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Cleveland Chamber Symphony features works by Margaret Brouwer (Apr. 19)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Margaret Brouwer’s music has become a fixture in Northeast Ohio — distinctive, unmistakable, and not easily pinned down. She goes her own way, with stylistic diplomacy: borrowing freely, but never pledging allegiance to any one camp.

On Sunday, April 19, Steven Smith led the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in three works by Brouwer as part of NEOSonicFest, its annual spring exposition of new sounds, at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights.

First up was Donald Erb’s Harold’s Trip to the Sky (1974). Scored for viola, piano, and percussion, Erb treats the ensemble less as a traditional trio than as three independent voices. The title makes a nod to Lord Byron’s Harold but Erb’s piece doesn’t tell a story. It unfolds in episodes: the viola climbing and exploring, the piano holding its ground, the percussion commenting, like Puck, with wry asides. [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra with violinist David McCarroll in Rocky River (Nov. 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Let’s cut to the chase and simply say that it would be difficult to imagine a more perfect and moving performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto than the one David McCarroll gave with Daniel Meyer and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra on Sunday afternoon, November 23 at Rocky River Presbyterian Church. We’ll come back to that thought.

The straight-through performance preceded the Beethoven with works by Cleveland composer Margaret Brouwer and a youngish Aaron Copland.

Brouwer’s engaging and popular The Art of Sailing at Dawn evokes memories of growing up on the Great Lakes. A flute conjures sonic images of gulls, and subtle waves support a lovely oboe solo before the wind kicks up and dark clouds assemble. A storm erupts, but soon passes, leading to a quiet ending. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: Brouwer’s Viola Concerto with Eliesha Nelson in Rocky River (Oct. 27)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The peripatetic CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra was founded with the admirable mission of bringing free performances of classical music to various corners of metropolitan Cleveland.

Having already taken their interesting program of works by J.S. Bach, Margaret Brouwer, and Johannes Brahms to Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills, and the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus in Slavic Village, CityMusic ended its most recent progress around town at Our Lady of Angels in Rocky River on Sunday afternoon, October 27. The performance attracted a large audience. [Read more…]

Recording review: Margaret Brouwer Rhapsodies (Naxos)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Rhapsodies, Cleveland composer Margaret Brouwer’s latest recording on the Naxos American Classics label, is a retrospective of works written over the last 21 years by one of the classiest orchestral colorists in the field.

Sensitive performances of Brouwer’s well-constructed works by Marin Alsop and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony offer examples of contemporary music that can be both sophisticated and accessible. Here’s proof that a composer’s emotional reactions to sights and sounds can be translated into music and shared with others in fresh and evocative ways. [Read more…]

CD Review: Margaret Brouwer Reactions 

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by Nicolette Cheauré

Margaret Brouwer’s latest album, Reactions: Songs and Chamber Music, released in April of this year, is an exploration of shared humanity, connection, love, and responses to universal life experiences.

Through a mix of instrumental and vocal chamber music featuring Sarah Beaty (mezzo-soprano), Brian Skoog (tenor), Mari Sato (violin and narration), Eliesha Nelson (viola), and Shuai Wang (piano), Brouwer offers a study of the range of human emotion. [Read more…]

A long-awaited celebration from the Blue Streak Ensemble (May 22)

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by Stephanie Manning

In the two years since the Cleveland Institute of Music’s centennial, Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble has been patiently waiting for the opportunity to celebrate — and they weren’t about to let another chance pass by. After three pandemic-related delays, the concert finally presented on May 22 at CIM’s Mixon Hall was a testament to both the institution and the resilience of the ensemble itself.

Sunday’s program, the first in a pair of performances from the ensemble, featured four contemporary works with instrumentations ranging from one to six players. It also paid homage to the lineage of CIM composition faculty with a work by Donald Erb — the second performance, on Tuesday the 24th, highlighted Marcel Dick and Keith Fitch. (Brouwer herself was the head of the composition department from 1996 to 2008.)

[Read more…]

Fourth time’s the charm: Blue Streak celebrates CIM

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Any graph tracking cases of coronavirus is a looping one: up, down, up, down. So if the timing is just unlucky enough, the same program could potentially be postponed once, twice, thrice…

That hypothetical has been a reality for the Blue Streak Ensemble. The group aimed to celebrate the Cleveland Institute of Music’s centennial in 2020 with a set of three programs that would include, in part, music by composers connected to CIM. But new variants, new spikes, and rescheduled student recitals have meant cycling through one date after another.

So composer and Blue Streak director Margaret Brouwer had a proclamation to make during our recent conversation on Zoom. “We’re giving these concerts no matter what!” she said with a laugh. “Even if we have to stand in the street and play.”

[Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland:
clarinet quintets old & new,
traditional & non-traditional

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by Jarrett Hoffman

A clarinet and a string quartet are the traditional components of a clarinet quintet, an instrumentation that has spawned widely performed works by composers such as Mozart, Brahms, and Coleridge-Taylor.

But after CityMusic Cleveland clarinetist Ellen Breakfield-Glick reached out to Margaret Brouwer about the possibility of writing a new clarinet quintet, the composer considered the possibilities, noting to herself that she had already written one in 2005.

“I’m all about sounds and colors,” Brouwer said during a recent interview. “That’s one reason I wanted to have percussion — I thought it would give me a lot of new colors.”

Commissioned by CityMusic and inspired by the theme for the ensemble’s 2021-22 season — “Justice, Equality, Hope” — Brouwer’s Justice March for the unconventional combination of clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and percussion will receive its premiere on Saturday, April 23 at 7:00 pm at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus.

[Read more…]

Local 4 Music Fund brings women composers and new music to the forefront with She Scores

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by Stephanie Manning

When the Institute for Composer Diversity analyzed the 2019-20 seasons of 120 American orchestras, it found that just eight percent of all pieces performed were composed by women. For Amber Rogers, artistic director of the Local 4 Music Fund, data like this combined with her own experiences as a violist inspired her latest project — one she’s been thinking about for a long time.

“The idea of concerts featuring female composers isn’t new, but I didn’t see anything quite like this in Cleveland,” Rogers said in a recent interview. “I’ve wanted to do something like this for about a decade.” After almost two years of preparation, her dream will soon be realized through She Scores, a series of three concerts from June 25-27. Livestreamed on Facebook and Local 4’s website, the performances will feature works by sixteen women composers in a variety of musical styles and ensemble configurations.

[Read more…]

Responding, or not, to the pandemic: conversations with eight composers

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by Jarrett Hoffman

During the COVID-19 pandemic, performers and presenters have grappled with cancellations by giving virtual performances and releasing videos from the past.

Composers have been flying a little more under the radar — and in a way, that’s natural. “Sheltering in place isn’t that much different than being on deadline for a piece,” Oberlin Conservatory professor Stephen Hartke wrote by email. Cleveland Institute of Music professor Keith Fitch agreed: “A quarantined composer is not so different from a non-quarantined composer.”

Hartke and Fitch are two of the eight composers — including professors, freelancers, and young professionals — who agreed to share their thoughts for this article. After establishing that all things considered, they’re healthy and well, we delved into how — or whether — the pandemic has impacted their writing.

[Read more…]

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