by Nicholas Stevens
In a Northeast Ohio music world recently energized amid multiple anniversary seasons, ensembles have faced the challenge of honoring their histories while plunging headlong into the future. Leave it to No Exit new music ensemble, ten years young this season, to prove itself among the most forward-thinking of all. In a concert of world premieres on Saturday, February 16, the chamber collective played a program defined more by promise than by pomp.
by Jarrett Hoffman
If you ask a bunch of composers how they dreamed up their latest pieces, they’ll all have something completely different to say.
That’s what I learned this past week, when I spent time on the phone with five of them to ask about their new chamber works being premiered by No Exit this weekend.
That new music ensemble, directed by Tim Beyer, will give free performances of these pieces at Heights Arts (Friday, February 15 at 7:00 pm), SPACES gallery (Saturday, February 16 at 8:00 pm), and WOLFS gallery (Friday, March 1 at 7:00 pm) in this second installment of the group’s Cleveland Composers Series.
by Jarrett Hoffman
There’s nothing quite like Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. And there will really be nothing like the performance this Friday, October 26 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
The conservatory’s New Music Ensemble, directed by Keith Fitch, will celebrate the 100th birthday of that classic work with the premiere of a new film: a commission from Cleveland-based video artist Kasumi, to be played simultaneously with the music. (The concert is free, and will also be live-streamed.)
And if you’re at all familiar with the work of Kasumi, you know you’re in for a fascinating, perhaps harrowing ride.
The trailer gives a taste of her style, in which she splices together images from mid-century B-movies, commercials, and training films from the public domain — images which are “completely direct,” as Kasumi told us during an interview last year. “The acting is so bad and corny that it conveys emotion in shorthand — it becomes a symbol, like a stop sign. If you weave together these tiny gestures, you get all kinds of nuances of emotion.”
by David Kulma
Concerts by CIM’s New Music Ensemble have such startlingly high levels of performance that it’s hard to remember that the musicians are, in fact, students. In their concert on Saturday night, April 7 at the Bop Stop as a part of this year’s NEOSonicFest, the ensemble gave immaculate performances of works selected from their 2017-2018 repertoire. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
It’s an epic feeling when three superheroes, from separate stories and with their own distinct powers, team up. The real-life, artsy, and Cleveland-related parallel to that? A collaboration next week among three prominent local institutions from three different disciplines.
Next Wednesday, April 18 at 7:00 pm and 7:45 pm, the Cleveland Institutes of Music and Art will join the Museum of Natural History for the fourth edition of 360° of Sight + Sound: The Planetarium Project. Five-minute films by students of CIA, scored with electronic music by student composers of CIM, will be given their world premiere screenings inside the dome of Shafran Planetarium at the Museum.
by Mike Telin
Since 2014, the Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony has sponsored NEOSonicFest, a festival of new music performed by musicians from Northeast Ohio and beyond. The 2018 festival will run from April 5 through 11 (see below for concert dates and times).
Clarinetist Carol Robinson and trumpeter Nate Wooley will kick things off by performing selections from Éliane Radigue’s Occam Ocean on April 5 at MOCA. The composer describes her work as “an ongoing acoustic work with influences ranging from electromagnetic waves, to William of Ockham’s philosophies, to science fiction mythologies.”
The always creative No Exit will return to the Festival on April 6 at Heights Arts. The ensemble was founded by composer Timothy Beyer as an outlet for the commissioning and performance of contemporary avant-garde concert music. No Exit is committed to promoting the works of living composers, particularly the music of young and emerging artists who haven’t yet received either the opportunities or exposure of their better-known counterparts. (Works by Leo Ornstein, Ty Emerson, Per Nørgård, James Praznik, Andrew Rindfleisch & Tristan Murail).
by Nicholas Stevens
In a recent concert by the Cleveland Institute of Music’s New Music Ensemble, Keith Fitch — CIM’s composition department chair, and the ensemble’s director — demonstrated his penchant for effective curation. His own new composition, The Range of Light, illuminated the work and words of John Muir, a visionary in American history, and cast the other pieces on the program into sharp relief.
by Jarrett Hoffman
For his New Music Ensemble’s biannual concerts, director Keith Fitch often builds programs around guest composers coming to the Cleveland Institute of Music. This year, the addition of a concert in February — one without a visiting artist — gives Clevelanders a further opportunity to hear new music, and provided Fitch extra programmatic flexibility.
“It gave me the freedom to put forward some works I might not otherwise have a chance to program,” Fitch said in a recent interview. Selections by Elliott Carter, Toru Takemitsu, and Frederick Fox came to mind — and to cap off the evening, the esteemed composer, who is head of CIM’s Composition department, looked to a new work in his own catalogue.
On Wednesday, February 7 at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall, Fitch will lead the CIM New Music Ensemble in a free concert to include the director’s own The Range of Light. Joined by baritone Dean Southern, head of CIM’s Voice and Opera division, the Ensemble will give the 2017 work its second-ever performance.
by Mike Telin
“I’m looking forward to the concert, and I have to say that the ensembles are sounding really good,” CIM’s New Music Ensemble director Keith Fitch said by telephone. On Sunday, November 5 at 4:00 pm in Mixon Hall, the Ensemble will present a concert featuring works by Guest Composer Stephen Hartke. The program will also include two pieces by Donald Erb.
On Saturday, November 4 at 1:30 pm in CIM’s Studio 113, Hartke will present a Guest Composer Symposium. The Grammy Award-winning composer and Professor of Composition at Oberlin Conservatory will discuss his music and approach to composition. Both events are free and open to the public. [Read more…]
by Jeremy Reynolds
On Sunday, April 2 at 4:00 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, CIM New Music Ensemble will present a concert including George Tsontakis’ Gravity Plus, selections from Midnight Rain, and Portraits by El Greco, as well as music by Morton Feldman and Stephen Stucky. Tsontakis will be featured in a New Music Symposium on Saturday, April 1 at 1:30 pm, in Studio 113 at CIM. Both events are free and open to the public.
Keith Fitch, head of composition and director of the New Music Ensemble at CIM, said that the school generally hosts three composers each year for guest residencies of a few days. The composers spend time working with the CIM Orchestra and New Music Ensemble, as well as holding masterclasses with the composition students. [Read more…]
