by Stephanie Manning
Of the many orchestra performances held at Severance Music Center in a given year, only one of them features a musician roster made up entirely of women. This brief break from the status quo comes courtesy of the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra, which has been performing in the space now known as Mandel Concert Hall for 90 years.
Closing out the final weekend of Women’s History Month, the longest-running women’s orchestra in the country marked its 90th anniversary with its annual celebration concert. Music director Eric Benjamin led the program on March 30, which leaned traditional with plenty of orchestral standards.
The group’s strengths showed brightest in the peppy music that bookended the program. Shostakovich’s Festive Overture opened the concert on a strong note with even tempos, a healthy group sound, and satisfying bass drum hits. Benjamin’s conducting was attentive, but not micromanaging. [Read more…]
On Thursday, February 23 at 7pm, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series will deviate from its usual pattern of presenting solo pianists to welcome the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine to the stage of its Metropolitan Campus.
Even the best pianists only share a keyboard in performance with someone they trust. Fortunately for Cleveland audiences, the bond between two players doesn’t get much deeper than the duo of Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Emanuela Friscioni.
For the fourth event in its five-concert, 32nd season, Heights Chamber Orchestra invited pianist Emanuela Friscioni to be its guest artist in a rare performance of Francis Poulenc’s Piano Concerto. The largely avocational orchestra is playing its first season under its new music director, Mark Allen McCoy. In addition to the Poulenc, HCO offered its audience Charles Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 in C at First Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon, March 29. 
In curating the 2014-2015 Tri-C Classical Piano Series, Emanuela Friscioni chose to showcase three young pianists from three different countries. This season’s performers have ranged in age from 11 (Gavin George of Granville, OH) to 23 (Beatrice Rana of Italy). The last of the three was 19-year-old Israeli pianist Adi Neuhaus, who played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Scriabin and Liszt for a large audience in Gartner Auditorium of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, March 22. 
Michael Lynn, Oberlin Conservatory Professor of Recorder and Baroque Flute, founded the Medici Charitable Foundation in 2012 following a liver transplant that restored him to health and allowed him to continue his career as a performing artist and teacher. The organization presents concerts by distinguished musicians to help raise funds for medical charities and research organizations. “Encore,” Medici’s next concert at Akron Civic Theatre on Saturday, October 18 at 7:30 pm, will benefit Lifebanc, a non-profit organization devoted to organ, eye and tissue recovery in Northeast Ohio. The performers will be the husband and wife piano team of Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Emanuela Friscioni.