here.

And on this date in 1964, Broadway mourned the final curtain call of composer and lyricist Cole Porter, who created both book and music for more than 20 musicals — mostly in the 1930s, but his late career hit, Kiss Me, Kate revived the popularity of a composer renowned for his witty, urbane lyrics. During his undergraduate days at Yale, Porter wrote some 300 songs, one of which is sung here by the Whiffenpoofs, of which he was a member.

by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 7:30 pm with a program titled “New Beginnings,” Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra will return in full force to Severance Music Center for the first time since March 2020. The evening will include Richard Strauss’ Macbeth, Joan Tower’s A New Day (for cello and orchestra) with Alisa Weilerstein, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. Tickets are available online. Click here for COVID-19 protocols.

This week’s concerts will mark the final performances by Joela Jones (hands pictured above) as the Orchestra’s principal keyboard. Jones, whose tenure has spanned 54 seasons, will be presented tonight with the Orchestra’s 25th Distinguished Service Award. Click here to read an interview with Jones and here for an interview with Alisa Weilerstein.

At 8:00 pm – BW Opera presents the fourth and final performance of Handel’s Alcina directed by Scott Skiba. The outdoor performance will be held on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center at Baldwin Wallace University, 49 Seminary St. in Berea. Food trucks will be available. Free general admission for the lawn and street (bring your own chairs or blankets, first come, first served), and 50 reserved seats are available at $25 (click here).

IN THE NEWS:

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra announced on Wednesday that it had chosen Nathalie Stutzmann, a conductor and singer from France, as its next music director. Stutzmann, 56, will be only the second woman in history to lead a top-tier American orchestra when she takes the podium in Atlanta next year. Read the New York Times article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Today marks the passing of American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, who died on this date in 1990 of a heart attack in his New York apartment at The Dakota. He was 72 years old.

Unfortunately for Northeast Ohio audiences, his sole appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra was a 1970 performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony at Blossom.

In our August 25, 2020 Diary, Daniel Hathaway honored Bernstein’s birth by going behind the scenes for a look at “Lenny” in rehearsal — a process even more revealing than a resulting performance.

Hathaway wrote: “I had the honor of studying with Bernstein in the conducting class at Tanglewood in the early ‘70s, and of singing in Mahler 2 with the Harvard-Radcliffe Choruses and the Boston Symphony on a radiant summer afternoon during that time.” Click here to watch Bernstein rehearse Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring during the 1987 International Conductor’s Competition and Master Course at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany. And in a separate clip, he takes the triangle players in Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette aside for a brief tutorial.”

September 8 marked the 50th anniversary of the world premiere of Bernstein’s MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers commissioned for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the nation’s capital in 1971. Click here to read more about the work.

Click here to watch Bernstein lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in his Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story.”

 

by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TONIGHT:

8:00 brings two options: one in person and outdoors, the other over the web and airwaves. BW Opera continues its run of George Frideric Handel’s Alcina outdoors on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center, while WCLV’s Ovations will feature CityMusic Cleveland in music by Jungyoon Wie, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Ellen Taffe Zwilich. Read our preview about the Wie and Coleridge-Taylor works, which were programmed together this past April.

Details about both events in our Concert Listings.

VIDEOS & PODCASTS:

To help welcome families back to Severance this season, The Cleveland Orchestra has prepared a digital family concert featuring the Factory Seconds Brass Trio (above, right), and hosted by Meaghan Heinrich. From the looks of it, there’s something for everyone, whether you’re drawn in by the performances, the music (Poulenc’s Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone), the story (a tale of Parisian love “brought to life by the antics of a mischievous cat!”), the artwork by Kate Atherton (one example pictured above, left), or the opportunity to create your own art. Watch here.

And the ASO’s Unorchestrated podcast finishes up its series on the Akron Symphony Chorus with a discussion about There’s a Stirrin’ in the Water, written by Chuck Myricks Jr. and Jesse Ayers in 2016. Joining host Tom Moore are the two co-composers, as well as Chorus Director Chris Albanese. Musical excerpts, of course, are included along the way, both from a November 2016 performance and from May 2021. Listen here.

IN THE NEWS:

Ahead of his recent speech at the Conservative Party conference, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson walked onstage accompanied by the music of indie band Friendly Fires. The group had not given advance permission, and in any case they were not pleased with the association. But the matter isn’t always that simple. Writing for the BBC, Mark Savage investigates the rules around politicians’ choices of music, both in the U.S. and the U.K.

And the Teatro Comunale di Bologna has named Oksana Lyniv as its next music director, making her the first woman to assume that position for an Italian opera company. Read the article from Opera Wire here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Previous Diary entries (here and here) have highlighted English-born violist and composer Rebecca Clarke, who died on this date in 1979 in New York City. Today we’ll shine a spotlight on another, lesser-known, and living Clarke, of no relation. That figure would be Australian musician Zana Clarke, born on October 13, 1965.

A composer, recorder player, and violinist, Zana Clarke has also taught Medieval improvisation and early instrumental music at the University of New England — an interest that intertwines with those other musical pursuits. Her compositions, mainly for the recorder, often bear Medieval influences, but combine them with contemporary techniques such as “vocalized recorder,” or singing while playing to create two individual melodic lines.

A great example is her Swamp — listen here, ignoring the shaky video, to enjoy a fascinating blend of the Medieval and the modern, as performed by Jo Arnott at the premiere in 2005.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

CONCERTS TODAY:

The Noon concert at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle will feature Bangor, Maine organist Kevin Birch at the 17th-century style gallery organ in works by Sweelinck, Weckmann, Bolt, and J.S. Bach.

And tonight at 7 in University Circle, the Cleveland Institute of Music will host the touring Sphinx Virtuosi and cello soloist Thomas Mena in a program highlighting Black and Latino composers. You’ll need a free seating pass for the concert in Kulas Hall.

On the West side of town, violinist Franceca dePasquale and pianist Scott Cuellar will join the Verona Quartet for a faculty recital in Warner Concert Hall at Oberlin at 7:30 pm (concertos by Lowell Lieberman and Ernest Chausson).

And at 8 pm in Berea, if the weather holds, BW Opera will present the second of four performances of Handel’s Alcina on the front patio of the Boesel Musical Arts Center (pictured). Some 50 reserved seats ($25) come with chairs. Free seating on the lawn if you bring your own chairs or blankets.

SAVE THE DATES:

Kent State University will hold a Celebration of Life for the late Richard D. Worthing, on Saturday, October 16 at 1:00 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall. Worthing, who died in 2020, taught music theory, analysis and orchestration, served as coordinator for the Kent/Blossom Music Festival, and Assistant Dean of the College of Fine and Professional Arts, and was named Dean Emeritus upon his retirement. Details here.

The Metropolitan Opera will simulcast its October 23 matinee performance of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, its season opener, and the first title by a Black composer to be staged by the company. Click here for a list of area theaters and to reserve tickets.

The 90th episode of the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival to be held from April 8-10, 2022, will feature guest appearances by the period string band ACRONYM, the Diederot Quartet, and a performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. (More information to come in January). On Wednesday, October 27 at 8 pm, WCLV 104.9 will rebroadcast the 2021 Virtual Bach Festival Mass in B Minor Retrospective.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1872, Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, Yorkshire, a village after which the British composer named one of the popular hymn tunes he wrote while serving as editor of The English Hymnal, published in 1906. (Listen to an arrangement made and played by Todd Wilson with the choir and instrumentalists of First-Pilgrim Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 2014.)

The range of RVW’s work was vast. To suggest just two radically different compositions that reflect his lifelong interests, let’s choose Along the Field and A Vision of Aeroplanes.

The former represents his close association with English folksong, of which he collected numerous examples and made arrangements for various combinations of voices and instruments. He so internalized that repertoire that he could write easily in the style, as in his settings of Edwardian poet A.E. Housman in Along the Field, simply but eloquently scored for solo voice and violin. Listen here to a performance of the cycle by soprano Marie Henriett Reinhold and violinist Dietrich Reinhold.

The other extreme finds Vaughan Williams exploring the full range of drama at his disposal as an early 20th century composer. Orchestrally, this expresses itself in his symphonies and in such works as Job, a Masque for Dancing, with its frightening musical depictions of Satan, but otherwise in his charmingly titled setting of the Vision of Ezekiel from the Hebrew scriptures for organ and chorus. The organ part is as fearsome for the keyboardist as the musical declamation is for the singers. Stay with it to the end in this performance by the University of Cambridge’s Clare College Choir.

And it was on this date in 1887 that Australian soprano Mrs. Helen Porter Armstrong made her sensational operatic debut in Brussels. We know her best by her stage name, Nellie Melba, as well as for two culinary items named in her honor, Melba Toast, and Peach Melba. Here’s a restored studio recording of the celebrated diva singing the finale of Act I of La traviata.

by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 3:00 at the Maltz, the Case/University Circle Symphony Orchestra, led by Kathleen Horvath, plays an all-Czech program of music by Dvořák and Smetana. And at 8, BW Opera and director Scott Skiba present Handel’s Alcina in an outdoor production on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center. Details and links in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

This Indigenous Peoples’ Day is the first one to be recognized by proclamation of a sitting U.S. president.

“For generations, Federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures,” President Biden wrote on Friday. “Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society.”

Let’s reflect on two recent and local musical events to honor Indigenous culture of the Americas.

We begin this past summer with Mexican guitarist, composer, and singer Anastasia Sonaranda (above, middle), who was one of three guest artists involved in the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Creative Fusion virtual series.

Through her residency, Sonaranda sought to illustrate the diversity of styles in Mexican music. The waltzlike “son istmeño” style, developed in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (which mostly lies in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Oaxaca), was aptly represented by La Llorona, a popular folk song that originated in that same region.

A key element of the arrangement by Sonaranda and Rodrigo Lara Alonso (educator and Latinx Community Liaison for the Guitar Society) is a text that was written for the occasion by Irma Pineda Santiago (above, left), a Oaxacan-born poet who is also a 2020-22 United Nations representative to Indigenous peoples of Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The poem, Gunaa runna, is written in the Indigenous language of Isthmus Zapotec or Diidxazá. The Zapotec group of around 50 languages is spoken by 490,000 people, according to the 2020 census, the majority of them in Oaxaca, with the Isthmus area being among the most proud in maintaining that tongue.

Given that the poem reflects on the figure of La Llorona (literally “the weeping woman”), it’s helpful to know the basics of the folklore in advance: a woman has drowned her children, then herself — for various reasons depending on the particular variation of the story — and now roams as a ghost mourning them.

Now, watch the video, which begins with Santiago in recitation — songlike in itself given the tonal aspect of the Zapotec languages — before introducing the musical soloists: on guitar Sonaranda, and on voice Martha Toledo Mar (above, right), herself a Zapotec singer-songwriter from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

You’ll also hear over 100 guest musicians: students from CCGS Education and from the Orquesta Juvenil de Guitarras de la Ciudad de México, as well as amateur and professional guitarists from Cleveland and Mexico.

Moving north, let’s end by revisiting Les Délices’ September 2020 SalonEra episode “Recovering Roots.” The program shone a spotlight on baritone Jonathon Adams, whose ancestry can be traced back to two groups of Indigenous people primarily from what is now Canada: the Métis (themselves a mix of Indigenous and European — mostly French — descent) and the Cree.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Live music is back in a big way this weekend, beginning with Oberlin’s Opening Festival, “Music, Sports, and the Enduring Influence of Ancient Greece,” the third annual cycle of themed kickoff concerts shepherded by violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson (pictured) with input from his faculty colleagues. Read an article by Erich Burnett here, and either join the four-concert festival in person or watch online Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm and 7:30 pm. In between, the theme is developed in symposia at 4 pm each day as well as in a listening party on Saturday at 10 pm when Conservatory students and Oberlin Athletics varsity team captains share their favorite music playlists from Warner Concert Hall.

Also on Saturday evening, the Stow Symphony plays its fall concert in Tallmadge.

Also on Sunday, the Chagrin Studio Orchestra continues its run of Carousel performances at 2, At 3, you have your choice of the CIM Orchestra at Severance Music Center under new conductor Carlos Kalmar, Cleveland Composers Guild at First Baptist, the CWRU Symphonic Winds at the Maltz PAC, MusiCLE’s Porchester Concert at the Cozad-Bates House, or the Akropolis Reed Quintet from the University of Michigan in Guzzetta Hall at Akron U.

But there’s more: on Sunday at 4, the Cavani Quartet continues its Beyond Beethoven cycle at the Music Settlement, and organist-composer Mark Thewes performs at First Church in Painesville. At 7:30, the Canton Symphony breaks its long silence with a concert of music by Ibert, Stravinsky, Haydn, and Margarer Brouwer’s The Art of Sailing at Dawn.

See our Concert Listings for details and links to live streams.

INTERESTING READS:

In last weekend’s Diary, we linked to a Van Magazine article about a recent attempt to complete Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony using AI. A followup review by Jan Swafford considers the success of the undertaking.

In the end, what were the creators of the AI Tenth Symphony actually trying to do? Did they want to create a piece that would be added to the Beethoven repertoire, played by orchestras everywhere? I hope that they weren’t attempting something that futile. Were they more modestly trying, like the creators of Watson and Deep Blue, to demonstrate the potential of computers to think faster and more pointedly than humans in mimicking human endeavors? If so, I’ll concede that they more or less succeeded: After an impressive feat of programming by its human proprietors, AI produced something that sounds unquestionably like a piece of music, only a gangly and forgettable one.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Earlier this week, the Michigan Daily reported that University of Michigan composition professor Bright Sheng had been removed from teaching an undergraduate class following the screening in a composition seminar of the 1965 version of Shakespeare’s Othello where actor Laurence Olivier appeared in blackface. Read the article here.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

Meet, if you haven’t already, two composers with Cleveland connections who were born on October 9 in 1869 and 1922 respectively.

Hearing a performance of Tannhäuser at the age of 18 inspired Cleveland-born Henry Lawrence Freeman to compose opera, and by his death in 1954, he had written scores for at least 23 titles, 21 of which are preserved in manuscript at Columbia University. He also founded two opera companies — one at the age of 22 in Denver that bore his name, and the Negro Grand Opera in 1920 in New York. The Martyr — the first opera to be produced by an all-black company, was staged in Chicago in 1893 and in Cleveland in 1894. [Read more…]

by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

Available beginning today: Les Délices: Song of Orpheus, Hannah De Priest, soprano, Jonathan Woody, baritone, Shelby Yamin, violin, Debra Nagy, oboe, Rebecca Reed, gamba & cello & Mark Edwards, harpsichord. Woody and De Priest recount the story of Orpheus’ descent to the underworld, his charming of Hades, and his attempt to bring Eurydice back to the land of the living in rarely-heard cantatas by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Philippe Courbois. By Much Love Betray’d, a new instrumental work by Woody, reimagines the powerful magic of Orpheus’ lyre. Online only, available for 30 days after premiere. Click here for tickets, here for an interview with Woody, and here for an advance review.

At 7:00 pm, Birch Browning leads the CSU Symphonic Wind Ensemble in concert in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University, 2100 Euclid Ave. Free.

At 7:30 pm David Ellis leads the Case Camerata Chamber Orchestra in J.S. Bach’s Contrapuncti 1, 3, 5 & 11 (Art of Fugue) & Grieg’s Holberg Suite. Maltz Performing Arts Center, 1855 Ansel Road in University Circle, Cleveland. Tickets available online.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Today we celebrate cellist, cultural ambassador, and humanitarian Yo-Yo Ma (pictured above), born on this date in 1955 in Paris. Since his days as a child prodigy, Ma has carved out a remarkably diverse career — one need to look no further than his expansive discography to understand why he is a household name around the world.

Ma is a person who enjoys building relationships and finding common ground with everyone he meets. Perhaps his best-known example of using music to find that common ground is The Silk Road Project, a collaborative enterprise to promote artistic exchanges between cultures, named after the 4,000-some miles of ancient trade routes that for two millennia linked parts of Asia with Europe and encouraged the trading of art, knowledge, philosophy and religion — as well as silk and other commercial goods.

Without a doubt, Ma is committed to bringing people together through music. In a 2013 interview with this publication, Ma said, “I do believe totally in what I’m trying to do, and I feel incredibly grateful — especially during these hard economic times. The world is changing so quickly and there are people left out. But we want to make sure that while things are changing, we have a sense of where we are going that we can all mutually work towards.”

He went on to say that culture and the arts are effective because as artists you are always working toward something bigger than yourself. “It’s not just about interest groups but rather that we have common interests. And sometimes the common interests get lost when we’re only saying ‘wait, you’ve got to look at me.’”

The cellist is also a firm believer in the power of education. In a 2013 interview prior to Silk Road’s appearance in Akron, Galician bagpipes player Christina Pato pointed out that the importance of education is very strong and the ensemble is constantly scheduling educational activities. “Watching Yo-Yo work has been an inspiration to all of us. He is constantly there worrying about everything,” Pato says. “Even in the middle of a long tour, he arrives at schools at 9 am to make things happen. He works with all the children and brings joy and happiness. It’s great to have a mentor like him.” [Read more…]

by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY:

The afternoon opens with a Trinity Brownbag “Organ Spectacular” at 12 pm, with Todd Wilson and Nicole Keller (above) unveiling Trinity Cathedral’s new Muller Pipe organ through music by Sowerby, Hampton, Widor, Lemare, Shearing, and Soler (attend in person or via stream). And at 12:15, there’s a Dana School of Music Voice Area Recital at YSU’s Butler Institute of American Art.

The evening pairs string quartets and visual art when four CIM ensembles play works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Haydn in “Music in the Galleries” at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Details in our Concert Listings.

IN THE NEWS:

Last Thursday, Mike Telin rounded up several reviews of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first opera by a Black composer ever to be staged by the company.

Following up on the review by chief classical critic Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times has since sent two more critics to see the production — one specializing in classical music, the other in jazz (Blanchard is a jazz trumpeter as well as a composer). Read the post-opera discussion between Seth Colter Walls and Giovanni Russonello here.

Elsewhere in NYC, the New York Philharmonic is managing the challenge of being without a home venue this season during the renovation of David Geffen Hall. “This 2021-2022 season is shaping up as a militarylike exercise of logistics, dexterity and scheduling,” writes Adam Nagourney in the Times.

Here are the numbers: “For each move, over the course of 86 concerts in four main locations, six crew members will have to pack up to 30 cases of instruments and equipment and load them into a 24-foot-long truck for hauls that will range from five blocks (from Tully to the Rose) to three miles (Riverside Church) and later in the season to its old home, Carnegie Hall.”

And you thought you were having a hard day.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1882 in the village of Tymoszówka, now in Ukraine, one of the great Polish composers was born: Karol Szymanowski. Beloved in his home country, he has received a slew of state honors, both during his life and after it.

Among the more fun facts in that arena, a whole year was given to his name thanks to a resolution by the Polish Parliament: 2007 was decreed “The Year of Karol Szymanowski” — it was the 125th anniversary of his birth. And later that year he reached truly rarefied air among composers: he appeared on commemorative currency, pictured above.

[Read more…]