by Jarrett Hoffman
There are still so many ongoing effects from the pandemic: physical, mental, economic, and most devastating of all, linguistic, specifically when it comes to the word “debut.”
In early 2021, Stephanie Jones was featured in the local music scene for the first time through a video — and a very popular one at that — recorded at her home in Munich and presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society. Now, an event that also feels deserving of that word, she’ll finally be visiting Cleveland in person.
Perhaps great minds can gather and hash all this out. In the meantime, the more Stephanie Jones, the better — and on Sunday, September 17 at 3:00 pm, she will bring works by J.S. Bach, Richard Charlton, Ross Edwards, Jakob Schmidt, Quique Sinesi, Rostislav Golubov, Astor Piazzolla, and Antônio Carlos Jobim to the Maltz Performing Arts Center in a presentation by CCGS. See the full program here, and get tickets here.
I sat down with the Australian-born guitarist on Zoom and began by catching up on some life updates: since we last spoke, she has finished her master’s degree and Konzertexamen at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, and is now teaching at the University of Augsburg — in addition to teaching through her Patreon, where her 25-member online studio is currently maxed out.
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.
“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” a line from The Book of Job, inspired the title of a full-length opera that received its Cleveland premiere last weekend at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. I saw the last of four performances on Sunday afternoon, June 12.
When Cathy Lesser Mansfield was asked to write a piece for the youth theater program at the Jewish Community Center in Cleveland Heights in 1977, little did she know that her creation would mark the beginning of her journey to compose an opera.
Having discovered surprisingly little overlap between their mailing lists, Cleveland’s two main purveyors of chamber music decided to bring their followers together on April 5 to enjoy a joint concert at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
In lieu of moving something resembling a normal season of concerts online, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra offered its patrons a beautifully produced video filmed at the Maltz Performing Arts Center at CWRU that debuted on May 27.
After greeting an in-person audience the night before at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, a mixed quartet from CityMusic Cleveland performed for an audience unseen on Saturday, May 15, thanks to the live-streaming capabilities of the Maltz Performing Arts Center.
Percussion music is full of nuance, but you can also boil it down to the single, simple action of striking something. And whether you’re the one doing that, or you’re watching it happen, it can be cathartic, which is one reason why that genre might feel particularly welcome during a time that still has its share of anxiety.
At one point during our recent conversation on Zoom, pianist/composer and Cleveland native Rob Kovacs gestured behind him to a bookshelf holding what he estimated to be 350-400 old video game cartridges. He laughed. “I’ve been collecting for about fifteen years, and I just keep going.”