by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon the Youngstown State University Opera Department presented a workmanlike rendition of Jules Massenet’s fairytale opera Cendrillon (“Cinderella”) in Bliss Hall’s Ford Theater. An outstanding cast of singers under production director Misook Yun, an excellent orchestra conducted by Hae-Jong Lee, solid stage direction by Gary Lehman, and Wendy Akers’ fine costumes all contributed to an entertaining performance. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
With all the bad news and sadness we encounter today nationally, internationally, and in everyday life, the Warren Civic Chorus’s performance of Handel’s Messiah was a magnificent gift to the city of Warren. The oratorio is a vivid, positivistic, religious affirmation of belief in future salvation, and a powerful, vocal, choral and instrumental depiction of its biblical subject matter. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Welsh composer Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace has been on Hae-Jong Lee’s mind for a decade. Lee, who is director of choral activities at the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University, first came across the work at a convention of the American Choral Directors Association.
“As soon as Carl Jenkins finishes a project, he makes a CD with excerpts,” Lee said in a telephone conversation. “I found The Armed Man to be very interesting. I wanted to hear the whole thing. Jenkins’s background is as a jazz musician and the music is fascinating. It sounds complex and intricate but the score is so simple.”
The 13-movement work will be performed by the Dana Symphonic Choir, Stambaugh Chorus and YSU Wind Ensemble on Sunday, May 4 at 6:00 pm in Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium. A film by Hefin Owen will accompany the performance. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
On Monday evening March 31, the audience at Trinity Methodist Church in downtown Youngstown witnessed the first modern performance of Carl Philip Emanuel Bach’s Passion According to St. Luke. The piece is actually attributed to Gottfried August Homilius, a student of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Bach’s contribution was to greatly shorten and rearrange the piece by giving Homilius a list of order and key changes, moving some of the vocal parts to different ranges and eliminating the boy soprano part. It was first performed for Easter, 1775, but the manuscript was forgotten for about two hundred years thereafter.
Prior to the performance Youngstown State University Professor Randall Goldberg, who had partnered in editing the new full score with his former professor, David Melamed of Indiana University, presented a pre-concert talk about the piece. [Read more…]