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Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at Severance Music Center (Apr. 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Eric Benjamin ended his brief tenure as music director of the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra with an engaging concert of mostly French music on Sunday afternoon, April 19 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center.

The performance marked Benjamin’s second visit to the Severance podium in the company of one of America’s few remaining women’s ensembles. CWO has grown artistically during his two years at the helm, and he leaves the orchestra in good hands for his successor.

Sunday’s program began with a rarity, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Overture to La Princesse Jaune. Benjamin drew a lush sound from his players during the introduction, and the ensuing allegro made for an enjoyable opener, both vigorous and charming.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra marks 90th Birthday at CMA (Oct. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra, “the lone survivor of the numerous women’s orchestras that existed in the early 20th century,” as described in the program, celebrated its 90th birthday with a concert in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, October 26.

The original purpose of those ensembles was to provide performance opportunities for talented female musicians barred by gender from the ranks of symphony orchestras. As that world has all but disappeared, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra has played on. [Read more…]

[VIDEO] The Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at 90 Years

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by Stephanie Manning

The oldest surviving women’s orchestra in the country — the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra — turns 90 years old this year. They’ll celebrate this milestone on Sunday, October 26th at 2:30 pm with a concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets available online.

Learn more in this video profile of violinist Joan Ferst and bassoonist Charlotte Hines, who have both been with the group for more than 50 years. Music director Eric Benjamin also talks about one of the featured pieces, Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1.

Also on the program is Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C, Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures (featuring mezzo-soprano Kira McGirr), and Clara-Jane Maunder’s The Coast (U.S. premiere).

Watch the video below and find it on Instagram and Facebook. [Read more…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra celebrates 90 years at Severance (Mar. 30)

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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…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at Severance: chatting with conductor Eric Benjamin

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Sunday afternoon, March 30, at 3:30 pm, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra will continue its long tradition of performing in Severance Hall. The ensemble’s 90th Anniversary Concert in what is now known as the Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center will be conducted by music director Eric Benjamin. Tickets are available online.

The main work on the program will feature violinist Olga Dubossarskaya Kaler, cellist Eleanor Pompa, and pianist Emanuela Friscioni, in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. 

Benjamin was named the fourth music director of the oldest women’s orchestra in the U.S. in 2023, following the lengthy tenures of its founder Hyman Schandler and his successor Robert L. Cronquist, who held the podium for 33 and 22 years respectively. During COVID, John Thomas Dodson served as interim music director for three-and-a-half years, passing the baton to Jungho Kim for a single season. [Read more…]

An Electrifying Bernstein Tribute from the Canton Symphony (Oct. 6)

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by Tom Wachunas

I was all of ten years old when I read Leonard Bernstein’s The Joy of Music for the first time. It was a cathartic experience, igniting in me a profoundly passionate appreciation of classical music. That inspiring book also fueled my regular viewing of Bernstein’s beloved Young People’s Concerts on television for the next several years. A particularly memorable highlight in one of those concerts was watching the composer conduct excerpts from his own Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. I was bitten by the Bernstein bug, benevolently infected by all those mad rhythms coming at me like so many punches amid a torrent of luscious orchestral colors. Now, more than 50 years later, that watershed moment of musical enthrallment returned a hundredfold on October 6 during the Canton Symphony Orchestra’s electrifying observance of the centenary of Leonard Bernstein. [Read more…]

Canton Symphony: A Christmas gem from Benjamin & a timeless gift from Beethoven (Dec. 3)

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by Tom Wachunas

Benjamin-EricIn the beginning, I thought that the Canton Symphony’s December 3 MasterWorks program, called “Gifts of Fate,” was a peculiar, even arbitrary pairing of very disparate works: The Secret Gift, a Christmas-themed symphonic poem of sorts, written in 2013 by American composer Eric Benjamin, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s iconic 1807 masterpiece, Symphony No. 5. But by evening’s end, I heard the connective light. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: “Pictures at an Exhibition” (Nov. 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ASO-Wilkins-Mathis-ADJ“Pictures at an Exhibition” was the title of the Akron Symphony’s concert in E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday evening, November 18, but there were more pictures on the wall than those by Victor Hartmann that inspired Mussorgsky’s famous musical stroll through a gallery. The other two artists whose work was projected on either side of the stage were Charles E. Burchfield and Matthias Grünewald, their art the catalysts for pieces by Morton Gould and Paul Hindemith.

[Read more…]

Akron Symphony to perform music inspired by artworks on November 18

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by Mike Telin

Burchfield Four Seasons“I like to play great music and I consider Mathis to be one of the greatest 20th-century works. And Pictures, especially in the Ravel orchestration, is a classic,” conductor Christopher Wilkins said by telephone. “Like the other two, Burchfield is a wonderful piece with a dazzling orchestration.”

On Saturday, November 18 at 8:00 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony will present three works inspired by masterpieces of art: Eric Benjamin will conduct Morton Gould’s Burchfield Gallery, and Wilkins will lead Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Tickets are available online.

The concert will also include projected visual images of the art that inspired the music. “Because showing a single image is a static thing to do, I think it’s more artistically honest to show and talk about the paintings and then perform the work,” Wilkins said. “In all three cases that is what we’re going to do.” [Read more…]

An enchanted evening from the Canton Symphony (October 1)

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by Tom Wachunas

buechner-sarah-davisThe October 1 concert by the Canton Symphony Orchestra was billed as “You Asked For It!” Last year, concertgoers were given a list of three works in three categories from which to choose for this season’s opening program. As Music Director Gerhardt Zimmermann reminded us at evening’s start, we chose well. I’m also happy to report that Zimmermann asked his colleague, Eric Benjamin, to compose a new work for the occasion. [Read more…]

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