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Kent Blossom Music Festival: Miami String Quartet (July 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

What was that strange din coming over the live feed from Ludwig Recital Hall on Friday evening, July 23, as the Miami String Quartet filed onstage to play the third faculty recital of the Kent Blossom Music Festival? Accustomed as we were during the pandemic ban on live audiences to hearing the sound of no hands clapping, it was both startling and thrilling to witness a large crowd putting their hands together to welcome one of the Festival’s perennial favorites back for an in-person performance. [Read more…]

Huang duo’s fantastic collaboration opens Kent Blossom season (July 14)

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by Stephanie Manning

The evening of July 14 surely felt like a momentous one for the Kent Blossom Music Festival. Just shy of two years since the Festival’s last live, in-person performance, Kulas Visiting Artists Paul Huang and Helen Huang took the stage at Ludwig Recital Hall to open Kent Blossom’s 53rd season. Performing for both an in-person and virtual audience (I heard the live stream), the violinist and pianist dazzled in sonatas by Mendelssohn, Corigliano, Ysaÿe, and Franck.

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Kent Blossom Music Festival: a conversation with flutist Demarre McGill

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“The first thing I do is find music that I love, that I’m emotionally connected to, and that I believe the listener will enjoy,” flutist Demarre McGill said by telephone last week, explaining how he put together his upcoming program for the Kent Blossom Music Festival.

In addition to that, the identity of the composers played an important role. “You don’t need to be a female, gay, or Black musician to program female, gay, or Black composers,” he said. “This is my way of creating something that is truly representative of American classical music — this beautiful diversity. That’s intentional.”

On Wednesday, July 21 at 7:30 pm, Kent Blossom will continue its Faculty Concert Series by presenting another pair of Kulas Visiting Artists: McGill and pianist Rodolfo Leone. Their program includes Valerie Coleman’s Fanmi Imén, flute sonatas by Lowell Liebermann and Yuko Uebayashi, and William Grant Still’s Songs for Flute and Piano. Attend in person at Ludwig Recital Hall (tickets here), or catch the free livestream.

[Read more…]

Huang duo’s decade of musical friendship continues to Blossom

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by Stephanie Manning

Almost a decade after violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang first performed together, their collaborative spirit is still going strong. The two acclaimed artists are eager to perform as a duo again this year, starting with their upcoming appearance as Kulas Visiting Artists on the Kent Blossom Music Festival’s Faculty Concert Series.

On Wednesday, July 14 at 7:30 pm, the duo (who share the same surname but are not related) will present a broad range of sonatas by Mendelssohn, Corigliano, Ysaÿe, and Franck at Ludwig Recital Hall. In-person tickets can be purchased on the Festival’s website, and the concert will also be live streamed here.

[Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival: In-Person and Remote for 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

“What a year!” Kent Blossom Music Festival director Ricardo Sepúlveda said in a recent telephone conversation. “But we’ve been fortunate. The challenges of the pandemic provided us with opportunities to learn, to explore, to be creative and innovative, and how to adapt to rapid change.”

The more you collaborate with others, the less control you have over your own operations. In the case of Kent Blossom, the summer education program that was established in the same year that The Cleveland Orchestra moved into its summer home in Cuyahoga Falls, the program that provides chamber music coaching for young players by members of the Orchestra takes its cues not only from the Orchestra, but also from Kent State University. And since the novel coronavirus made its appearance, the program has also been subject to the health protocols of the State of Ohio.

[Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival goes virtual beginning July 1

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by Daniel Hathaway

As goes the Blossom Festival, so goes the Kent Blossom Music Festival, the parallel educational program that each summer brings young musicians to the Kent State University campus for several weeks of intensive chamber music coaching by members of The Cleveland Orchestra and other musicians.

In a normal season, multiple student concerts would be on the docket as well as faculty recitals, and a student chamber orchestra would be sharing an al fresco program with The Cleveland Orchestra. But in this thoroughly abnormal summer, nothing will be happening in person either at Blossom or Kent State. Instead, KBMF will be offering five streamed broadcasts of concerts from its archives on Wednesdays beginning July 1.

The performances can be accessed on the Kent Blossom website. Here’s the schedule.

Wednesday, July 1 at 7:30 pm – Concert 1 with the Miami String Quartet & Spencer Myer, piano. Haydn’s Quartet No. 64 in D (“Largo”), Op. 76, No. 5, Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 16 & Max Bruch’s Quartet No. 1 in c, Op. 9. [Read more…]

KLR Trio visits Kent Blossom series as Kulas Visiting Artists (July 31)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson trio, this season’s Kulas Visiting Artists, brought the Kent Blossom Music Festival faculty series to a memorable conclusion on Wednesday evening, July 31 in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus. This group qualifies as a legacy ensemble — they’ve played together since Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977 — but they continue to perform with fire and authority. Playing to a large crowd on Wednesday, they no doubt inspired KBMF students as much as they delighted the general public. [Read more…]

Kent Blossom Music Festival features KLR Trio as Kulas Artists

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio (pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Sharon Robinson) will present the last of five faculty concerts in the Kent Blossom Music Festival Series on Wednesday, July 31 at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus. Named the Kulas Visiting Artists for this year’s Festival, the Trio will perform music by Previn, Ravel, and Mendelssohn. Tickets are available online.

The KLR Trio enjoyed a distinguished debut as an ensemble more than four decades ago, having been invited to perform at the White House in 1977 as part of the inauguration festivities for President Jimmy Carter. (Joseph Kalichstein reminisced about that event in an interview for this publication in October of 2012).

I reached Sharon Robinson and Jaime Laredo by telephone at their home in Cleveland, where they both teach at the Cleveland Institute of Music, to chat about their Kent program. I began by asking them about André Previn’s Piano Trio No. 2, which the ensemble commissioned and debuted during their 2012-2013 season, and which they’ve brought back recently. [Read more…]

Kent Blossom: a conversation with Barrick Stees and Frank Rosenwein

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by Rory O’Donoghue

“We don’t discuss much when we’re playing in orchestra,” Cleveland Orchestra principal oboe Frank Rosenwein said in an interview this week. “It’s funny, there’s opportunity to point something out if anything is amiss — you can say, ‘Oh, can we go over this or that’ — but essentially, it’s a silent collaboration. In chamber music, however, we have the luxury of getting together and discussing things, and teasing out people’s individual personalities and musical concepts.”

Rosenwein will showcase the fruits of that process this week as part of the Kent Blossom Music Festival Faculty Concert Series. He’ll join his fellow Cleveland Orchestra members, assistant principal bassoon Barrick Stees and principal clarinet Afendi Yusuf, for an evening of woodwind repertoire this Wednesday, July 24 at 7:30 pm in Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall.

The evening will begin with Shapes for Bassoon and Piano, a new work by assistant principal oboe Jeffrey Rathbun. [Read more…]

Kent Blossom Faculty Concert showcases Cleveland Orchestra musicians (July 17)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Amid the recent heat wave, the Kent Blossom Music Festival offered refuge with events in cool, tranquil spaces. Rarities, favorites, and unexpected delights packed one concert last week, a showcase for members of The Cleveland Orchestra who also serve as Festival Faculty. The music on Wednesday, July 17 filled Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall without overwhelming it. This may seem unexceptional for a space purpose-built for duos, quartets, and the like, but the program included both whisper-soft moments for cello and a spirited duet for piccolos — noted for their carrying power, but perfectly balanced in this room. [Read more…]

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