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CityMusic Cleveland:
the poetry of Weatherspoon
& an ode to Slavic Village

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The next program from CityMusic Cleveland was dreamed up by Miho Hashizume, and stems from two of the violinist’s experiences over the past few years: teaching strings in Slavic Village, and encountering the poetry of Cleveland-born writer and activist Weatherspoon.

Through commissions from CityMusic, that author’s texts have been set to music by Jasmine Barnes and Jessica Meyer in works for string quartet and soprano that will be heard for the first time — the latest of several new pieces by women composers that have been premiered during the organization’s 2021-22 season.

The program, titled “Slavic Village Then and Now,” also includes music by a pair of Czech composers: Antonín Dvořák and, by ancestry, Cleveland-born Charles Rychlik, who lived on Fleet Avenue in Slavic Village, and who crossed paths with Dvořák during studies at the Prague Conservatory.

Performances will take place on Friday, April 8 at Lakewood Congregational Church and Sunday, April 10 at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, both at 7:00 pm. Admission is free — RSVP’s encouraged — and a livestream option has been added for Friday’s concert.

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CityMusic Cleveland: Identity and “Syncretism”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

syn·cre·tism — the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought (Oxford English Dictionary).

CityMusic Cleveland will explore that concept with an in-person concert of chamber music on Sunday, April 11 at 3:00 pm at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus. (The audience will be limited to 250 people, and masks and social distancing are required. Click here to RSVP.)

The program begins with a quartet: Jungyoon Wie’s 2019 Han, played by violinists Miho Hashizume and Catherine Cosbey, violist Eric Wong, and cellist Sophie Benn. Then clarinetist Dan Gilbert will join the ensemble for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 1895 Clarinet Quintet in f-sharp.

On a purely musical level, it’s hard to pick two pieces that deserve a wider audience — one of them a fresh and riveting contemporary piece, the other a beautiful and unjustly neglected gem of the past. But these two composers also represent an intriguing pairing through the lens of syncretism.

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CityMusic Cleveland:
“Baroque Reflections” (Dec. 6)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

On December 6, CityMusic Cleveland continued its season-long chamber series celebrating 100 years of the 19th amendment with “Baroque Reflections,” streamed live from the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

Here are the numbers: seven masked performers (including several period-instrumentalists and, notably for these times, a soprano) alternated through multiple configurations from duo to sextet as they explored music by eight composers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Arts Renaissance Tremont: Amici Quartet (Jan. 31)

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by Nicholas Stevens

As the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth sweeps classical music audiences along a twelve-month, field-wide festival of heroics, experiments, rhapsodizing, and apocalyptic drive, a challenge arises for performers who plan to acknowledge the occasion. In a season peppered with all-Beethoven programs, how does one stand out? Of the many approaches that could thrill an audience and do justice to the composer, which ones serve the ensemble just as well? On a late January evening, the Amici Quartet offered their answer: impeccable playing and utter unity. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland at Lakewood Congregational (Dec. 13)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Mass media can make it feel as though the true color of the holiday season is a uniform Federal Reserve-issue sage, barely veiled by the colors of different proud traditions. The same ten songs blare in every grocery aisle. Yet on the ground, people find ways to wring something vital and unique out of a month when every icon of cheer feels somehow recycled. CityMusic Cleveland, prone to giving end-of-year concerts packed with music that knows no season, has found a way to reconcile seasonality with a respite. [Read more…]

Season 14 of Close Encounters, Year 20 of Heights Arts

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Close Encounters Chamber Music and artistic director Isabel Trautwein have two reasons to celebrate: the series’ 14th season, and the 20th year of its parent organization, Heights Arts.

The minds behind the scheduling have kept things simple for concertgoers to store away in their brains (and for writers to explain): the four concerts take place on Sundays at 3:00 pm, which does seem like a particularly nice time for “up close and personal” chamber music, just as the series likes it. Single and season tickets are available online.

Up first is the Omni Quartet on October 13 at a Carriage House on Herrick Mews Lane in Cleveland Heights. Cleveland Orchestra musicians Amy Lee and Alicia Koelz, violins, Wesley Collins, viola, and Tanya Ell, cello, will bring along Haydn’s Trio in C, Hob V:G1, Mozart’s Quartet No. 22 in B-flat, and Robert Schumann’s Quartet No. 3 in A — written during his exuberant, love-filled first year of marriage to Clara Wieck.

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Arts Renaissance Tremont turns twenty-nine this season

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by Mike Telin 

Since its founding in 1991, Arts Renaissance Tremont (ART) has been a cultural pillar in that West Side Cleveland neighborhood. And from the beginning, the organization has made its home at the historic Pilgrim Congregational UCC. Under the tireless direction of its founder and director Chris Haff-Paluck (left, with Jinjoo Cho), with assistance from a group of dedicated board members and volunteers, ART has remained true to its vision of keeping concerts free of charge.

On Sunday, October 13 at 3:00 pm, ART will kick off its 29th season with a recital by cellist Darrett Adkins and pianist Cicilia Yudha. Their program will feature works by Janáček, Kodály, Messiaen, and Chopin.

“Twenty-nine years — who knows where all the time has gone?” Haff-Paluck said during an interview, noting that the Tremont neighborhood was very different in the early ‘90s. “There are so many restaurants and galleries now, but it wasn’t that way back then. People wanted arts programs to be happening in the neighborhood.”

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Arts Renaissance Tremont: Amici Quartet continue their Beethoven series (Feb. 10)

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by David Kulma

It’s February, and that means another lovely installment in the Amici Quartet’s multi-year Beethoven cycle for Arts Renaissance Tremont at Pilgrim Congregational Church. This year’s program on Sunday, February 10 included two quartets in the key of A that span the composer’s career. The Op. 18, No. 5 quartet is a jovial work with dark undercurrents from Beethoven’s first collection of six quartets published in 1800, while the late Heiliger Dankgesang quartet, Op. 132 from 1825, features a profound and patiently unfolding slow movement. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra musicians play on CVNP Conservancy Series (July 17)

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by Alice Koeninger

The Happy Days Lodge welcomed musicians from The Cleveland Orchestra with special guest Eric Wong into its wide-beamed hall on Tuesday, July 17, at 7:00 pm. Hosted by the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the concert was a lovely and relaxed program full of color and brightness. [Read more…]

Amici Quartet continue Beethoven cycle on Arts Renaissance Tremont (Feb. 18)

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by David Kulma

Amici-String-Quartet-newSunday afternoon, February 18 was a time for chamber music at Pilgrim Church. As a part of the Arts Renaissance Tremont concert series, the Amici Quartet played their fourth concert in a series of six that will survey all of Ludwig van Beethoven’s string quartets over several years. [Read more…]

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