by Daniel Hathaway
Music From the Western Reserve, Music and Art at Trinity Cathedral, and Arts at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church all streamed concerts online in September, all without audiences present.
As organizations gingerly take steps to open up for business, it’s refreshing to have new content to listen to and write about after a solid six months of archival footage. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
“Britten is such a master of theater that his Canticle II is like a little 17-minute opera,” countertenor John McElliott said in a telephone conversation. “Any chance I have to sing this music is such a great joy that I savor every one.”
In fact, McElliott has had many opportunities to savor Benjamin Britten’s “Abraham and Isaac” together with his colleagues, tenor JR Fralick and pianist Todd Wilson. “We’ve performed it many times both at the Church of the Covenant and at Trinity Cathedral. At this point, it’s become an old friend.”
McElliott, Fralick, and Wilson will renew that friendship in the third of Music and Art at Trinity’s live streamed concerts this summer, an episode that will air in real time with no audience present on Friday, September 18 at 7:00 pm. The program, “Music by Three B’s,” will include Nadia Boulanger’s Three Improvisations, played by organist Nicole Keller, and Brahms’ Violin Sonata in A, performed by Andrew Sords with pianist Elizabeth DeMio. The event is free, but donations are welcome toward a COVID-19 musicians relief fund.
Britten wrote his five Canticles between 1947 and 1974. Though the titles suggest liturgical works, they’re more like little cantatas for various combinations of voices and instruments. Three of them were crafted as memorials, and all five reflect the composer’s knack for setting fine examples of English literature to highly expressive music. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
How can a faith mourn its greatest loss while still gesturing toward the resurrection that follows — and set it all to music? Last year, Trinity Cathedral’s choristers and instrumentalists presented Arvo Pärt’s Passio on their annual Good Friday concert. A vast, austere retelling of Christ’s Passion, the work exerts an almost grueling gravity. This year, however, Trinity artistic director and organist Todd Wilson presented not a monument, but a colorful mosaic of grief, farewell, and hope in the form of two English Requiem settings. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Conductor Jay White is leading Quire Cleveland into its second decade this season following the retirement of the professional choir’s founders, Ross W. Duffin and Beverly Simmons. His debut program at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, November 2 at 7:30 pm is a complex web of music celebrating All Saints and All Souls Days.
White, who toured as a countertenor for eight seasons with Chanticleer, and now serves as professor of voice at Kent State, has put together a program that interleaves Gregorian chants of the Requiem Mass with mass movements by several different Renaissance composers, and memorial motets written in honor of Machaut, Ockeghem, Josquin, and Tallis. The concert will be repeated on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at St. Sebastian Church in Akron.
In a telephone conversation from his office at the University, White noted that his long experience as a professional vocalist gave him a lot of repertory to choose from. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
The story of Jesus of Nazareth’s final hours is necessarily an unpleasant one, concluding hints of optimism aside. But the Passion can be beautiful in its own way, as Trinity Cathedral’s Good Friday Concert demonstrated. Suffering and salvation, grit and grace, horror broken by a spark of hope: under director Todd Wilson on March 30, Trinity’s Choir and Chamber Orchestra incorporated all of these into a program built around Arvo Pärt’s monumental Passio. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Quire Cleveland began its tenth anniversary season with concerts in Painesville and Cleveland devoted to liturgical music by the 17th-century British composer Henry Purcell. On Friday, October 6 at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland, Quire was in fine “voyce” as its 21 singers under the direction of founder Ross W. Duffin sang repertoire Purcell composed for the choir of the Chapel Royal between his appointment in 1682 and his untimely death at the age of 35 in 1695. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland was packed on Friday evening for its annual Good Friday concert. This year Todd Wilson, the Cathedral’s director of music, presented Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passion According to St. John. It was musically a very fine performance, using period instruments, a chamber-sized chorus (mostly, more on that below) and a group of talented soloists who were all well-versed in historically-informed performance practices. The program booklet contained a lengthy, informative essay by musicologist Judith Eckelmeyer. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
On Friday, November 21, Trinity Cathedral’s Choir, Chamber Singers and instrumentalists, directed by Todd Wilson, presented a “Bach by Candlelight” concert in their home church with violinist Jinjoo Cho, oboist Danna Sundet and organist Parker Ramsay. It was a glorious setting in the magnificent Trinity Cathedral nave with its ornate organ case the center of attention. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Contrapunctus, a professional choral group just finishing its first season, gave an unusual program of music for high voices (sopranos, altos, countertenors) at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on Friday, June 6th. British countertenor and conductor David Acres, music director of Contrapunctus, planned an audacious program of 22 works, with repertoire from Gregorian chant and the early polyphonist Perotin, through Brahms and Fauré, to a striking new work by Cleveland composer Kevin Foster.
The tenors and basses of Contrapunctus sat this one out, but if these fine performances are any indication, audiences should flock to the group’s next concert. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Since its founding, Quire Cleveland has presented concerts that connect audiences to the past through passionate performances of choral works from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras, and beyond. One highly anticipated concert is Quire’s annual performance of Carols for Quire. Beginning on Friday, December 20 with performances through Sunday, December 22 at Trinity Cathedral, Quire Cleveland under the direction of Ross W. Duffin, will present the 2013 edition of this popular annual event.
“This is the fifth year in a row that we’ve done this, said Quire’s founding Artistic Director Ross W. Duffin. “It’s become a tradition. I think audiences have come to expect it and I know we certainly look forward to it.” Although Quire’s programs generally focus on early choral repertoire, this year’s Carols for Quire will be a bit of a departure for the ensemble. [Read more…]