by Mike Telin
We all know that the pandemic forced many performing arts organizations to put their plans on hold. Case in point, the collaboration between BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and the Cleveland Chamber Choir that was scheduled for May of 2020.
Now, after a long wait, the two ensembles will come together on Saturday, October 8 at 7:30 pm at the Church of the Covenant for a performance of Beethoven’s Mass in C and American composer Gwyneth Walker’s emotionally intense The Golden Harp, featuring Ideastream Public Media’s John Mills as narrator. A pre-concert talk will be presented by Oberlin Conservatory musicologist Charles Edward McGuire 30 minutes before the performance. The concert is free.
The performance will be under the direction of both Gregory Ristow, Associate Professor of Conducting and Director of Vocal Ensembles at Oberlin, and Daniel Meyer, Artistic Director of BlueWater.
I caught up with Ristow and Meyer via Zoom and began by asking them how they came to pair the Walker with the Beethoven.
The audience may have been more restrained than the appreciatively foot-stomping listeners who typically pack into Finney Chapel back home — but not by much. The crowd in New York’s Carnegie Hall gave two ensembles from Oberlin College and Conservatory a warm reception on January 19, with loud cheers and even some shoutouts to the players onstage. All well-deserved.
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,