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ChamberFest Cleveland at The Madison (July 1)

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by Jacob Strauss

ChamberFest Cleveland put on a spectacular event on July 1 at The Madison. They proclaimed that it was unorthodox fitting a round into a square in the old luxury faucet plant located at 46th and Payne in Midtown.

Pianos with pins and tape on strings, a bass drum and tam tam, crotales, Almglocken, and vibes. Microphones were hooked up all around the instruments. The feed was sent to speakers around the room. Lighting designer Nicholas Houfek hung incandescent globes over the arrangement of instruments from thin black wires stretching across the beams. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: 
An Enchanting Celebration (July 2)

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by Peter Feher

If you missed the tail end of ChamberFest Cleveland’s season, don’t be too worried. The highlights from each summer of brilliant, collaborative performances have a way of sticking around — online on the Festival’s YouTube channel and, more recently, on the radio with WCLV. Certainly this year’s finale, on July 2 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, was full of such memorable musical moments.

The program, titled “An Enchanting Celebration,” made good on its promise of a special event. ChamberFest put two large ensembles on stage for a pair of works brimming with instrumental and stylistic variety.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland Concert 6: “Forging New Paths” at Mixon (June 23)

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by Nicholas Stevens

“Forging New Paths,” the title of ChamberFest Cleveland’s sixth concert this season, refers to a time when critics feared that classical music was dying. In an article titled “New Paths,” Robert Schumann predicted that his young colleague Brahms would become German art music’s savior. The unstated premise was that it needed one. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland Concert 5: “A Turn in the Road” at Mixon (June 21)

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by Nicholas Stevens

In the fifth concert of this year’s ChamberFest Cleveland season, programming took “A Turn in the Road” amid the festival’s theme of searching for freedom. Three trios played works by Alban Berg, George Crumb, and Antonín Dvořák, each of whom sought liberation from aesthetic constraints in some way. The resulting musical experience on June 21 in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall had remarkable stylistic and sonic range. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland Concert 6: “A Free for All” at Crawford Rotunda (June 19)

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by Timothy Robson

ChamberFest Cleveland offered a light-hearted program of mostly unusual repertoire on Tuesday, June 19, in the resonant Crawford Rotunda at the Cleveland History Center of the Western Reserve Historical Society in University Circle. Performers included several familiar members of the “ChamberFest family” as well as some talented newcomers. [Read more…]

Flutist Lorna McGhee to join ChamberFest for George Crumb’s Voice of the Whale

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by Jarrett Hoffman

lornamcgheeIn 1969, George Crumb heard the complex, otherworldly singing of the humpback whale — then a deeply endangered species — and was inspired to write Vox Balaenae (“Voice of the Whale”). A trio for flute, cello, and piano, all amplified, the work continues to fascinate audiences with its imitation of whale song, and the feeling it conjures of time standing still.

Taking the composer’s suggestion, ChamberFest Cleveland will cast a deep blue light over the stage of Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Thursday evening, June 21, when they present Crumb’s underwater epic as part of a 7:30 pm concert titled “A Turn in the Road.” The program will also include Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 3 in f and the “Adagio” from Berg’s Chamber Concerto.

I recently spoke with Scottish-born Lorna McGhee, principal flute of the Pittsburgh Symphony and professor at Carnegie Mellon University. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland — Season Seven: In Search of Freedom

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by Mike Telin

Chamberfest LogoSince ChamberFest Cleveland’s inaugural season in 2012, Festival co-artist directors Diana and Franklin Cohen have taken the concept of thematic programming to new heights. (It’s) About Time (2013) explored elements of time as related to the musical experience. Last season’s theme, Cycles: Phases! reflected on the complexity of the human experience at each stage of life.

This season ChamberFest will consider the concept of freedom — an essential ingredient to the creative process. Beginning of June 14 and continuing through June 30, In Search of Freedom will explore the range of freedom in music, with nine concerts in a variety of venues.

In addition to violinist Diana Cohen and clarinetist Franklin Cohen, this year’s roster of returning artists will include violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley, Alexi Kenney, and Amy Schwartz-Moretti, violinist/violist Yura Lee, cellists Julie Albers, Clive Greensmith, and Oliver Herbert, bassist Nathan Farrington, and pianists Zoltán Fejérvári, Roman Rabinovich, and Orion Weiss. Making their ChamberFest debuts are violinist Noah Geller, violists Matthew Lipman and Tanner Menees, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, flutist Lorna McGhee, and singer Amanda Powell.

[Read more…]

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