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Cleveland International Guitar Festival: five guest artist recitals at CIM (June 8-10)

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by Mike Telin & Daniel Hathaway

Vieaux-LabroFor the past seventeen years, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival has brought some of the world’s finest classical guitarists, lutenists, lecturers, composers, teachers, and guitar makers to the Cleveland Institute of Music. The eighteenth season, which ran from June 8 through 10, featured thirteen artists and ensembles, five concerts, nine master classes, and three lectures. Here are our impressions of the artists who provided enthusiastic audiences with top-notch performances of a range of diverse and entertaining repertoire.    [Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: a conversation with Colin Davin and Estelí Gomez

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by Mike Telin

Davin-GomezIt’s a privilege to be asked to perform the closing concert of any festival. It also requires the artists to create a program that both celebrates the past and looks to the future. At this year’s Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, the honor of presenting the final concert has been bestowed upon guitarist Colin Davin and soprano Estelí Gomez. The Festival runs from Friday June 8 through Sunday June 10 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Tickets can be purchased online.

On Sunday, June 10 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, Davin and Gomez will present Nomads by Nature. The evening will include repertoire standards — some with a new twist — as well as two World Premieres which are grounded in 21st century cultural esthetics.

In a joint telephone conversation, Davin and Gomez said the program’s title is taken from a line in the text of Henri Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage which opens the concert. Davin first encountered Duparc’s setting of Charles Baudelaire’s poem when he was asked to play at the 90th birthday party for French painter, critic, and author, Françoise Gilot. “They requested some French music and we settled on this piece,” Davin said. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Roomful of Teeth with the Oberlin College Choir (Feb. 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Roomful1Brad Wells’ groundbreaking vocal octet, Roomful of Teeth, spent a few days last week on the Oberlin College campus, giving demonstrations, holding master classes, and answering questions before joining Greg Ristow’s Oberlin College Choir in a jaw-dropping, larynx-challenging concert in Finney Chapel. [Read more…]

Roomful of Teeth to perform twice in Northeast Ohio: a conversation with founder Brad Wells

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by Mike Telin

ROOMFULL-OF-TEETHPortions of this article are reprinted from an interview in March of 2015 before Roomful of Teeth performed at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

When Brad Wells founded the innovative vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth in 2009, he wanted to explore all the possibilities of the human voice. “Initially, before I studied classical technique, my experience with the voice was pop, rock, and jazz,” Wells said during a recent telephone conversation.

“When I got into choral and solo singing, as well as composing for the voice, on the one hand the Western classical style struck me as very powerful, beautiful, and expressive. But at the same time, I felt that from a composer’s point of view, there were all sorts of colors, gestures, and timbres that were out there still waiting to be harnessed.” [Read more…]

Roomful of Teeth at CMA (March 20)

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by Timothy Robson

ROOMFULL-OF-TEETHThe a cappella vocal group Roomful of Teeth made a big roomful of noise at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Friday, March 20 before a large, enthusiastic audience. This remarkable group, founded in 2009, has won a Grammy for their 2012 eponymous first album, and one of the major works on the program, Partita for 8 voices by member Caroline Shaw, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for music. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Classical Guitar Society — Gomez and Davin in an enticing tribute to Dowland and Britten (Feb. 22)

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by Timothy Robson

Davin-GomezSoprano Estelí Gomez and classical guitarist Colin Davin presented a splendid and fascinating program on Saturday, February 22, at Plymouth Church, sponsored by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society. The program was a belated tribute to the Benjamin Britten centennial celebration, but was, in fact, as much a tribute to Peter Pears, tenor and Britten’s life partner, and Julian Bream, guitarist, lutenist, and a long-time recital collaborator with Pears.

The two also presented an arresting new work by Caroline Shaw, which easily could have fit into a Pears/Bream recital program. Colin Davin closed the program with Britten’s only solo guitar work, Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70, composed for Julian Bream and first performed by him in 1964.

Under the title “Ancient Melodies, Modern Echoes,” Davin and Gomez alternated lute songs by Elizabethan composer John Dowland with songs from Britten’s cycle Songs from the Chinese, op. 58, which was written for Pears and Bream. [Read more…]

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