by Jarrett Hoffman
The next program from CityMusic Cleveland was dreamed up by Miho Hashizume, and stems from two of the violinist’s experiences over the past few years: teaching strings in Slavic Village, and encountering the poetry of Cleveland-born writer and activist Weatherspoon.
Through commissions from CityMusic, that author’s texts have been set to music by Jasmine Barnes and Jessica Meyer in works for string quartet and soprano that will be heard for the first time — the latest of several new pieces by women composers that have been premiered during the organization’s 2021-22 season.
The program, titled “Slavic Village Then and Now,” also includes music by a pair of Czech composers: Antonín Dvořák and, by ancestry, Cleveland-born Charles Rychlik, who lived on Fleet Avenue in Slavic Village, and who crossed paths with Dvořák during studies at the Prague Conservatory.
Performances will take place on Friday, April 8 at Lakewood Congregational Church and Sunday, April 10 at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, both at 7:00 pm. Admission is free — RSVP’s encouraged — and a livestream option has been added for Friday’s concert.
How do you depict grief? The most personal emotion next to love, it seems incommunicable. Its particularity grows out of a unique relationship between the aggrieved and the one who is lost; no one else can understand the complexities of that tie or the feelings engendered by its severing.