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ChamberFest Cleveland at The Madison (July 1)

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by Jacob Strauss

ChamberFest Cleveland put on a spectacular event on July 1 at The Madison. They proclaimed that it was unorthodox fitting a round into a square in the old luxury faucet plant located at 46th and Payne in Midtown.

Pianos with pins and tape on strings, a bass drum and tam tam, crotales, Almglocken, and vibes. Microphones were hooked up all around the instruments. The feed was sent to speakers around the room. Lighting designer Nicholas Houfek hung incandescent globes over the arrangement of instruments from thin black wires stretching across the beams. [Read more…]

Credo Music celebrates
20 years in Oberlin

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by Daniel Hathaway

Among the several distinguished chamber music programs in Northeast Ohio that welcome young musicians each summer, Credo Music is unique for its parallel emphasis on providing professional-level music instruction to students ages 13-23, and on serving others — both through outreach concerts and in volunteering opportunities in food banks, park districts, churches, Habitat for Humanity, and homeless shelters.

Oberlin Conservatory viola professor Peter Slowik, who founded Credo in Chicago in 1999, said in a recent telephone conversation that this summer is a time to reflect on the last two decades. “Twenty years is a big milestone. Musical generations turn over every three, four, or five years. This is an opportunity to look back and see what we’ve done in the past, and to pivot toward where we’re going to be in the future.”

Slowik said that Credo has been “blessed from the beginning” to have virtually all of its faculty return every summer. “We were all in our early 40s at the beginning, and now we’re all in our 60s, so we have to think about refreshing ourselves. Because we’re probably not going to keep doing this when we’re in our 90s, this is an inflection point.” [Read more…]

Tuesday Musical: Chamber Music from Lincoln Center (Mar. 12)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Depending on how presenters and performers discuss it in concerts, music history can be a portal to deeper understanding or a padlock. Especially hazardous is the tracing of artistic lineage. If you talk engagingly about teacher-to-student “family trees,” the concert may gain in vitality and direction. If you list them dryly, you risk making textbook fodder of vibrant art.

[Read more…]

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center returns to Tuesday Musical stage

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by Mike Telin

On Tuesday, March 12 at 7:30 pm, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will return to Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall stage as part of Tuesday Musical’s Mainstage Series. The program of Russian music will feature Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque in g for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher for Violin and Piano, Prokofiev’s Sonata in C for Two Violins, and Taneyev’s Piano Quintet in g. Tickets are available online.

“I’m so excited to be able to play this program,” pianist and CMS artistic director Wu Han said during a telephone conversation. “People know the names Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev, but they may not know these pieces, and Sergei Taneyev is a name that music lovers in the United States should be more familiar with.”

Han, who will be joined by her CMS colleagues Arnaud Sussmann and Alexander Sitkovetsky, violins, Matthew Lipman, viola, and Nicholas Cannellakis, cello, said the program is built around the relationship that Taneyev had with Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev.

“He was Rachmaninoff’s and Scriabin’s teacher, and he claimed that he was Prokofiev’s teacher as well. And at one point, Tchaikovsky was Taneyev’s teacher.” [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Dawn of a Revolution (June 30)

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by Mike Telin

ChamberFest Cleveland wrapped up its seventh season with an excellent concert on Saturday, June 30 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. “Dawn of a Revolution” included works by Claude Debussy, a world premiere by Sebastian Chang, and a musical tapestry woven with inspired new choreography by David Shimotakahara. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Behind Bars” at Reinberger (June 29)

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by Timothy Robson

In the penultimate concert of their 2018 season, ChamberFest Cleveland offered the program “Behind Bars” on Friday, June 29 in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall at Severance Hall. The title was a reference to twentieth-century composer, organist and teacher Olivier Messiaen, who was being held in a German POW camp in 1940 when he composed his Quartet for the End of Time. That work received a searingly intense performance on the second half of the program, rendering the music that preceded it almost trivial by comparison. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland — Season Seven: In Search of Freedom

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by Mike Telin

Chamberfest LogoSince ChamberFest Cleveland’s inaugural season in 2012, Festival co-artist directors Diana and Franklin Cohen have taken the concept of thematic programming to new heights. (It’s) About Time (2013) explored elements of time as related to the musical experience. Last season’s theme, Cycles: Phases! reflected on the complexity of the human experience at each stage of life.

This season ChamberFest will consider the concept of freedom — an essential ingredient to the creative process. Beginning of June 14 and continuing through June 30, In Search of Freedom will explore the range of freedom in music, with nine concerts in a variety of venues.

In addition to violinist Diana Cohen and clarinetist Franklin Cohen, this year’s roster of returning artists will include violinists Noah Bendix-Balgley, Alexi Kenney, and Amy Schwartz-Moretti, violinist/violist Yura Lee, cellists Julie Albers, Clive Greensmith, and Oliver Herbert, bassist Nathan Farrington, and pianists Zoltán Fejérvári, Roman Rabinovich, and Orion Weiss. Making their ChamberFest debuts are violinist Noah Geller, violists Matthew Lipman and Tanner Menees, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, flutist Lorna McGhee, and singer Amanda Powell.

[Read more…]

Chamber Music from Lincoln Center on Tuesday Musical series (January 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

TMAJan23During Tuesday Musical’s pre-concert chat at E.J. Thomas Hall on January 23, one of the members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center referred to the touring ensemble who were appearing as part of the Clara I. Knight Young Artists Series as “Wu Han and the boys.” Afterwards, the seasoned chamber music pianist teamed up with her younger colleagues — pianist Michael Brown, violinists Chad Hoopes and Paul Huang, violist Matthew Lipman, and cellist Dmitri Atapine — for fresh, riveting performances of works by Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák that melded experience with youthful exuberance. [Read more…]

Tuesday Musical to present Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

TMAJan23

“I love playing chamber music, and CMS concerts are some of the highlights of my season,” violinist Chad Hoopes said by telephone from New York. “You’re playing some of the greatest music and traveling with wonderful people, which is fun because you’re not alone.”

On Tuesday, January 23 at 7:30 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, Hoopes will join his Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center colleagues — Wu Han and Michael Brown, piano, Paul Huang, violin, Matthew Lipman, viola, and Dmitri Atapine, cello — in a concert presented by Akron’s Tuesday Musical Association. The program juxtaposes music by two giants of Romanticism — Antonín Dvořák and Johannes Brahms. Click here for program details and ticket information.

[Read more…]

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: string sextets on CCMS series at Plymouth (April 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

SextetChamber music societies are big on presenting string quartets — they’re portable, capable of a wide range of musical expression, and they control most of the repertory. But every now and again, programming differently-sized ensembles provides a welcome change. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center gave the Cleveland Chamber Music Society that opportunity on Tuesday, April 19, when it served up a program of string sextets by Richard Strauss, Antonín Dvořák, and Johannes Brahms to a large audience at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]

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