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ENCORE: “Director’s Carte Blanche” at Oberlin (June 14)

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by Max Newman

This year’s ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival, themed around “Planet Earth,” graced the Cleveland area with some brilliant performances over the course of this month. One of those came on the evening of June 14, when Oberlin Conservatory played host to the series. 

Violinist and founder Jinjoo Cho, violinist Mathieu Herzog, and pianist Hyunsoo Kim starred in a terrific performance at Warner Concert Hall. The event also featured a conversation with Chris Stanton, the Senior Naturalist at Lorain County Metro Parks, which perfectly served ENCORE’s season theme as an ode to the natural world.

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ENCORE returns with an ode to Planet Earth

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by Mike Telin

Each summer, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s Music and Ideas Festival brings artists and speakers from around the world to present engaging performances and thought-provoking discussions that are inspired by a theme such as Creatures of Emotion, Storytelling, and FIRE. The 2024 edition of the Festival will feature six concerts under the theme of Planet Earth.

“I wanted to highlight the universal connection that we humans have with nature,” ENCORE founder and artistic director Jinjoo Cho said during a telephone interview.  “Anybody who takes a walk in the beautiful Cuyahoga Valley National Park — listening to the sounds of nature — will feel more calm and more centered.”

Planet Earth begins on Friday, June 7 at Kendall Lake at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. “Roma Jazz on a Starry Night” features the Olli Soikkeli Band — Olli Soikkeli (guitar), Brad Brose (rhythm guitar), Paul Sikivie (bass), and Evan Arntzen (clarinet/saxophone). “Olli has a special place in that repertoire, and we’re excited to do our first concert with him.”

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BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: Jinjoo Cho soars in Barber Concerto (Nov. 17)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a pre-holiday offering, Bluewater Chamber Orchestra’s audience received gifts simple and somber, with intermittent thrills, on Friday evening, November 17. In an all-American program, the pleasures were many: Cindy McTee’s moving Adagio for strings, Barber’s firework of a Violin Concerto, and Copland’s wise portrait of rural America, Appalachian Spring.

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Violinist Jinjoo Cho: Barber with BlueWater & writing a book

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Following up on her Tchaikovsky Concerto performance four years ago, violinist Jinjoo Cho will make a return appearance with BlueWater Chamber Orchestra on Friday, November 17 at 7:30 pm at Church of the Covenant.

This time, the first prize winner of the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis will focus on the Concerto of Samuel Barber — part of an all-American program led by Daniel Meyer that will also include Cindy McTee’s Adagio for String Orchestra and Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring: Suite for Full Orchestra. Pay-what-you-wish tickets are available here. [Read more…]

ENCORE Chamber Music Institute Music & Ideas Festival gets underway

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by Mike Telin

Since June of 2016, young violinists, violists, and cellists have made their way to Northeast Ohio to take part in the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute. Earlier this week, 92 students ages 13 to 26 arrived on the campuses of Gilmour Academy and John Carroll University to participate in either the String Quartet Intensive or the Summer Academy.

Both programs include masterclasses and workshops under the guidance of renowned artists, teachers, and guests. Over the course of three weeks, students will also perform fifteen community concerts as part of ENCORE in Cle and the concluding Blooming Young Artist Concerts.

“The students also have movement classes, morning practice sessions, and lessons in the afternoon,” ENCORE founder and artistic director Jinjoo Cho said during a recent telephone conversation. “It’s a lot to handle, but this is probably the highest-level student pool that we have ever had. They come from all over the world, and it’s very exciting to hear them.”

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ENCORE: A Tasteful showcase— “Tales of Travel & Transformation” (July 3)

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by Jacob Strauss

ENCORE Chamber Music held a musical tasting on Sunday afternoon, July 3rd at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts. “Tales of Travel and Transformation” featured members of the Verona Quartet, artistic director Jinjoo Cho, and other faculty of the summer institute.

Cellist Max Geissler led off with composer-in-residence Andrew Rindfleisch’s Quiet Music for Solo Violoncello. Gymnastic hand positions land on natural harmonics in “Waltz Music.” Heavy rhythmic lines roll under chords played assertively by Geissler in “Fast Music,” then become quiet while wind chimes glisten in “Slow Music.” [Read more…]

ENCORE: Tales of Wünderkinds (July 1)

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by Noah Auby

If their first tale of July 2022 was any indication, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s “Storytelling” Music & Ideas Festival is true to its name. On July 1, ENCORE premiered and livestreamed “Tales of Wünderkinds: The Hunt & Chase” — a formidable continuation of this year’s primarily narrative-driven Music & Ideas Festival. Interestingly, Jorg Widmann’s Hunt would be the only piece from the evening’s program to share a word with this title. I watched the livestream.

Performed by a string quartet with periodic shouting from violinist (and ENCORE artistic director) Jinjoo Cho, the players flawlessly executed the intended discordant quality of the piece. [Read more…]

Splendid Sibelius, Stratospheric Tchaikovsky from the Canton Symphony (June 25)

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by Tom Wachunas

“Music begins where the possibilities of language end.” —Sibelius

The first selection on the June 25 “Triumphant Tchaikovsky” program from the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 3 in C Major.

With this work, premiered in 1907, Sibelius offered a bold departure from the explosive emotionalism so prevalent in late-Romantic era music. This symphony was a renewed embrace of Classicism’s purity of form and melody, and one that, oddly enough, left many initial audiences of the day somewhat bewildered. [Read more…]

ENCORE Festival:
“Food & Desire” in music

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by Jarrett Hoffman

In one way, the next event in ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s Music & Ideas Festival has a wide appeal. As I said to artistic director Jinjoo Cho during an interview, the music on Friday’s program is both brilliant and, without a doubt, fun.

Still, Cho pointed out that it might not be for all audiences. One piece, Derek Bermel’s Coming Together for clarinet and cello, is composed entirely of glissandos, often wild ones. And depending on the listener, you might hear those as depicting — well, one half of the title of this program.

“Food & Desire” will be presented on Friday, June 17 at 7:00 pm at the Dodero Center for Performing Arts in Gates Mills, preceded by a 6:00 conversation featuring Brandon Chrostowski, founder of EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute. In addition to the Bermel, the program includes music by Svante Henryson, Andrew Rindfleisch, Paul Schoenfield, and Bohuslav Martinů — much of it influenced by jazz. In-person and livestream tickets are available here.

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ENCORE Chamber Music: Evelyn Wright on Billie Holiday

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Scientists, activists, a writer, a visual artist, a jazz singer, and a former president all sparked inspiration in the mind of Jinjoo Cho as she developed this summer’s Music & Ideas Festival as part of ENCORE Chamber Music Institute.

That jazz singer? The great Billie Holiday, whose life and music will be explored in two events on Friday, June 18 as ENCORE begins its Juneteenth Celebration Weekend.

At 7:00 pm, the Evelyn Wright Jazz Quartet — made up of Wright herself on vocals (pictured), pianist Dave Thomas, drummer Bill Ransom, and bassist Peter Dominguez — will play a program titled “Sparked by Billie,” made up of songs that Holiday either wrote, such as God Bless the Child, or famously recorded, like Strange Fruit. See the full setlist here.

An hour earlier, at 6:00 pm, Cho will join Wright and Thomas for “Billie Holiday: Tragedy and Triumph,” a panel discussion about the intersection of those two elements in Holiday’s life. Both events take place at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts, located on the Gilmour Academy campus in Gates Mills. Tickets are available here.

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