Duo Noire Archives - Cleveland Classical

Duo Noire: Thomas Flippin & Christopher Mallett return to Cleveland

November 13, 2025 by Mike Telin

by Mike Telin

When selecting works for a program, classical guitarists Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett are always asking themselves if they are being inclusive — are they including works by composers who are not usually represented on classical guitar concerts.

On Saturday, November 15 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, the adventurous Duo Noire will return to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International series with a program that will include three world premieres along with other recent commissions and arrangements of music by J.S. Bach, Nathaniel Dett, Domenico Scarlatti, Astor Piazzolla, Justin Holland, and Thomas Flippin. Tickets are available online.

“What’s cool about this program is that we have new pieces by a Middle Eastern jazz fusion composer, a film composer, and a jazz pianist who does weird stuff with 8-bit video game music on his albums,” Thomas Flippin said during a Zoom conversation with his duo partner. “All of that is really interesting to us.”

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Duo Noire to make Cleveland Classical Guitar Society Debut

March 2, 2022 by Mike Telin

by Mike Telin

Although they wouldn’t meet for some time, Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett long shared a musical trajectory.

They both grew up in Southern California and were steeped in their local punk rock scenes, playing in bands during high school. They both found their way to the classical guitar in their late teens. They both did their undergraduate studies in the Midwest — Flippin at the University of Chicago and Mallett at Oberlin Conservatory — and they both went on to study at Yale University, becoming the first two African American guitarists to be admitted into the program. Yale was also where they formed Duo Noire, taking the name of the French term for both “black” and “quarter note.”

On Saturday, March 5 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society will present Duo Noire in a program that explores the many ways music expresses the essence of place. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

CIM Opera’s engaging Puccini double bill prompts both laughs and tears (Nov. 7)

by Stephanie Manning

The three one-act operas that make up Giacomo Puccini’s Il trittico (The Triptych) are typically connected by theme, rather than location. Although the trio of works take place in 13th-century Paris, 17th-century Siena, and 20th-century Florence respectively, they all deal with keeping someone’s death a secret — whether tragically or comedically.

CIM Opera Theater’s recent production of two-thirds of the triptych brought the action into one particular place and time, as director Dean Southern moved both Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi into 1918’s New York City. What stood out more, however, were the impressive performances from across the large cast, which I heard on November 7 in Kulas Hall.

[Read on…]

Oberlin Orchestra with the Poiesis Quartet in Finney (Oct. 31)

by Daniel Hathaway

Fresh from winning the grand prize at the prestigious Banff Competition on the last day of August, the Poiesis Quartet (Sarah Ying Ma & Max Ball, violins, Jasper de Boor, viola, and Drew Dansby, cello) took a late October victory lap at the Oberlin Conservatory, returning to their place of birth as an ensemble to give master classes and solo with the Oberlin Orchestra.

Judging from the turnout in Finney Chapel on Friday, it might not have been a prizewinning idea to schedule a major orchestra concert on a college campus on Halloween, but there was nothing slim about the sound that the stage full of musicians produced. Brilliantly scored works by Carlos Simon, John Adams, Angélica Negrón, and Zhou Tian, were conducted with precision by Rafael Jiménez.

[Read on…]

Cleveland Orchestra makes a sinister showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (Nov. 5)

by Peter Feher

A violin bow is an unlikely murder weapon. But in the hands of composer Bernard Herrmann, the slashing motion of a string instrument seems almost one and the same with the stabbing knife onscreen in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic Psycho.

The infamous soundtrack to secretary Marion Crane’s final moments in the shower — and also to private investigator Milton Arbogast’s stumbling death down the stairs later in the film — is horrifyingly simple. A series of screeching down-bows begins in the first violins and then stacks in dissonant intervals as the remaining string sections join in. The gesture is more like a Foley effect than music per se, evoking something between a human scream and the shriek of metal against metal.

[Read on…]

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