by David Kulma
The West Shore Chorale and its longtime music director John Drotleff focused on psalms settings by Mozart and Bernstein together with a work by David Conte for its performance on the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on Friday, March 1.
by Daniel Hathaway
At the midpoint of its 51st season, The West Shore Chorale will sing a program on the Helen D. Schubert concert series at St. John’s Cathedral on Friday, March 1 at 7:30 pm. John Drotleff, who has conducted the Rocky River-based chorus since 1984, will lead his singers and an instrumental ensemble in music by Mozart, David Conte, and Bernstein.
I caught up with Drotleff by telephone at his home in Lakewood to ask about Friday’s program, and began by complimenting him on choosing what must be a challenging program.
by Nicholas Stevens
The 2017-18 performing arts season celebrated several auspicious anniversaries in Northeast Ohio, and last week in Rocky River, the West Shore Chorale marked its first half-century. Any ensemble with an extensive record of uniting communities through music deserves a commemoration of grand scale and ambition, and the Chorale offered just such a program for its own anniversary at Magnificat High School.
by Jarrett Hoffman
For the West Shore Chorale, composer Dave Malloy is more than just a multiple Tony Award nominee — most recently for his electro-pop opera Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. He’s also a former member of the Chorale and a graduate of Lakewood High School, where his choir director was none other than West Shore’s conductor John Drotleff. The cherry on top? Malloy’s dad now sings in the choir — Drotleff heard him singing karaoke, and said he should try out.
Add all of that together, and it’s hard to imagine a better recipe for the Chorale’s 50th Anniversary Concert than Dave Malloy’s homecoming — and the world premiere of his Dewdrops (A Requiem) under the direction of his former teacher this Sunday, April 29 at 7:30 pm at Magnificat Performing Arts Center in Rocky River.
Dewdrops was commissioned by the Chorale as a companion piece to Mozart’s Requiem. The two works will sit side by side on Sunday’s program, titled “From Mozart to Malloy,” which will feature the West Shore Chorale Orchestra and student singers from West Side high schools.
by Daniel Hathaway
What to do about the Brahms Requiem? It’s one of the most beloved extended works in the choral repertoire, but what amateur choral society has the resources to put it on with full orchestra? Some settle for organ accompaniment, some for Brahms’s own arrangement for piano four-hands, but a lot of orchestral color goes missing.
For the West Shore Chorale’s performance of the Requiem at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on Friday evening, March 14, conductor John Drotleff presented another solution: German flutist Joachim Linckelmann’s 2010 reduction of the orchestra score for just eleven players — string quartet plus double bass, standard woodwind quintet and timpani.
If that would seem to put the well-fed sonorities of Brahms on a drastic diet, consider a few other cases where composers have trimmed their resources and produced wonderful results — the chamber operas of Benjamin Britten come immediately to mind. [Read more…]