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Michelle Cann at Severance: smiles, laughter, and learning something new (May 19)

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by Stephanie Manning

What’s the best part about attending a dinner party? Maybe it’s the friendly conversation, the relaxed atmosphere, or a lovely musical performance. Michelle Cann’s recital had all three.

On May 19, the pianist welcomed the audience into her (temporary) home at Severance Music Center, entertaining with both elegant musicianship and cheerful dialogue. The warm lighting, low ceiling, and plush seats of Reinberger Chamber Hall helped make it feel as if the packed crowd was listening from inside Cann’s living room.

Presented in Cleveland as part of the 2025 Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival, “The Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance” is a program as much about education as it is about performance. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Imani Winds go all out with Michelle Cann (Oct. 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Imani Winds has mastered the art of extemporized risk-taking. If most of the notes on Tuesday, October 15, were predetermined, the specialness was in what was not on the page. It’s what one aspires to hear from the best chamber music performances and in jazz: aligned individual and group invention, conversational interplay, courage of dynamics, tempos, and timbres edging on extremes — music-making never again to be heard in exactly the same way.

Flutist Brandon Patrick George, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mark Dover, horn player Kevin Newton, and bassoonist Monica Ellis were joined by pianist Michelle Cann — a potent spark of invention in her own right — in a program of varied, but logically grouped works by Paquito D’Rivera, Lalo Shifrin, Francis Poulenc, and Valerie Coleman. Ellis described the evening’s sequence as “concentric circles” coinciding in Paris, or at least in a French aesthetic.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society continues its 75th anniversary season with Imani Winds and pianist Michelle Cann

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by Mike Telin

For pianist Michelle Cann, returning to Cleveland always feels like coming home. “It was such a significant part of my life, having done my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music,” she said. “I just love the city and I have so many memories, both musically and personally, that it always feels so great to be back.”

On Tuesday, October 15 at 7:30 pm at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church, Cann will join the Imani Winds for a Cleveland Chamber Music Society concert that will include works by Paquito D’Rivera, Lalo Schifrin, Valerie Coleman, and Francis Poulenc. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

PianoDays @CLE: Michelle Cann features music of Florence Price (Aug. 11)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Pianist Michelle Cann freely admits she was as unaware as everyone else about the music of Florence Price until a trove of Price’s compositions turned up in the composer’s former summer home in Chicago in 2009.

Since then, Cann has become one of Price’s most enthusiastic advocates, as she made clear to the audience in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on August 11. Her program, part of Piano Cleveland’s PianoDays @CLE, wrapped works by Chopin, Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Margaret Bonds around Price’s Sonata in e and Fantasie Nègre No. 1, also in e minor. I heard the performance through the livestream. [Read more…]

Pianist Michelle Cann Returns for PianoDays @CLE

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by Mike Telin

Winner of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Professor at the Curtis Institute of Music, pianist Michelle Cann returns to Cleveland on Thursday, August 11 for a 7:30 pm performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall. Presented as part of PianoDays @CLE, her program features works by Chopin, Brahms, Clara Schumann, Florence Price, and Margaret Bonds. Purchase tickets here.

Cann made her orchestral debut at age fourteen and has since performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

A champion of the music of Florence Price, she performed the New York City premiere of the composer’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in July 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra in February 2021. [Read more…]

Piano Cleveland presents: Prelude to Piano Days 2022 Listening Series

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by Mike Telin

Piano Cleveland has a lot in store for Northeast Ohio this summer. But before PianoDays@CLE kicks off on July 24, why not take a deep dive into how to listen to piano music by enrolling in the Prelude to Piano Days 2022 Listening Series? During the three sessions you’ll discover how two pianists work together, what it means to immerse yourself in the work of a single composer, and what exactly is involved in improvisation. Click here for more information.

“We call this ‘education for adults,’” Piano Cleveland president Yaron Kohlberg said during a Zoom conversation. “It’s all part of our mission to make piano music as accessible as possible. And to help everybody, regardless of their knowledge of piano music, find something to connect with.”

Following the success of last year’s listening series which touched on the basics, Kohlberg said that this year the series will go one step further. “Everything that is being presented during the listening series will be heard during the summer performances. So there is a direct connection.” [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra Returns to Blossom

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by Timothy Robson

It was March 20, 2020, when The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst gave their last concert as a complete ensemble before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live performances for more than a year. The Orchestra, with guest conductor Brett Mitchell, returned triumphantly to Blossom Music Center on July 3 and 4 to celebrate Independence Day. I attended on July 4.

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The Cleveland Orchestra Returns to Blossom Music Center

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by Mike Telin

After a year’s absence, The Cleveland Orchestra will return to the stage of Blossom Music on Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4 at 8:00 pm. Under the direction of Brett Mitchell, the concerts will also mark the first time the full orchestra has performed in front of an in-person audience since March of 2020.

“The program is titled ‘An American Celebration,’ and while I’m certain there have been countless Fourth of July concerts over the decades with the same name, for me, this program feels truly American,”Mitchell said during a telephone conversation. “We’re certainly not going to ignore the holiday, so there will be the pieces that are associated with it — the 1812 Overture and Stars and Stripes Forever — but there was a desire to have the program be reflective of times that we are living in and that we have lived through since the Orchestra and audiences were last together.”

The playlist will also include Leonard Bernstein’s “Overture” to Candide, Mary D. Watkins’ Soul of Remembrance, Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement with pianist Michelle Cann, Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Fanfare, and Aaron Copland’s “Suite” from Appalachian Spring. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra: Michelle Cann plays Florence Price

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The name Florence Price had barely come up in school. So in 2016, when pianist Michelle Cann was asked to play that composer’s Concerto in One Movement with the New York City-based orchestra The Dream Unfinished, she hesitated.

“I’d never heard of the piece, and I hardly knew her,” Cann said during a recent telephone conversation. “I thought, I’m not going to just agree to this — I need to see the music.” She remembers when the orchestra sent it to her like it was yesterday. “I sight-read through it, called my friend, and said, ‘This piece is amazing.’ I was like, wait a second — how is it so good, and no one’s ever played it, at least recently?”

After giving the New York premiere five years ago with Dream Unfinished, and debuting it with The Philadelphia Orchestra earlier this year, Cann will play Price’s Concerto in One Movement with The Cleveland Orchestra and conductor Brett Mitchell on Saturday and Sunday, July 3-4 at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center.

The program, “An American Celebration,” also includes works by Bernstein, Watkins, Hailstork, Copland, Tchaikovsky, and Sousa, and will open the Orchestra’s Blossom season. Tickets and more information are available here.

[Read more…]

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