by Daniel Hathaway
The Cleveland Cello Society’s annual ‘i Cellisti!’ extravaganza always finds creative ways to bring multiple cellos together, but on Friday, January 11 at St. Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights, CCS outdid itself. Publicity originally promised a choir of 24 cellos — an impressive gathering — but that number had been upped to 40 last week. Ultimately, 52 cellists were arranged in a vast circle around the nave of the church at the beginning of the concert, along with the 45 members of the Oberlin College Choir. A critical mass indeed. [Read more…]
As a music journalist, I have had many opportunities to have aside conversations with artists about their favorite concert halls. While everyone mentions the acoustic of places like Severance Hall, for example, most add that they can also feel the ghosts that inhabit these storied venues.
“It’s amazing how professional choral singing has changed in the past 10 to 15 years,” Gregory Ristow, director of vocal ensembles at the Oberlin Conservatory, said during a recent conversation. “And the singers in Roomful of Teeth are the perfect model for our students because their careers are multi-faceted.”
Enjoying the natural beauty of Lake Erie has always been part of composer Margaret Brouwer’s life — she grew up spending summers at her family’s lake cottage in Huron. But when dangerous levels of algae blooms in the Lake’s western basin caused a water crisis in Toledo in 2014, the ensuing national conversation about environmental pollution and the state of the country’s drinking water became the source of inspiration for Brouwer’s latest composition, 
