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Composers Guild joins Cleveland Chamber Choir for Joint Concert

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Sunday, April 4 at 4 pm in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, Cleveland Composers Guild will join  Cleveland Chamber Choir for a program that combines new works by Northeast Ohio choral composers with masterworks from the last five centuries.

I recently met up on Zoom with Chamber Choir interim music director Gregory Ristow and Composers Guild chair Margi Griebling-Haigh to learn more about this Sunday’s concert.

Daniel Hathaway: It takes two to tango, but usually when two organizations end up collaborating, the original idea came from one of them. Who instigated this project?

Margi Griebling-Haigh: Neither of us was in a decision-making capacity when the idea first came up — which I believe was in a brainstorming session for the 2019 season. Probably somebody said, ‘Hey, I’ve heard that Cleveland Chamber Choir is terrific. Let’s work with them.’ So I’m pretty sure we approached them for the first concert. [Read more…]

A Romantic German Valentine

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by Mike Telin

What is it about the central German city of Weimar that has inspired so many important artists, musicians, poets and philosophers?

In 2019 composer Margi Griebling-Haigh had the good fortune to visit the picturesque city twice — she too was inspired. “The apartment I was staying in was on the top floor of an old building on the Herderplatz. My window overlooked the bell tower of the church in which Bach wrote most of his organ concertos,” she recalled during a recent conversation. “It snowed most of the week I was there — it was beautiful. But looking out at the bell tower and hearing them ring, I realized that this is what Bach would have heard. I actually recorded them on my phone, and I knew that somehow I would use them in a piece.”

On Tuesday, February 14 at 7:30 pm at Fairmount Presbyterian Church Chapel, Griebling-Haigh’s Weimarer Winterszenen and Lufthaltenlieder will receive their world premieres during a program titled “A Romantic German Valentine.” The program will also include Schubert’s Auf dem Strom, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen and Schumann’s Drei Romanzen & Drei Fantasiestücke  performed by Gabrielle Haigh (soprano), Robert Woolfrey (clarinet), Jesse McCormick (horn), Margi Griebling-Haigh (English horn), and Randall Fusco (piano). Suggested freewill donation: $20 at the door. [Read more…]

New Wine in Old Bottles: Cleveland Composers Guild goes Baroque

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by Mike Telin

Although it is often said that you cannot put new wine in old bottles — or wineskins, on Friday, March 25 at 7:30 pm in Kulas Music Hall at Baldwin Wallace University, the Cleveland Composers Guild will show that it can be done.

“New Wine in Old Bottles” features recently composed works by Guild members — new wine — performed by Burning River Baroque’s Malina Rauschenfels (Baroque cello,viola da gamba, and voice), Paula Maust (harpsichord), and guest David Ellis (Baroque cello, viola da gamba, and bass gamba) — old bottles.

“I don’t think the Composers Guild has ever collaborated with an early music group,” Guild president Margi Griebling-Haigh said during a recent telephone conversation. “We were just brainstorming, as we do in Guild meetings, about what projects we would like to pursue in the future. This idea came up and everyone thought it was interesting. So we thought ‘Let’s branch out and see what it’s like to write for gamba and harpsichord.’” [Read more…]

Cleveland Composers Guild teams up with McGaffin Carillon for new music 

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by Daniel Hathaway

It’s good for composers to try writing outside their comfort zone, but some members of the Cleveland Composers Guild are challenging themselves to scale new heights by learning to write for the carillon.

Ubiquitous in the Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands, carillons are collections of tuned bells played with the fingers, fists, feet, and occasionally by a performer’s outstretched hand or forearm. The instruments vary in size depending on the number of bells their creators could afford, and on the size of the towers where they’re housed.

Northeast Ohio is home to several carillons, among which the McGaffin Carillon in University Circle is the largest, with its four-octave range of 47 bells. Its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2018 included McGaffin Flourish, a new work by Guild member Jennifer Conner, who teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music — well within earshot of the McGaffin Tower. Although attached to The Church of the Covenant, the structure has been incorporated as a separate entity for the sake of the preservation and promotion of the bells.

Carillonneur George Leggiero has been the liaison between the Friends of the McGaffin Carillon and the Composers Guild in planning a series of new works to be debuted from the tower this fall during the Friday lunchtime concerts, which run between 12:15 and 12:45 pm. [Read more…]

Margi Griebling-Haigh’s The White Trout: a chamber opera in one act on YouTube

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by Daniel Hathaway

Commissioned by Peter Gallagher in 2012, premiered in 2013 at the convention of the International Society of Bassists, and revised in 2019, Margi Griebling-Haigh’s 25-minute chamber opera, The White Trout, was released in mid-November on YouTube.

The piece embellishes an Irish folk tale from County Mayo as told by Samuel Lover and collected by William Butler Yeats. Predictably fantastical, the story centers around a beautiful woman whose fiancé, a king’s son, is murdered and thrown into a lake. The grieving bride eventually disappears (the work of fairies?) about the time villagers notice a strange white trout in the water. [Read more…]

Cleveland Composers Guild joins area music students in 28th “Creativity: Learning Through Experience” (Sept. 27)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The Cleveland Composers Guild’s annual collaboration with music students in the area couldn’t go ahead as usual this year (I’ll let you guess why). But that didn’t stop the Guild and these young players from putting together something virtual.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Composers Guild at Drinko Hall, CSU (Oct. 13)

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by David Kulma

It was another fascinating afternoon of recent music by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild at CSU’s Drinko Recital Hall on Sunday, October 13. Opening the Guild’s 60th anniversary season, the concert featured chamber music by eight local composers in the usual explorative potluck format.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Composers Guild kicks off 60th anniversary on Sunday

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by Mike Telin

If you’ve ever been asked to define new music, you’ve probably found yourself over-thinking the question. As the Minneapolis-based ensemble Zeitgeist explains it on their website, “In the end, new music is simply that: newly created music written by living composers.”

On Sunday, October 13 at 3:00 pm in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, the Cleveland Composers Guild will kick off its 60th anniversary season with a program that celebrates the membership’s diversity of musical styles. The free concert will feature works by Sebastian Birch, Margaret Brouwer, Margi Griebling-Haigh, Scott Michal, Ryan Charles Ramer, Robert Rollin, Matthew C. Saunders, and James Wilding.

“I always say that our concerts are for adventurous listeners who like a smorgasbord of the unexpected,” Composers Guild vice-chair Margi Griebling-Haigh said during a telephone interview. [Read more…]

NEOSonicFest: a look back at the beginning, and a peek at what’s on tap in 2019

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When a festival runs for long enough, it becomes interesting to look back and remember that it wasn’t always a staple of the local culture. At one time, it was entirely new.

“Last weekend,” Daniel Hathaway wrote in April of 2014, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony “burst suddenly into bloom like a crocus after a long winter with the first of two concerts anchoring its promising new enterprise, NEOSonicFest…”

Back then, music director Steven Smith had been thinking for years about how to keep the name and activities of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony alive, as Mike Telin reported in our very first preview of NEOSonicFest. The retirement of the orchestra’s founder, Edwin London, and the end of its residency at Cleveland State University had slowed the group’s momentum.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater {NOW} Festival: a celebration of new opera

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by Daniel Hathaway

The creation of new operas is a passion of Scott Skiba, Cleveland Opera Theater’s executive artistic director. The company will host the third annual {NOW} Festival at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory beginning on Monday, February 4 and running through Sunday, February 9. All Festival activities are free and open to the public.

This year’s Festival will include partnerships between Baldwin Wallace, Bowling Green State University, the Cleveland Composers Guild, Hiram College, and Oberlin. “Every year we try to make the institutional collaborations and student engagement more rich,” Skiba said during a telephone conversation. “And this year we’ve got great energy around everything that’s happening.”

The Festival will also include an American Futures Residency by composers Jake Heggie and Griffin Candey, and soprano Ann Moss. “We started putting the plans for this together during the first {NOW} Festival,” Skiba noted. “The residency will allow us to bring these three exceptional artists to the BW campus to work and collaborate with Conservatory students.” [Read more…]

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