by Alexandra A. Vago
July 27th marked the last of five faculty concerts featured in the Kent/Blossom Music Festival, Kent State’s summer partnership with The Cleveland Orchestra for nearly fifty years. The highlight of the evening in Kent State’s Ludwig Recital Hall was the beautifully executed second half, featuring two intimate cello sonatas performed by cellist Richard Weiss and pianist Joela Jones. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Musical sparks will fly on Wednesday, July 13 at 7:30 pm when Time for Three, this year’s Kent/Blossom Kulas Guest Artists, will present a free concert at Cartwright Hall on the campus of Kent State University. (Tickets are required and can be reserved by calling 330.672.2787)
In addition to Wednesday’s performance, the band members — violinists Nikki Chooi and Nicholas (Nick) Kendall and bassist Ranaan Meyer — will coach student chamber music ensembles, conduct master classes and workshops, and participate in a Q&A session. “Wherever we go, organizations ask us to talk about the entrepreneurial side of the group,” Ranaan Meyer said during a recent telephone conversation. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
On Wednesday evening, July 6, the Miami String Quartet and pianist Spencer Myer gave a thrilling concert in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State University. This installment of the Kent/Blossom Faculty Concert Series showcased two short but fiery string quartets — Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Serioso” in f, Op. 95 and Gabriela Frank’s Milagros (“Miracles”) — as well as Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet in g, Op. 25. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Saturday’s Cleveland Orchestra concert at Blossom graced the kind of crystalline evening for which summer festivals were created. As I drove to the concert through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, its lush meadows already half in shadow and half in sun, I could hear in my head the idyllic opening of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, almost as summer-drenched as one could imagine a piece of music to be.
by Carlyn Kessler
On Wednesday, July 29, Kent/Blossom Music Festival welcomed audience members into Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall to cool down with the final Faculty Concert Series program of the season. The evening of chamber music featured celebrated musicians performing works with refreshing, unusual instrumentations.
by Daniel Hathaway
When it’s time for a musician to say goodbye to an ensemble and its audience after 39 years, what piece should he choose for his swan song? Long-time Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet Franklin Cohen revisited Carl Maria von Weber’s second concerto on Sunday night, July 26 at Blossom, winning a standing ovation before he even played a note. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Kent State oboe professor Danna Sundet will join members of The Cleveland Orchestra in the final faculty concert of the Kent/Blossom Music festival on Wednesday, July 29 at 8:00 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State Campus. Sundet, who is co-artistic director of the festival, will join pianist Joela Jones and violist Stanley Konopka in Charles Martin Loeffler’s Two Rhapsodies for oboe, viola and piano, originally conceived for bass voice, clarinet and piano.
The program includes Mozart’s Trio in E-flat, K. 498 “Kegelstatt” (with Konopka and clarinetist Robert Woolfrey), and three works for cello and piano featuring Richard Weiss: Gaspar Cassadó’s Requiebros (1934) & Danse du Diable Vert (1926), and Charles-Marie Widor’s Cello Sonata in A, op. 80. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Music for French horn, mezzo-soprano and piano isn’t an everyday flavor of chamber music, so if you happen to be Jeff Nelsen and you marry Nina Yoshida and decide to perform together, you have to undertake some exploring, some arranging, and some commissioning, to come up with enough repertoire to build a concert program. Last Wednesday evening, July 1, Jeff and Nina Nelsen, in cahoots with pianist Elizabeth DeMio, proved that a delightful evening of chamber music can result from unlikely ingredients — if the performers and the music are as excellent and committed as these were. [Read more…]
By Daniel Hautzinger
Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor Brett Mitchell has had an eventful summer. He just got married and moved into a new house, and last weekend he made his debut at the Blossom Music Center, stepping in for Stanislaw Skrowaczewski to conduct The Cleveland Orchestra (TCO) after Skrowaczewski cancelled shortly before the concert because of illness. And on July 26, Mitchell returns to Blossom for what he thought would be his debut there, conducting the Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra in a prelude concert at 7:00.
That concert will be followed at 8:00 by John Storgårds conducting TCO in Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture and Liszt’s First Piano Concerto with Stephen Hough. Finally, the jam-packed night will end with the Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra, who are students at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival, and TCO in a side-by-side performance of Sibelius’s Second Symphony led by Storgårds.
Things have come full circle for Mitchell, whose first time working with TCO “was back in the summer of 2009, when they hired me to be a cover conductor for a couple of their guest conductors at Blossom,” he said last week over the phone while on the way to lunch in between rehearsals. So a debut at Blossom is fitting. [Read more…]
By J.D. Goddard
An evening of Brahms at any venue, with any combination of instruments, is always a deeply moving experience for those who love Romantic music. And so it was Wednesday evening, July 16 at Kent State’s Ludwig Recital Hall when Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower and pianist Jee-Won Oh presented three Brahms sonatas as part of the Kent/Blossom Music Festival Faculty Recital Series. This was an evening of deep emotion as these two excellent performers fused their exceptional talents into an exquisite program. [Read more…]