ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival: Kondonassis and Vieaux “Together Again” (May 28)

by

by Mike Telin

Kondonassis-VieauxOn their debut recording Together, celebrated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and Grammy Award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux take listeners on a beautiful sonic journey that will mesmerizes from the first note to the last. On Thursday, May 28 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Kondonassis and Vieaux will perform all of the music from the album in a recital presented as a part of the 2015 Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. The program will also include Antônio Carlos Jobim’s A Felicidade (arranged for solo guitar) and Carlos Salzedo’s Chanson dans la nuit, for solo harp. CIM student performances will take place in the Pogue Lobby from 7:00 to 7:45 pm. [Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival to begin May 28

by

by Mike Telin

CICGFPanel1

Next week marks the fifteenth installment of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. Beginning at 10:00 am on Thursday, May 28 and continuing through Sunday evening, May 31 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, CICGF will present recitals and master classes by Antonis Hatzinikolaou (Greece); Nigel North, lute (England); Jason Vieaux and harpist Yolanda Kondonassis (USA); Paul Galbraith (Scotland); Ricardo Gallen (Spain); Duo Melis (Susana Prieto, Spain, and Alexis Muzurakis, Greece); and Pavel Steidl (Czech Republic). See our concert listings page for days and times.

[Read more…]

Grammy winning guitarist Jason Vieaux to perform with the Akron Symphony

by

Mike Telin

VIEAUX-JasonWhiteThis past Sunday, guitarist Jason Vieaux became a first-time Grammy Award winner in the “Best Classical Solo Performance” category for his Azica Records CD, Play. On Saturday, February 14, Vieaux will be the featured soloist in Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the Akron Symphony under the direction of Christopher Wilkins.

The program also includes Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and Oboe Concerto with ASO principal oboist Terry Orcutt as soloist, as well as Elgar’s Serenade for Strings and de Falla’s El amor brujo. The concert begins at 8:00 pm in the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall.

Composed in 1939, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is without a doubt the composer’s best-known work. “It is a popular piece and deservedly so,” Vieaux said during a recent telephone conversation. “The second movement is a masterpiece. As a guitarist, I am a little biased, but I think it’s so cool how the solo line brings the entire concerto to a climax at the end of the second movement cadenza. Rodrigo understood the guitar well enough to make sure it was at its very loudest during those ten-note flourishes.” [Read more…]

Northeast Ohio Grammy Nominees, Part II: a continued conversation with Bruce Egre and Alan Bise of Azica Records

by

by Mike Telin

Egre-BiseOn Sunday, February 8, the 57th Grammy Awards will be presented in Los Angeles. ClevelandClassical.com wishes the best of luck to all the Northeast Ohio nominees.

Today we continue our discussion with Azica Records founder and recording engineer Bruce Egre (left) and classical music producer Alan Bise (right). Following an informative conversation about guitarist Jason Vieaux’s Grammy-nominated album Play, on Azica, and the nominating process, the topic turned to the ever-evolving recording industry.

I began by asking Egre and Bise to comment on the belief held by many: that the classical music recording industry is on its way to extinction. “No, I don’t think it’s dead and it won’t die. People are simply consuming the music differently, like streaming,” Bruce Egre commented. He added that while streaming is good for the consumer, in financial terms it’s not necessarily good for the artist or the label. [Read more…]

Northeast Ohio Grammy nominees, Part I: Jason Vieaux up for Best Classical Instrumental Solo

by

by Mike Telin

Vieaux-Play-CDGuitarist Jason Vieaux’s solo album, Play, is among the five 2015 Grammy Award nominees in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo. The awards ceremony will take place on February 8 at Los Angeles’s Staples Center.

The album, released in January 2014 by Cleveland’s Azica Records, includes showpieces by Barrios, Sagreras, Bustamante, and Sainz De La Maza, as well as Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra and Capricho Arabe, Vieaux’s own arrangement of Duke Ellington’s In A Sentimental Mood, and Andrew York’s Sunburst, which had “Encores” as its original working title.

“The album is a culmination of Jason’s twenty years as a touring artist, a retrospective of encores,” Azica’s Bruce Egre, who engineered the recording, said in a recent conversation. “It took us months to figure out the title,” said producer Alan Bise. “We wanted it to say something interesting without becoming cheesy.”

How much does a title really matter these days? “That’s a good question,” Egre said. “With so much product coming out, especially in the classical world, you need to put something out there that is a little bit distinctive. What do you call an album of Haydn string quartets?” They settled on Play, and Egre admitted that the title has grown on him. [Read more…]

CIM musicians and performers with local ties win Grammy Nominations (updated)

by

Vieaux-JasonCleveland Institute of Music faculty members Jason Vieaux, Jaime Laredo, Alan Bise and Bruce Egre and pianist Daniil Trifonov are among the nominees for the 57th Grammy Awards, to be presented in Los Angeles on February 8. [Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society opens season with its annual Showcase Concert September 27

by

by Mike Telin

Vieaux-Jason“This week’s concert is going to be really great,” classical guitarist Jason Vieaux exclaimed during a recent telephone conversation. On Saturday, September 27, beginning at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society will begin its International Series. And in keeping with tradition, the series will kick off with a free Showcase Concert.

[Read more…]

Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival to conclude with recital by Jason Vieaux & Julien Labro

by

by Carlyn Kessler, Special Contributor

VIEAUX-LABROOn Sunday, June 1st at 7:30 pm, Jason Vieaux, guitar, and Julien Labro, bandoneón, will close out the 2014 Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival with a dynamic recital at Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Vieaux and Labro, who have been collaborating for the past four years, will perform a varied program consisting of works by Brouwer, Gnatalli, Metheny and Piazzolla. In a recent conversation, Vieaux, who is the head of the CIM guitar department, described the formation of their musical duo. Vieaux, who describes himself as a jazz enthusiast, heard Labro playing accordion with his group Hot Club of Detroit four years ago at Cleveland’s Nighttown.

Vieaux said that the group did not intend to transport the audience back to the 1930’s, but instead “used instrumentation as a springboard for new ideas.” Both Vieaux and the crowd were “knocked out” by Labro’s solo playing. Vieaux and Labro chatted after the performance and discovered that they were “fans of a lot of the same kind of music.” [Read more…]

Review: Classical Guitar Weekend at CIM — Five solo recitals (May 23-25)

by

by Daniel Hathaway, James Flood & Mike Telin

VIEAUX-JasonWhiteThough packed with lectures, panel discussions, exhibits and master classes, Classical Guitar Weekend, sponsored by Guitars International, centers around a series of solo recitals by international artists. This year’s fetival — the thirteenth — featured Cleveland’s own Jason Vieaux, assisted by three instrumentalists from the Cleveland Institute of Music, the debut of Korean guitarist Jiyeon Kim, the American artist Colin Davin, the Belgian guitarist Raphaëlla Smits in her fourth appearance at the festival, and British-born artist Jonathan Leathwood. The five players offered the Mixon Hall audiences a wide range of repertory to ponder and enjoy.

Jason Vieaux

Representing the host of Classical Guitar Weekend, Cleveland Institute of Music guitar professor Jason Vieaux sometimes caps off the weekend’s activities, but this time was the headliner for Thursday evening’s opening concert. After playing a sweet and beautifully layered performance of Fernando Sor’s Bagatellle, op. 44, no. 3, Vieaux told the audience that he had decided to revisit repertory he had played over the years at Classical Guitar Weekend, after working on some of the pieces on the program with students and recalling how much he liked them. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us