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Cleveland Chamber Choir to feature works by Salamone Rossi

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland Chamber Choir will devote its midwinter concerts to the music of the prolific Italian Jewish composer and violinist Salamone Rossi, a transitional figure who bridged the Renaissance and Baroque periods and was equally at home in the worlds of Jewish liturgical and Italian secular music. Like his contemporary Claudio Monteverdi, he was employed at the court of the Gonzaga family in Mantua.

Artistic director Gregory Ristow will lead the Chamber Choir and youth choir HaZamir in “Synagogue and Salon” on Saturday, March 1 at 8:00 pm at Congregation Mishkan Or in Beachwood, and Sunday, March 2 at 4:00 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River. Admission is pay-what-you-can.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir At Cleveland School of the Arts (Dec. 20) 

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by Peter Feher

Handel’s Messiah wasn’t the only oratorio you could hear in Northeast Ohio over the Holiday season. The Cleveland Chamber Choir offered a brilliant, bracing alternative with two performances of David Lang’s the little match girl passion, December 20 and 21 at Cleveland School of the Arts.

Friday’s concert saw expert singing in service of sincere emotion, vividly realizing this stark Christmas story adapted from Hans Christian Andersen.

There’s no trace of a happy ending in Andersen’s original 19th-century fairy tale. The titular character in “The Little Match Girl” freezes to death on New Year’s Eve after being kicked out of the house by her father, losing her slippers in the street, and failing to sell any matches to passersby who can’t spare so much as a penny. [Read more…]

“Meditations and Mysticism” opens Cleveland Chamber Choir season (Oct. 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It somehow seemed wrong to clap and cheer at the end of Cleveland Chamber Choir’s “Meditations and Mysticism” program on October 26. Less a concert than an administering of musical healing, the event left us feeling more like sitting quietly and sipping measured breaths to prolong our newfound tranquil state.

In a program of ten carefully conceived and sequenced musical episodes, artistic director Gregory Ristow brought a politically weary crowd some much-needed spiritual succor and peace through music. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir begins 10th season with “Meditations and Mysticism”

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by Mike Telin

In a recent Zoom conversation, Gregory Ristow said, “We talk so much about how music heals. And that idea provided me with threads into how composers engaged with the notion of music as a centering device — as a way of finding one’s own place in the world or observing the broader context of the world beyond oneself.”

On Saturday, October 26 at 7:00 pm at Trinity Cathedral, Ristow will lead the Cleveland Chamber Choir in “Meditations and Mysticism.” The program celebrates the healing power of music. The concert, presented in partnership with the award-winning mental health program, Ghetto Therapy, will launch the ensemble’s tenth anniversary season.

The program will be repeated on Sunday at 4:00 pm at First Lutheran Church in Lorain. Oberlin College & Conservatory Professor Charles Edward McGuire will present a pre-concert talk 45 minutes prior to each performance. Click here to register for a “pay what you will” ticket.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir & Lakewood High singers: Considering Matthew Shepard at Trinity Cathedral (Oct. 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Young Matthew Shepard’s iconic suffering and death in Wyoming 25 years ago have inspired a number of social, political, and artistic initiatives, including Craig Hella Johnson’s “passion oratorio” Considering Matthew Shepard, which was first performed in 2016.

In 2023, some 40 organizations will have performed the nearly two-hour work, among them Gregory Ristow’s Cleveland Chamber Choir, who were joined by the Lakewood High School Symphonic Mixed Choir and an instrumental ensemble from the Local 4 Music Fund in an affecting Sunday afternoon concert at Trinity Cathedral on October 22. (An earlier performance was given the day before in Avon Lake).

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: Considering Matthew Shepard

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by Mike Telin

Statement from President Joe Biden on the 25th Anniversary of the Tragic Death of Matthew Shepard:

October 12, 2023

Twenty-five years ago today, Matthew Shepard lost his life to a brutal act of hate and violence that shocked our nation and the world. The week prior, Matthew had been viciously attacked in a horrific anti-gay hate crime and left to die – simply for being himself.

Matthew’s tragic and senseless murder shook the conscience of the American people. And his courageous parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, turned Matthew’s memory into a movement, galvanizing millions of people to combat the scourge of anti-LGBTQI+ hate and violence in America.

On October 6, 1998 Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, accepted a ride home from two men at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie. Instead, Shepard was driven to a remote area where he was pistol-whipped, tortured, tied to a fence, and left for dead. Shepard died six days later from brain damage.

Shepard’s murder would later become the inspiration for Craig Hella Johnson’s fusion oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard.

[Read more…]

Composers Guild & Cleveland Chamber Choir join forces (Apr. 2)

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by Daniel Hathaway

When the Cleveland Composers Guild added the requirement of writing a vocal piece to its collegiate composition contest in 2019 and generated only a single entry — impressive as that piece was — the idea was born for dedicating an entire year to vocal music.

The choral side of that theme came to fruition on Sunday, April 2 in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, when the Guild collaborated with Cleveland Chamber Choir in a program designed and led by CCC acting director Gregory Ristow that successfully combined new pieces by Northeast Ohio composers with existing works, and in one case brought a new wrinkle to a well-known choral cycle.

[Read more…]

Composers Guild joins Cleveland Chamber Choir for Joint Concert

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Sunday, April 4 at 4 pm in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, Cleveland Composers Guild will join  Cleveland Chamber Choir for a program that combines new works by Northeast Ohio choral composers with masterworks from the last five centuries.

I recently met up on Zoom with Chamber Choir interim music director Gregory Ristow and Composers Guild chair Margi Griebling-Haigh to learn more about this Sunday’s concert.

Daniel Hathaway: It takes two to tango, but usually when two organizations end up collaborating, the original idea came from one of them. Who instigated this project?

Margi Griebling-Haigh: Neither of us was in a decision-making capacity when the idea first came up — which I believe was in a brainstorming session for the 2019 season. Probably somebody said, ‘Hey, I’ve heard that Cleveland Chamber Choir is terrific. Let’s work with them.’ So I’m pretty sure we approached them for the first concert. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: “Of Sound Mind” at the Maltz (Feb.19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Since it made its impressive debut in 2015, Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir has enlivened the choral music scene in Northeast Ohio with superb performances of carefully curated, interestingly-themed programs that so far have added more than 32 new commissioned works to the repertoire.

That tradition is now continuing under the leadership of Gregory Ristow, associate professor of conducting and director of vocal ensembles at Oberlin, who has been appointed acting artistic director of the ensemble following the mid-season announcement of MacPherson’s retirement.

At the Maltz Performing Arts Center on Sunday afternoon, February 19, the Choir, whose tagline is “more than music,” presented Of Sound Mind: From Darkness into Light, a program that “explores the universality of grief and sorrow, helping us to embrace our common humanity in the struggles we individually and collectively experience.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: a conversation with Gregory Ristow

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by Daniel Hathaway

The next pair of concerts by Cleveland Chamber Choir this weekend will be led by Gregory Ristow, associate professor of conducting and director of vocal ensembles at Oberlin Conservatory, who has been appointed acting artistic director of the ensemble following the mid-season announcement of founding director Scott MacPherson’s retirement.

The program, “Of Sound Mind: From Darkness into Light,” explores the universality of grief and sorrow, helping us to embrace our common humanity in the struggles we individually and collectively experience. Free performances will take place on Saturday, February 18 at 7:30 pm at St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills and on Sunday, February 19 at 3:00 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in Cleveland. A pre-concert talk with Oberlin musicologist Charles Edward McGuire will begin 30 minutes prior to each performance.

After their Cleveland concerts, the Choir will perform at the 2023 National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association in Cincinnati later this month. Of the hundreds of choirs from across the country that auditioned, CCC was one of 28 choirs invited to perform, and will send 32 singers to perform two 25-minute performances to thousands of attendees.

I reached Gregory Ristow by telephone to chat about the repertoire for this weekend, and began by asking how much input he had into the program. [Read more…]

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