by Nicholas Stevens

by Nicholas Stevens

by Mike Telin
by Mike Telin

Beginning later this week, Cleveland Opera Theater will present its second annual {NOW} Festival featuring performances of new opera works at various stages of development, including readings, workshops, and staged productions. {NOW} is presented in collaboration with The Cleveland Composers’ Guild, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, and the Maltz Center for the Performing Arts. All events are free and open to the public (some require registration). Following each performance audiences will have the opportunity to engage with the creative teams and performers during talk-back sessions.
{NOW} begins on Friday the 26th at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Center with a reading of Obie award winner and Garcia Lorca scholar Caridad Svich’s new libretto based on Lorca’s last play, Bernarda Alba. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman

The piano-accompanied, twenty-minute readings will be performed on Saturday, January 27 at 3:00 pm and on Sunday, January 28 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. Both events, part of COT’s {NOW} Festival, are ticketed but free, and include talk-back sessions with the performers and composers.
“Margi, Ryan, and Lorenzo each have incredibly unique styles,” Guild chairman Joseph Hollings said in an email. “If a music lover is looking for a way in to contemporary opera, if a veteran opera-goer wants a refreshing afternoon or evening out, or if anyone wants a chance to quiz the composers about how the musical sausage is made, they don’t want to miss this.” [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
by Mike Telin

During the past 24 years, 296 compositions have been premiered through the program — 409 students have performed, and 317 teachers and coaches have prepared those performances. “It is kind of amazing,” Guild chair Margi Griebling-Haigh said during a telephone conversation. “I have the records of all the pieces, including composers, performers, and private teachers.”
Griebling-Haigh, who has been involved with the Learning through Experience program from its inception, credited then-Composers Guild chair Marshall Griffith for its creation. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

by Mike Telin

The idea to put the concert together came when Griebling-Haigh and her husband, Cleveland Orchestra first assistant principal bassist Scott Haigh learned that their daughter Gabrielle would be home on break from Clare College, Cambridge where she has been studying Classics as well as singing in the renowned Clare College Choir. “Gabrielle has been having a fair amount of success in Cambridge, getting to perform solo parts in concert on tour and in recordings, so I thought since she was home it would be very nice to do recital as a family.” [Read more…]
by Mike Telin

Ms. Griebling-Haigh comes from a family which boasts three generations of composers, including her father, her mother, her sister and her daughter.
A native of Akron, she began music study with her parents and before graduating from high school, had already won awards for her compositions from BMI and the National Federation of Music Clubs. An oboist, she took her Bachelor’s degree from Eastman, studying with Robert Sprenkle, and Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, studying with Marc Lifschey.
In addition to the commission from Barrick Stees, she has been asked to compose for other Cleveland Orchestra soloists, including principal hornist Richard King and the late principal oboist, John Mack. Other commissions have come from organist Karel Paukert, the Schenectady Symphony, the Greater Akron Music Association and the Cleveland area chamber ensemble Panorámicos.
Her daughter Gabrielle (Gabby) is following in the tradition. Currently training to be a classicist at Clare College, Cambridge, where she sings soprano in the Chapel Choir, her Symphony No. 1 was premiered recently by the Monterey Symphony Orchestra.
We spoke with Margi Griebling-Haigh by telephone to talk about her career as a composer, her remarkable family and about the new work she has written for Barrick Stees.