Cuyahoga Arts and Culture has awarded a $5,000 challenge grant to the Blue Streak Ensemble toward production costs of a professional video recording of Margaret Brouwer’s Voice of the Lake, to bring her oratorio about Lake Erie’s ecological challenges to a wider audience. Matching donations must be received by September 19. The revised oratorio will be performed at the Cleveland Institute of Music on October 19.
Review link:
Oratorio Sounds The Alarm About Lake Erie’s Health
by Mike Telin
CLEVELAND – Margaret Brouwer’s “environmental oratorio,” Voice of the Lake, was inspired by an algae bloom in Lake Erie that caused a water crisis in 2014. Its premiere makes an urgent case that the lake is in trouble. Click here to read the article on Classical Voice North America, the website of the Music Critics Association of North America.
Margaret Brouwer’s Voice of the Lake to be premiered at the Breen Center
by Mike Telin
Enjoying the natural beauty of Lake Erie has always been part of composer Margaret Brouwer’s life — she grew up spending summers at her family’s lake cottage in Huron. But when dangerous levels of algae blooms in the Lake’s western basin caused a water crisis in Toledo in 2014, the ensuing national conversation about environmental pollution and the state of the country’s drinking water became the source of inspiration for Brouwer’s latest composition, Voice of the Lake.
The four-part oratorio will have its world premiere this Sunday, November 12 at 3:00 pm at the Breen Center for the Performing Arts.
Music and the environment: a conversation with composer Margaret Brouwer about Voice of the Lake
by Samantha Spaccasi
“Lake Erie is in trouble, and getting worse by the year,” reads an August 2014 article in The New York Times that describes the water crisis in Toledo. The disaster spawned another national conversation about the state of the country’s drinking water and environmental pollution. For composer Margaret Brouwer, that conversation, coupled with her love of Lake Erie, spawned an idea — a new piece titled Voice of the Lake.
In a recent phone conversation, Brouwer described her newest work about Lake Erie’s beauty, but also about its serious environmental problems. I reached her at Interlochen, which she called “a great place to compose.” Brouwer explained her process of creating Voice of the Lake. She’s been working on it for over a year and said it’s “3/4 complete.” [Read more…]
Blue Streak Ensemble at Heights Arts: “Looking Back” (October 13)
by Daniel Hathaway
Composer Margaret Brouwer curated a fascinating playlist for the most recent concert by her Blue Streak Ensemble. At Heights Arts on October 13, the seven musicians wrapped a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Bascom Little Fund and a remembrance of the victims of 9/11 into a single program, “Looking Back.” [Read more…]
Panorámicos and friends salute Cleveland composers on the 50th anniversary of the Bascom Little Fund
by Daniel Hathaway
Though the Bascom Little Fund — named after the late Cleveland architect and avocational composer — may be obscure to many music lovers, it’s quite well-known among composers and musicians. Created “for the promotion through the media of concerts, publications, and recordings of serious and semi-popular music, newly composed and performed in or near Cleveland, Ohio,” the charitable trust has funded numerous projects over the last five decades. [Read more…]
Blue Streak Ensemble to present “Down Home Classical” February 25
by Carlyn Kessler
“I thought the name ‘Down Home Classical’ fit perfectly because chamber music originally started in the home,” composer Margaret Brouwer explained in a telephone conversation. “Back before television, families would get together and play chamber music in the home, and all of this music is very much that kind of chamber music. And the place where we’re performing, Dunham Tavern, is like a great big living room. The audience will be sitting pretty close to the musicians, which will be almost like a home environment.”
On Thursday, February 25 at 7:30 pm at Cleveland’s Dunham Tavern Museum, the Blue Streak Ensemble (BSE), directed by award-winning composer Margaret Brouwer, will present “Down Home Classical,” an evening of American porch music. “It’s very American music,” said Brouwer. “There are a lot of beautiful melodies, wonderful sparkling sounds, and fun, catchy rhythms.” [Read more…]
Blue Streak Ensemble at Fairmount Presbyterian (March 15)
by Mike Telin
It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of composer Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble over the past few years. Unlike many composers who form groups for the sole purpose of bringing their own compositions and arrangements to the public, Brouwer has been guided from the beginning by the mission to present her music alongside that of other living composers, as well as those from the past. On Sunday afternoon, March 15 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, Brouwer realized her mission in a beautifully programmed concert featuring three of her own works, one arrangement, and pieces by two giants of the classical music canon. The concert was splendid from start to finish. [Read more…]
CIM Orchestra celebrates composer Margaret Brouwer’s 75th Birthday
by Mike Telin
In his 2012 New Music Box feature on composer Margaret Brouwer, Frank Oteri appropriately titled the article Margaret Brouwer: Multiple Planes — for Brouwer has undoubtedly enjoyed a multi-faceted career. Starting out as a violinist in the Fort Worth Symphony and Fort Worth Opera Orchestra, she has also toured with the likes of Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett. But it was her passion for composing that eventually led her to abandon her violin career and pursue a doctorate in composition. From 1996 until 2008 Margaret Brouwer served as head of the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
On Wednesday, January 28 at 8:00 pm in Kulas Hall at CIM, guest conductor Michael Adelson will lead the CIM Orchestra in a concert celebrating Margaret Brouwer’s 75th Birthday. The concert features Brouwer’s Caution Ahead – Guard Rail Out (2012) and Rhapsody for Orchestra (2009) as well as Carl Ruggles’s Angels (1921/1940), Lilacs (1924) and Sun-treader (1931). [Read more…]
CD Review: Margaret Brouwer — Shattered
by Mike Telin
On her latest recording, Shattered, released on the Naxos Label, composer Margaret Brouwer has compiled four beautifully constructed and emotionally captivating compositions. Each work reflects her personal and continuing musical journey to come to terms with the first decade of the turbulent twenty-first century. However what makes Shattered so appealing is that you do not need to know of Brouwer’s inner conflicts in order to immerse yourself in her alluring music. She has a talent for taking the simplest melody and through her expansive array of compositional techniques, develop it into a polished musical gem. And even when employing a twelve-tone row, Brouwer never ventures into the realm of compositional gimmickry. Every note she writes has musical purpose.
Margaret Brouwer’s immense prowess as a composer is in full evidence in her Quintet for Clarinet in A and String Quartet (2005), which is masterfully performed by the Maia String Quartet – Tricia Park and Zoran Jakovic, violins, Elizabeth Oakes, viola, Hannah Holman, cello and clarinetist Daniel Silver. In her informative liner notes, Brouwer describes the work as “a musical experiment to see whether the overlaying of different cultural influences can add to and enhance each other.” For example, during the opening movement she inventively layers musical quotes from Christian hymns with an imitation of the Muslim Call to Prayer. [Read more…]