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Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VII (Jan. 12)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program titled Music of America VII held on Sunday, January 12 at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, the Cleveland Chamber Collective presented a concert of attractive and varied new music, inspired by sounds from around the globe —  India to Buenos Aires and Bali to Manhattan.

At two and a half hours, the program might have stood a trimming, but it would be hard to know what to cut — the works and performances by familiar and rising Cleveland professionals were uniformly splendid. Director Ty Alan Emerson served as gracious host as well as stagehand and impresario.

In Reena Esmail’s Blaze, a duo for violin (Emily Cornelius) and tabla (Dylan Moffitt) much of the intensity came from Cornelius’s relationship to Moffitt’s exact playing — we were drawn in by the quietness of Moffitt’s tabla and by Cornelius’s attention to it. The two drifted in and out of sync, with the violinist both captive to and rebelling against the insistent rhythm, even while she conjured enigmatic extremes of darkness and ecstasy.
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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Showcase Concert (Sept. 14)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society kicked off its new season at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on Saturday, September 14 with its “2024 Showcase,” highlighting outstanding Cleveland talent and a rising star.

As is customary, an alumnus of CCGS’ Citizens Leadership Academy began the evening. Damien Goggans gave a superb and poised performance, evidence of his own talent and bestowing reflected glory on the educational arm of CCGS.

Goggans, who is a classical guitar performance major at Oberlin Conservatory, has already enjoyed triumphs at Severance Music Center and on national television and radio. Selecting three of Thomas Flippin’s 14 Études on the Music of Black Americans to play (III. “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You ’Round,” XIII. “Wake Up, Jacob,” and XII. “Don’t Be Weary, Traveler”), he sang the three spiritual melodies with an easy and clear voice before playing the etudes on guitar alone. Goggans’ guitar playing was an extension of his singing voice: sensitive, technically secure, and dignified. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VI

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday, August 3 at 7:00 pm at Disciples Christian Church, The Cleveland Chamber Collective will present Music of America VI. The program includes works by Caroline Shaw, Missy Mazzoli, Jessie Montgomery, Michael Oesterle, Trevor Kazarian, and Eric Charnofsky. The concert is free.

During a recent telephone conversation Cleveland Chamber Collective director and conductor Ty Alan Emerson said that the Music of America series has evolved over time.

“When we started out, we were calling it American Icons, which was our way to feature music by composers such as Lou Harrison, George Crumb, and Leonard Bernstein. Then we thought, there’s all this other music being made in America that isn’t getting played. So several years ago we started to look at who else is out there and who are we missing.”

Emerson noted that right now, inclusion is the hot button in classical music, and that for several years the ensemble has been trying to find ways to be more inclusive.

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Cleveland Chamber Collective: Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker (Apr. 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It is one of Cleveland’s persistently good things that outlets for fresh new music — played by some of the area’s best musicians — continue to thrive. On Sunday, April 28, we were reminded of this again at Cleveland Chamber Collective’s presentation of Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker, a Requiem for chamber ensemble and digital playback at the Pivot Center.

Emerson conducted a distinguished ensemble comprising Linda White, flute, Emily Cornelius, violin, Brian Slawta, viola, Trevor Kazarian, cello, Eric Charnofsky, piano, and Dylan Moffitt, percussion.

Oath Breaker takes the audience on a 60-minute journey of anger, grief, and hope, as a kind of collective PTSD therapy session about the events of January 6 and its subsequent aftermath. The mixture of recorded electronics, live performances, and poetic and prosaic texts helped to conjure in real time the horror of that day.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Zidur Guitar Duo (Feb. 24)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Hermelindo Ruiz and Samuel Diz, constituents of the Zidur Guitar Duo, made their Cleveland debut on Saturday, February 24, endearing themselves to the crowd at the Maltz Performing Arts Center with an attractive program and winning personalities — two young virtuosos from out of town you’d like to meet afterwards over tapas and beer.

Ruiz, a native Puerto Rican, and Diz, Spanish-born, delighted in sharing music from their respective countries, including works by Egúrbida, Gottschalk, Rodrigo, Vide, and Acosta, plus two by Ruiz himself. While other guitarists might have been inclined to flashier repertoire, Ruiz and Diz chose milder stuff, perhaps ambassadors of a gentler sort.

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Music, Sports, and Ancient Greece festival: Oberlin faculty recital (Oct. 10)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

To open the academic calendar in recent years, Oberlin Conservatory violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson has organized interdisciplinary festivals centered around intriguing themes. That continued earlier this month with “Music, Sports, and the Enduring Influence of Ancient Greece,” a topic that was examined through a variety of events, musical and otherwise, over the course of two days. I caught the tail-end of the festival via live stream: the fourth and final faculty recital in Warner Concert Hall on the evening of October 10.

The program was fresh and eclectic, featuring several works by lesser-known composers, and spanning from traditional classical to contemporary music and jazz — not to mention poetry.

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Cleveland Chamber Collective and Inlet Dance Theater at Cain Park 

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by Mike Telin

In her article Four Qualities of Classic Literature, MJ Booklover says that

A great writer has something specific to say, or perhaps, more typically, a big question to ask about the nature of the world as it was in the times of that writer. But a great work also observes truths about the human condition as it occurs in any age. 

Perhaps no writer has captured the timeless truths of the human condition more profoundly than William Shakespeare, and nowhere as persuasively as in The Tempest, the inspiration for Ty Alan Emerson’s new ballet, Caliban Ascendant.

“This project started about eight years ago when I was working with a friend of mine, Josh Legg,” Emerson (pictured below) said during a telephone conversation. “He’s a choreographer and a wonderful person. We wanted to collaborate on a project so we started talking about what we’d like to do. I had seen many productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I saw one at Bowling Green that was really fun — they actually put a gamelan onstage and Caliban was played by a two-person puppet. So I thought, ‘I’d like to dig into that.’”

On Sunday, August 29 at 8:00 pm at Cain Park Amphitheater, the Cleveland Chamber Music Collective in partnership with Inlet Dance Theatre will present the world premiere of Caliban Ascendant. The ballet is based on a story developed by Joshua Legg and Ty Alan Emerson and features music by Emerson and choreography by Bill Wade in collaboration with Dominic Moore-Dunson, Kevin Parker, Emily Stonecipher, and Katie Wilber. [Read more…]

Cleveland Trombone Seminar: Mark Lancaster Lusk (June 20)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Last week, as part of the seventh annual Cleveland Trombone Seminar, a concert by Mark Lancaster Lusk took listeners into the heart of the brass player’s world: a region dominated by vocal music, modernist explorations, and jazz.

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FiveOne Experimental Orchestra to perform at Flower Child September 26

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by Mike Telin

51XO-1Since May of 2008, the Cleveland-based FiveOne Experimental Orchestra (51XO) has presented concerts featuring an eclectic mix of repertoire that bridges the gap between pop and art music at out of the ordinary venues such as the Sculpture Garden and the East Cleveland Cemetery. On Saturday, September 26 at 8:00 pm, 51XO will push the envelope of unusual venues even further with their latest program, “Dream House,” a guided labyrinth of solo works performed by the ensemble’s eight members throughout the two floors of Cleveland’s premier retro vintage shop, Flower Child, located at 11508 Clifton Boulevard.

“This is going to be a cool concert,” 51XO’s executive director Jeremy Allen said enthusiastically during a telephone conversation. “We’re asking people to arrive at 8:00 pm and spend the first half hour exploring the space. I’ve talked to a lot of people who know where it is but have never been inside, so we want to give everyone a chance to get a feel for the space, and do some shopping if they want to.” [Read more…]

Four percussionists delight intergenerational crowd at Music for Miles opening concert (September 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

150913_0001Launched five years ago, the Music for Miles series presented its 30th performance at Waterloo Arts in Collinwood on Sunday, September 13, a concert by the Cleveland Percussion Project which attracted an admirably intergenerational audience. Headed up by Andrew Pongracz, the quartet of drummers and mallet players also included Dylan Moffitt, Bruce Golden, and Luke Rinderknecht, a stellar assembly of local professionals who held the audience of small children and adults in thrall for nearly two hours. [Read more…]

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