by Jeremy Reynolds
Paul Hindemith’s woodwind sonatas are gems, displaying the timbres of each instrument to great effect. Experiencing their individual personalities back-to-back on Convergent Winds: Music of Paul Hindemith is what makes the recently released Oberlin Music album so engaging. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Men Who Don’t Bite — a bassoon quartet that includes Oberlin Conservatory professor George Sakakeeny, Cleveland Orchestra members Jonathan Sherwin and Barrick Stees, and University of Kansas professor Eric Stomberg — will join Oberlin Conservatory pianist James Howsmon in a benefit concert for Family Promise of Lorain County on Sunday, April 10 at 3:00 pm at First Church, 106 North Main St. in Oberlin. (Because of a scheduling conflict, Jonathan Sherwin will be replaced by Tom English for this concert.)
“We combine serious music skills and a light-hearted sense of humor,” said Sakakeeny about the quartet, whose name refers to the accepted technique of placing one’s lips on the bassoon reed. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Men Who Don’t Bite — a bassoon quartet that includes Oberlin Conservatory professor George Sakakeeny, Cleveland Orchestra members Jonathan Sherwin and Barrick Stees, and University of Kansas professor Eric Stomberg — will join Oberlin Conservatory pianist James Howsmon in a benefit concert for Family Promise of Lorain County on Sunday, April 10 at 3:00 pm at First Church, 106 North Main St. in Oberlin.
“We combine serious music skills and a light-hearted sense of humor,” said Sakakeeny about the quartet, whose name refers to the accepted technique of placing one’s lips on the bassoon reed. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
BlueWater Chamber Orchestra welcomed guest conductor Charles Latshaw to the podium at the Breen Center in Ohio City on Saturday, February 27. The concert featured two of its own members, violinist Emily Cornelius and cellist Linda Atherton, in the double concerto by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. An Arriaga overture and a Beethoven symphony completed the 70-minute performance, played without intermission. [Read more…]
Gabrieli: National Brass Ensemble (Oberlin Music/50 Oak Music).
“No composer is more iconic of Venice’s fabled Renaissance splendor than Giovanni Gabrieli,” writes Steven Plank, Andrew E. Meldrum Professor of Musicology at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, in his informative liner notes that accompany the National Brass Ensemble’s stunningly beautiful CD entitled Gabrieli. A sonic feast, the recording transports listeners back in time to the Venetian Basilica of St. Mark’s.
Performed by members of the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, the CD pays homage to the famous 1968 Gabrieli recording featuring players from the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. The players for this recording were brought together by Michael Sachs, principal trumpet of The Cleveland Orchestra. The story of the project’s genesis is well-documented in the liner notes. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
May Wine is a delightful spring punch made out of a bit of everything — the fruitiness of Riesling, the bubbly of Prosecco, the tart bite of strawberries, and the sweet pungency of the flowers and leaves of woodruff (also wonderfully known as sweet-scented bedstraw), blooming now in northern Ohio. For their final concert of their fifth season, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra served up a bowl of musical May wine, more than welcome on one of the first warm evenings of the season. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
1935, 1936, 1940, 1946, 1947, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1963, 1967, 1971, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2011 — and now 2015. Those are the 23 years in which the 83-year-old Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival has featured Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Great Catholic Mass,” as his sons described it. That makes it a tradition, for sure, but Dirk Garner’s concept in his first year as the festival’s new artistic director was notable for its infusion of new energy and vitality into a work that needs a regular shaking-out in order to remain fresh. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
On Saturday evening, February 28 at the Breen Center for the Performing Arts, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of guest conductor Raphael Jiménez, performed a sumptuous program of two works by giants of the Romantic era, Gabriel Fauré and Johannes Brahms. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger
Northeastern Ohio has some fantastic musicians. Case in point: the chamber concert in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall on January 14, part of the conservatory’s Winter Chamber Music Festival. Featuring the abundant talents of members of The Cleveland Orchestra, Oberlin faculty, and one student, it offered a cornucopia of musicality, passion, and delight. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Carlton Woods and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra had a fine time celebrating the Halloween weekend in their concert at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday evening. The featured work on the program was Jon Deak’s The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, an action-packed concerto for string quartet and orchestra, with narration read by WCLV president Robert Contrad. [Read more…]