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Cleveland Chamber Collective: “Travelogue” at Disciples (Apr. 12)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Cleveland Chamber Collective’s “Travelogue” at Disciples Christian Church on Sunday afternoon April 12 traced a set of journeys — some literal, some inward — across a compact, varied program. What held it together was a shared interest in motion: landscapes, folk traditions, and time itself.

Director Ty Alan Emerson was an amiable emcee, introducing each piece and serving as an efficient stage crew of one. The program’s range — captivating, sometimes far-flung — reflected careful curation, and he deserves praise for bringing it together.

Robert Manno’s Three Scenes from the Mountains, written in 2012 and inspired by the view from his home in the Northern Catskills, opened the afternoon with pastoral charm. In “The Wind on the Water,” flutist Linda White, clarinetist Alix Reinhardt, and pianist Eric Charnofsky conjured the scene, the piano rippling under shifting breezes of flute and clarinet. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VII (Jan. 12)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program titled Music of America VII held on Sunday, January 12 at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, the Cleveland Chamber Collective presented a concert of attractive and varied new music, inspired by sounds from around the globe —  India to Buenos Aires and Bali to Manhattan.

At two and a half hours, the program might have stood a trimming, but it would be hard to know what to cut — the works and performances by familiar and rising Cleveland professionals were uniformly splendid. Director Ty Alan Emerson served as gracious host as well as stagehand and impresario.

In Reena Esmail’s Blaze, a duo for violin (Emily Cornelius) and tabla (Dylan Moffitt) much of the intensity came from Cornelius’s relationship to Moffitt’s exact playing — we were drawn in by the quietness of Moffitt’s tabla and by Cornelius’s attention to it. The two drifted in and out of sync, with the violinist both captive to and rebelling against the insistent rhythm, even while she conjured enigmatic extremes of darkness and ecstasy.
[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VI

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday, August 3 at 7:00 pm at Disciples Christian Church, The Cleveland Chamber Collective will present Music of America VI. The program includes works by Caroline Shaw, Missy Mazzoli, Jessie Montgomery, Michael Oesterle, Trevor Kazarian, and Eric Charnofsky. The concert is free.

During a recent telephone conversation Cleveland Chamber Collective director and conductor Ty Alan Emerson said that the Music of America series has evolved over time.

“When we started out, we were calling it American Icons, which was our way to feature music by composers such as Lou Harrison, George Crumb, and Leonard Bernstein. Then we thought, there’s all this other music being made in America that isn’t getting played. So several years ago we started to look at who else is out there and who are we missing.”

Emerson noted that right now, inclusion is the hot button in classical music, and that for several years the ensemble has been trying to find ways to be more inclusive.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective: Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker (Apr. 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It is one of Cleveland’s persistently good things that outlets for fresh new music — played by some of the area’s best musicians — continue to thrive. On Sunday, April 28, we were reminded of this again at Cleveland Chamber Collective’s presentation of Ty Alan Emerson’s Oath Breaker, a Requiem for chamber ensemble and digital playback at the Pivot Center.

Emerson conducted a distinguished ensemble comprising Linda White, flute, Emily Cornelius, violin, Brian Slawta, viola, Trevor Kazarian, cello, Eric Charnofsky, piano, and Dylan Moffitt, percussion.

Oath Breaker takes the audience on a 60-minute journey of anger, grief, and hope, as a kind of collective PTSD therapy session about the events of January 6 and its subsequent aftermath. The mixture of recorded electronics, live performances, and poetic and prosaic texts helped to conjure in real time the horror of that day.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: the Showcase Concert and into the fall

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by Jarrett Hoffman

As per tradition, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society will kick off its 2021-22 series with the free Showcase Concert highlighting musicians from around the region. This year’s event, which you can attend in person at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on Saturday, September 18 at 7:30 pm, or via livestream, might aptly be described as a Cincinnati sandwich on Cleveland bread.

There will be three sets, with Cleveland-based musicians on either end. Guitar Society educator Andy Poxon will open the concert with Mauro Giuliani’s Grande Ouverture before moving to his own arrangement of Handel’s D-Major Violin Sonata, where he’ll be joined by violinist Jeanelle Brierley.

Occupying the middle portion of the program is guitarist and composer Jeremy Collins, representing his hometown and homebase of Cincinnati, though he also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music as an undergraduate (Cleveland-bred in addition to the Cleveland bread). He’ll perform two of his own pieces, The Starry Night and Reverie, followed by José Luis Merlin’s Suite del Recuerdo.

At the finish, bringing an impressive variety of flavors to the table is the guitar-and-flute Gruca White Ensemble. They’ll open with three miniatures by Stephen Goss (part of his From Honey to Ashes) influenced by music from around the world. They’ll continue with Masamitsu Takahashi’s Homage to the Harvest Moon, in which they’ll imitate the Japanese traditional instruments shinobue and koto. And they’ll finish with two movements from Marshall Griffith’s Jazz Impressions of Cleveland.

[Read more…]

Urban Troubadour: Ned McGowan in “Big, Bad Flute” (Nov. 24)

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by David Kulma

It was a flute bonanza for Urban Troubadour’s concert on Sunday, November 24 at Akron’s Blu Jazz. The focus of “Big, Bad Flute” was on composer and flutist Ned McGowan, his engaging music, and his astounding playing of the pillar-sized contrabass flute.

[Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra tells tales at Plymouth (May 4)

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by David Kulma

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra entered an exciting second era with the final concert of its 9th season on Saturday, May 4 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Last month, conductor Daniel Meyer was named the orchestra’s artistic director, so now this important Northeast Ohio institution can chart a course into its second decade.

[Read more…]

Trinity Cathedral: Howells & Rutter on Good Friday (Apr. 19)

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by Nicholas Stevens

How can a faith mourn its greatest loss while still gesturing toward the resurrection that follows — and set it all to music? Last year, Trinity Cathedral’s choristers and instrumentalists presented Arvo Pärt’s Passio on their annual Good Friday concert. A vast, austere retelling of Christ’s Passion, the work exerts an almost grueling gravity. This year, however, Trinity artistic director and organist Todd Wilson presented not a monument, but a colorful mosaic of grief, farewell, and hope in the form of two English Requiem settings. [Read more…]

Gruca White Ensemble to feature guitarist/composer works at Bop Stop

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by Mike Telin

Gruca-White-EnsembleIt’s no secret that the Cleveland area has a vibrant classical guitar scene. But it wasn’t until flutist Linda White relocated here from Wyoming, that she discovered the breadth of repertoire that has, and continues to be written for flute and guitar.

“Before I moved here, I can say that I had never heard a classical guitarist perform live, let alone work with one,” White said during a telephone conversation. “As I began to learn the concert repertoire, it spoke to me because of all of the different colors and sounds the instrument is capable of producing.”

On Saturday, March 4 at 8:00 pm at the Bop Stop, Linda White will join classical guitarist Robert Gruca, performing as the Gruca White Ensemble, in a concert that will feature music by three guitarist/composers. [Read more…]

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