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She Scores: a dazzling display from composers & performers (June 2)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

You might have gone to the Sunday, June 2 She Scores concert to hear exemplary works by female and nonbinary composers, or simply to enjoy some fresh new sounds. But once there, you would have stayed for the dazzling expertise on display, from both composers and performers alike.

Credit the Local 4 Music Fund and executive director Amber Rogers for organizing the fourth annual iteration of this splendid concert series, which ran from May 30-June 2 in CIM’s lovely Mixon Hall. Genre or gender aside, this was an afternoon of superb music.

Margi Griebling-Haigh’s Triskaidekaphilia (“love of the number thirteen”) for three violins made for an arresting and mathematical start. Violinists Ken Johnston, Leah Goor-Burtnett, and Emily Cornelius drew out the composer’s introspective and playful sides in this well-crafted three-movement work. [Read more…]

No Exit New Music Ensemble: Laura King gets to the bottom of three world premieres

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by Daniel Hathaway

No Exit New Music Ensemble has scheduled three world premieres for its December concert cycle that begins at Praxis Fiber Gallery on Thursday, December 1, and continues on Saturday the 3rd at 8 pm (SPACES) and Friday the 9th at 7:30 pm (Kent State University).

Guest pianist Shuai Wang will join the ensemble — violinist Cara Tweed, violist James Rhodes, cellist Nicholas Diodore, pianist and composer Nicholas Underhill, flutist Sean Gabriel, clarinetist Gunnar Owen Hirthe, percussionist Luke Rinderknecht, artistic director and composer Timothy Beyer, and composer, conductor, and pianist James Praznik — in a program that includes music by Henry Cowell and world premieres by Max Friedman (Butter-lider), David Glaser (Aurora II), and Frank Wiley (The Dream of Sisyphus).

Taking a novel approach to introducing the program, the ensemble sent Laura King to interview the three composers, revealing interesting insights into their individual personalities, sources of inspiration, and creative processes. [Read more…]

Local 4 Music Fund brings women composers and new music to the forefront with She Scores

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by Stephanie Manning

When the Institute for Composer Diversity analyzed the 2019-20 seasons of 120 American orchestras, it found that just eight percent of all pieces performed were composed by women. For Amber Rogers, artistic director of the Local 4 Music Fund, data like this combined with her own experiences as a violist inspired her latest project — one she’s been thinking about for a long time.

“The idea of concerts featuring female composers isn’t new, but I didn’t see anything quite like this in Cleveland,” Rogers said in a recent interview. “I’ve wanted to do something like this for about a decade.” After almost two years of preparation, her dream will soon be realized through She Scores, a series of three concerts from June 25-27. Livestreamed on Facebook and Local 4’s website, the performances will feature works by sixteen women composers in a variety of musical styles and ensemble configurations.

[Read more…]

Karel Paukert & Noa Even open Ars organi II at St. Paul’s (Sept. 29)

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by Timothy Robson

Karel Paukert has been an intrepid and fierce advocate for contemporary music in Cleveland for the better part of fifty years. Although he has retired from his position as Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, he continues as the organist and choirmaster at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. Now in his 80s, Paukert is still commissioning and performing new music. His latest venture is Ars organi II, an eight-concert series at St. Paul’s continuing through October 20. [Read more…]

Karel Paukert presents Ars Organi II at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights

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by Daniel Hathaway

Organist Karel Paukert said in a recent telephone conversation that he often runs into people who tell him they miss the organ recitals he used to give during his tenure as curator of musical arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “I tell them, well just come to St. Paul’s.”

Paukert is referring to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, where he continues to serve as organist and choirmaster after retiring from the Museum. He plays occasional Sunday afternoon recitals there on the church’s two organs — the 1952 Holtkamp instrument at the front of the nave, and the 1986 Hradetzky Italian Baroque-style instrument in the back gallery.

Last fall, he launched a mini-festival of music for organ, voice, and instruments called Ars Organi. The second edition of that festival will span seven free events from September 29 through October 20.

The first concert on Sunday, September 29 at 4:00 pm will feature saxophonist Noa Even, who heads up new music activities at Kent State University. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: “The Personal Muse” (May 18)

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by David Kulma

The Cleveland Chamber Choir has a bold tagline: “More than Music!” The final program of their fourth season, a collaboration with the Cleveland Composers Guild, clearly reflected this progressive mandate. Pairing living, local composers with works by British and American women, artistic director Scott MacPherson curated a delightful, satisfying evening titled “The Personal Muse” at Fairmount Presbyterian Church on Saturday, May 18. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir & Cleveland Composers Guild: a conversation with Natsumi Osborn

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Composer Natsumi Osborn remembers the first time she read October Danger, a poem by her friend Anabelle Clark.

“It’s very descriptive and kind of mystical,” Osborn said during a telephone conversation. “It evoked in my head the kinds of images and feelings that I always want to evoke in my music.”

Osborn went on to set that text to music with her choral work Autumn Reflections, for which she won the Cleveland Composers Guild’s 2019 Collegiate Composition Contest. She’s currently finishing up her second year at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she studies composition with Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Elizabeth Ogonek.

In two concerts this weekend, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, under the direction of Scott MacPherson, will perform works by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild, including Osborn’s Autumn Reflections, and pieces by American and British women composers — details below.

[Read more…]

BlueWater + Cleveland Chamber Choir: the phone call from Carlton Woods to Scott MacPherson

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Scott MacPherson_2016Last year, Carlton Woods was scheduled to conduct the first joint performance between his BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir. But when Woods fell ill, he called MacPherson (left), who stepped in to lead that concert — the premiere of Sam Guarnaccia’s Emergent Universe Oratorio at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

Another phone call came with worse news. “Carlton was trying to set up his season this year for BlueWater,” MacPherson said during a recent interview, “because he knew he wasn’t going to live to see the day.”

Woods asked MacPherson if he would lead another collaboration between the two chamber ensembles. The BlueWater founder requested two selections for chorus and orchestra, and one for orchestra alone — and that’s what MacPherson will deliver on two dates this weekend.

On Saturday, May 19 at 7:30 pm at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights, then on Sunday, May 20 at 3:00 pm at Baldwin Wallace University’s Gamble Auditorium, MacPherson will lead BlueWater and his own Cleveland Chamber Choir in “Vocal Verve.” [Read more…]

Kent State New Music Ensemble: Frank Wiley retirement concert (Apr. 28)

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by Robert Rollin

KSU New Music EnsembleLast Saturday night, April 28 at Ludwig Recital Hall, the Kent State University New Music Ensemble presented a retirement concert for co-director Frank Wiley in celebration of his 38 years at Kent. Of the four Wiley works played, the two most recent were Rituals of Earth and Fire (1999) and the premiere of Violet Spirals at Twilight (2018).

[Read more…]

KSU’s Frank Wiley to retire after 39 years at the University

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by Daniel Hathaway

Wiley & EvenThis Saturday evening’s concert by the Kent New Music Ensemble on April 28 at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall will mark the end of an era at the University. Composer Frank Wiley, who founded the group in 1980 and now co-directs it with saxophonist Noa Even, is retiring from the KSU faculty at the end of the current academic year after nearly four decades — but not to a life of shuffleboard and crossword puzzles. When I asked him in a recent telephone conversation what he’d do first thing the morning after he retires, he didn’t have to think. “I’ll probably be composing,” he said.

Wiley has a long list of promised pieces in his inbox. “I’ve got a violin concerto I’m going to be writing for Jameson Cooper, a wind ensemble piece for Jesse Leyva, a percussion quartet for Michael Burritt and his Eastman percussion ensemble, a flute and clarinet duet, and the second version of a piece we’re going to perform on Saturday night,” he said. “That’ll keep me busy.”

[Read more…]

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