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Kent Blossom Music Festival: Imani Winds return (July 2)

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by Stephanie Manning

Already no strangers to Northeast Ohio, Imani Winds are quickly turning last summer’s debut at the Kent Blossom Music Festival into an annual event. For the second year in a row, the wind quintet visited Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall on July 2 to perform on the Festival’s Faculty Concert Series.

Their program, “Grooves and Meditations,” included some familiar names from their 2024 outing, including Paquito D’Rivera and Andy Akiho. But there were also plenty of new additions, like composer Fazıl Say and his piece Alevi Dedeler rakı masasında. The four-movement work is essentially about “old grandpas getting drunk at the bar,” bassoonist Monica Ellis said with a grin. [Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival: WindSync with Jon Kimura Parker (June 25)

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by Peter Feher

What do you call a concerto for six soloists? There’s no punchline here — just a delightful question posed by the first faculty concert of this year’s Kent Blossom Music Festival.

On Wednesday, June 25, in Ludwig Recital Hall, pianist Jon Kimura Parker and the five members of WindSync came together in a dynamic performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue that somewhat confounded categories.

“Piano sextet” is the usual name for this combination of instruments, and Gershwin’s composition could easily be subtitled “a concerto in one movement.” Yet neither designation would do justice to the spirit of this collaboration, in which every musician shone.

[Read more…]

Kent Blossom closes out Faculty Concert Series with two classics (July 17)

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by Stephanie Manning

With a program of only two pieces, both of them staples in chamber music repertoire, creating the conditions for a standout performance might be more difficult than usual. But the musicians in Kent Blossom Music Festival’s final entry in this year’s Faculty Concert Series knew what to do.

“Friendship is a requirement to open up and enjoy this piece,” clarinetist Afendi Yusuf said of the opener, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet — though this sentiment could equally apply to Schubert’s Octet that followed. The July 17 performance in Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall proved that the group had the friendship element in spades. [Read more…]

Kent Blossom: Poiesis Quartet’s youthful energy abounds (July 10)

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by Peter Feher

It’s not just the student performances at this year’s Kent Blossom Music Festival that are infused with youthful energy.

The Wednesday, July 10 faculty concert in Ludwig Recital Hall brimmed with optimistic, enthusiastic music-making. The Poiesis Quartet, the string ensemble-in-residence at Kent Blossom this summer (a role filled in previous seasons by the venerable Miami String Quartet), has been together for less than two years. Yet this fresh-faced group — violinists Sarah Ma and Max Ball, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby, all recent alums of Oberlin Conservatory — already plays like an ensemble with a long and storied history.

[Read more…]

Imani Winds captivate in Kent Blossom debut (July 3)

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by Stephanie Manning

Given Imani Winds’ active touring schedule, it’s not unusual to see the group revisit the same part of the U.S. within a few months. So while it might feel like the wind quintet was just here for their March performance in Oberlin, July 3 saw them return to Northeast Ohio to appear on the Kent Blossom Music Festival’s Faculty Concert Series in Ludwig Recital Hall. Thankfully, this proximity was no issue — Imani is a group worth hearing again and again.

The evening’s program, “Black and Brown II: A Celebration of Composers of Color,” was understandably similar to the one from March, although not without some notable changes. [Read more…]

Kent Blossom faculty concerts continue with the Imani Winds: a chat with clarinetist Mark Dover

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by Daniel Hathaway

The 2024 GRAMMY® winner in the Classical Compendium category for Jeff Scott’s Passion for Bach and Coltrane, Imani Winds have led both a revolution and evolution of the wind quintet for over a quarter of a century.

Their adventurous programming, imaginative collaborations and outreach endeavors have inspired audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

Tonight at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall, the Kent/Blossom Music Festival will present the Imani Winds. Tickets available online.

I caught up with Imani’s clarinetist Mark Dover yesterday by phone to ask about the ensemble’s residency and this evening’s repertoire.

[Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival: students step in for faculty (Aug. 2)

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by Peter Feher

The crowd at Ludwig Recital Hall on August 2 got a sneak peek of the Kent Blossom Music Festival’s annual side-by-side concert with The Cleveland Orchestra.

A mix of student and faculty players took the stage for Wednesday’s program, which was originally meant to feature a trio of past and present Orchestra members. Assistant principal flutist Jessica Sindell still anchored the performance, but her colleagues — pianist Joela Jones and cellist Richard Weiss — had to withdraw, with Jones citing health reasons. Two student chamber ensembles, coached by Jones and Sindell, were ready to step in, bringing some of the waiting-in-the-wings energy that makes each summer at Kent Blossom so stimulating.

The standout piece of the evening was destined to make a splash. [Read more…]

Anthony McGill and Daniel Schlosberg at Kent Blossom Music Festival (July 13)

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by Jacob Strauss

On Wednesday July 13, clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Daniel Schlosberg, and soprano Colleen Longshaw Jackson gave a masterful performance in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State University’s Kent Blossom Music Festival.

The scheduled program by the McGill/McHale Trio was changed due to the unavailability of flutist Demarre McGill and pianist Michael McHale, but there was no change in expectation for the artistry that was going to occur. Anthony McGill is world-renowned, and Daniel Schlosberg is a talented composer and performer who has collaborated with some of our best contemporary musicians.

Jackson began the program with a recitation of Langston Hughes’ poem “Helen Keller” — the first of five poems by Hughes that served as interludes between each piece on the first half. [Read more…]

Myer + Miami return to Kent Blossom Music Festival

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Over the years, performances by pianist Spencer Myer with the Miami String Quartet at the Kent Blossom Music Festival have happened so regularly that you could almost set your watch to them. But 2020 derailed that, and in 2021 schedules didn’t line up to make it happen either.

Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in g will be the focus when Myer and the Miami get this tradition going again on Tuesday, July 19 at 7:30 pm at Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall. Of course, the Quartet will be minus one fiddle for that piece, but not to worry: violinists Benny Kim and Cathy Meng Robinson, violist Scott Lee, and cellist Keith Robinson will all come together in string quartets by Joseph Haydn (Op. 77, No. 1) and Samuel Barber (Op. 11). Tickets are available here.

Myer has played Fauré’s First Piano Quartet before, but the g-minor — which he described as grittier and with more gravitas — is new to him. And what a warm welcome it gives to any pianist: a series of quick 32nd-note gestures right at the top, repeated again and again, and again.

[Read more…]

Second Kent Blossom concert to feature the McGill/McHale Trio

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Two Chicagoans and an Irishman walk into a bar — or rather, a university. That’s the origin story of the McGill/McHale Trio.

The university is none other than Bowling Green, where flutist Demarre McGill and clarinetist Anthony McGill were artists in residency in 2014. There they performed alongside a pianist hailing from Belfast — Michael McHale — and a long-term partnership began to brew.

The Trio will return not quite to the scene of the crime, but close, when they perform on the Kent Blossom Music Festival’s Faculty Concert Series as Kulas Visiting Artists on Wednesday, July 13 at 7:30 pm at Kent State’s Ludwig Recital Hall. Tickets are available here.

Their program will draw on Portraits, the album they recorded in 2017 on the Cedille Records label, which featured a slew of world-premiere recordings of works by living composers: Valerie Coleman (Portraits of Langston), Chris Rogerson (A Fish Will Rise), Paul Schoenfield (Sonatina for Flute, Clarinet and Piano), and Philip Hammond (the trio version of his Lamentation of Owen O’Neil).

[Read more…]

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