ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Cleveland Chamber Choir: “A Season of Thanksgiving”

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

This year and last, Thanksgiving has taken on an additional meaning, something that the Cleveland Chamber Choir will recognize in a free program to open its seventh season on Saturday, November 6 at 7:00 pm at St. Ambrose Parish in Brunswick.

Celebrating life and gratitude as a way of recognizing all that musicians and audiences have gone through over the last eighteen months, “A Season of Thanksgiving” brings together sacred music by Kerry Andrew, Gwyneth Walker, Kevin Allen, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, Susan LaBarr, and Jose Elberdin, as well as arrangements by Sarah Quartel, Mark Butler, and Kevin S. Foster. (Click here to learn about CCC’s safety practices related to COVID-19.)

The Choir will be represented by an octet made up of sopranos Jackie Josten and Anna E. White, altos Katie Fowler and Kira McGirr, tenors Joel Kincannon and Peter Wright, and basses Jelani Watkins and Corey Fowler — CCC’s assistant conductor, who will also be directing the ensemble.

On that note, when I reached Fowler last Friday during a break in his teaching at Roosevelt High School, where he is Director of Choirs, we began our conversation on the topic of leading a group while also singing within it.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: “We March On! Music of Social Justice” (March 8)

by

by Mike Telin

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. The 50th anniversary of this horrific event was the focal point of Cleveland Chamber Choir’s recent program “We March On! Music of Social Justice.” The thought-provoking concert also poignantly addressed anti-Semitic violence, the civil rights movement, hate crimes, police brutality, and women’s suffrage. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to present “Lux Caelestis” concerts this weekend

by

by Daniel Hathaway

To begin its fifth season, the professional singers of Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir will present identical programs at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland on Friday, November 8 at 7:30 pm, and at St. Sebastian Church in Akron on Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 pm.

“Our overall theme this season is ‘Women’s Voices Resounding,’” MacPherson said in a telephone conversation. “A good chunk of the repertoire is by women composers and poets. And the first pair of concerts will be given in memory of my dear friend Helen Tremaine Gregory, who passed away last winter. She was a businesswoman and philanthropist who sang in my town-gown Kent Chorale.”

When MacPherson puts a concert program together, he often begins with a central piece out of which companion works spring. “The centerpiece of these programs is Timothy Kramer’s Lux Caelestis, a piece he wrote for me when I was at Trinity University in San Antonio,” the conductor said. “I asked him for a piece we could sing on tour in Cologne Cathedral — one that was appropriate for a watery acoustic.” [Read more…]

Anna White & Katie Fowler in
Musings of a Singing Mother

by

by Daniel Hathaway

When soprano Anna E. White and mezzo-soprano Katie Fowler (left to right) met in the Cleveland Chamber Choir four years ago, they discovered they had one major thing in common. Both were balancing careers as professional vocalists with their responsibilities as mothers with small children at home. Three and a half years later, the two have created Musings of a Singing Mother, a cabaret show that celebrates the joys and complications of their everyday lives.

“The concept of the working mother is not new,” White said in a recent telephone conversation, “but because we have to practice at home and prepare for our rehearsals at night, we can be working on a phrase in an Italian aria and finding ourselves changing a dirty diaper or consoling a crying child in the same room. Those lives exist side by side, and we decided to put them on the stage to show people what we do.”

Having already presented their show in Medina in June, the duo will give it a second performance on Saturday, July 27 at 7:30 pm at the Aurora School of Music, where both serve on the faculty. They’ll be joined by pianist Will Hamilton and cellist Faith Rohde. Admission is free. [Read more…]

Opera Circle: Cavalleria rusticana at First Baptist Church (November 21)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

OC-Cav-1In just over an hour, betrayal and jealousy in a Sicilian village spill over into tragedy in Pietro Mascagni’s one-act classic opera, Cavalleria rusticana — all the while accompanied by some gorgeous music. Opera Circle staged two performances of “Cav” last weekend at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. I saw the opening performance on Friday evening, November 21. [Read more…]

Opera Circle to stage Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana at First Baptist

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Cast-Montage

One of the most popular of all opera titles came about through a contest. 27-year-old Pietro Mascagni barely made the deadline for a new opera competition set up by Milanese publisher Edoardo Sonzogno in 1888, but won out over 72 other aspiring young Italian composers who fulfilled the entrance criterion of never before having had an opera staged. His winning entry, the one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana, received its premiere in Rome in 1890.

Although Mascagni lived until 1945 and penned fourteen other stage works, none ever received the attention that “Cav” attracted. Cleveland’s Opera Circle, having previously produced Mascagni’s second opera, L’Amico Fritz, will mount two staged performances of Cavalleria rusticana on Friday evening, November 21 and Sunday afternoon, November 23, at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]

Review: Nightingale Opera Theatre: Hansel and Gretel at the Barlow Center, Hudson (June 29)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

WitchIntoOvenWarning to all witches: you’re courting danger if you try to turn children into gingerbread in Northeast Ohio. You’ve been punished for that many times recently — at the Cleveland Institute of Music (March 2012), at Youngstown State University (April 2013), at the Oberlin Conservatory (November 2013) and at Baldwin Wallace University (February 2014). The children rebelled once again last weekend at the Barlow Center in Hudson, as Nightingale Opera Theatre staged three performances of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. And once again, the witch didn’t survive the trip through her own oven. I saw the show, which was sung in English, on Sunday, June 29.

It was talented student casts who turned the tables on the sorceress in those previous performances. Nightingale, a company of professional singers, brought an especially high level of vocal prowess and acting experience to Humperdinck’s retelling of the famous fairy tale, while retaining the feel of a community production by casting young human beings as children and angels. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us