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ChamberFest Cleveland: “A Musical Feast” at Heights Theater & in Nate’s World (June 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland’s season theme of “Lost and Found” extended to the choice of venue for its program “A Musical Feast” on June 14.

Heights Theater opened in 1919 as a motion picture theater with 1,200 seats. Renamed Coventry Theater, then Centrum, it eventually closed in 2003. The space was repurposed as a church, following a period as a comedy club, and is now being used as a performance venue.

The sound carries well, but the large space has an odd acoustic which suits some styles of music better than others. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Reflections” at Church of the Saviour (June 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The second program of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2025 season, titled “Reflections,” offered a varied but carefully sequenced triptych, was presented on June 13 at Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. Works by Arvo Pärt, Anton Arensky, and Camille Saint-Saëns captivated with a blend of suspended time, remembrance, and fervent sweep.

Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (“Mirror[s] in the Mirror”) was a remarkable opener, drawing violinist Gabrielle Després and pianist Michael Stephen Brown into a meditative dialogue and listeners into a quasi-hypnotic state. Després’s playing was austere and strangely luminous — testaments to her musical imagination and steady bow arm. She beautifully shaped each phrase — sharpening the listeners’ focus and slowing the collective pulse. Brown’s piano triads resonated with bell-like purity, so finely braided with Després’s lines that the effect was clairvoyant. As each violin note faded, the piano gently cued the next — gestures mirroring one another like eternal reflections in glass.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland invites you to spend time in Nate’s World

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by Mike Telin

“I’ve been coming to ChamberFest for a number of years, and it’s always a wonderful thing to come back,” bassist Nathan Farrington said via Zoom from Los Angeles. “I grew up in Columbus but I have a huge family in the Medina area so it also gives me a chance to perform for and reconnect with them.”

On Saturday, June 14 at 7:30 pm at Heights Theater, Nathan Farrington will join pianist Ahmed Alom and drummer Gabriel Globus-Hoenich for a chamber cabaret from “Nate’s World.” The program also includes J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E, Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat, and Errollyn Wallen’s Making Hay. Wallen and composer Michael Frazier will present a pre-concert conversation at 6:30 pm. A cash bar will be available in the lobby. Tickets can be purchased online.

What is Nate’s World? Farrington said that it grew out of the frustration he and his trio members had with the role of performers in traditional classical concerts — the genre doesn’t always do the best job of acknowledging the role of the performer.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: transporting listeners into “Other Worlds” (June 22)

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by Stephanie Manning

Hearing the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” was not on my ChamberFest Cleveland bingo card. But Brandon Ridenour had other ideas.

“Antonio Vivaldi was the Paul McCartney of his time,” the trumpet player told the audience at the festival’s June 22 concert. Accompanied by string quartet, Ridenour brought his arrangements of both the Beatles and the Baroque to the program — titled “In Other Worlds” — and made a pretty strong case for the connection between 18th-century opera and 1960s pop.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland Concert 6: “Forging New Paths” at Mixon (June 23)

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by Nicholas Stevens

“Forging New Paths,” the title of ChamberFest Cleveland’s sixth concert this season, refers to a time when critics feared that classical music was dying. In an article titled “New Paths,” Robert Schumann predicted that his young colleague Brahms would become German art music’s savior. The unstated premise was that it needed one. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland Concert 6: “A Free for All” at Crawford Rotunda (June 19)

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by Timothy Robson

ChamberFest Cleveland offered a light-hearted program of mostly unusual repertoire on Tuesday, June 19, in the resonant Crawford Rotunda at the Cleveland History Center of the Western Reserve Historical Society in University Circle. Performers included several familiar members of the “ChamberFest family” as well as some talented newcomers. [Read more…]

ChamberFest’s “A Free for All”: A conversation with bassist Nathan Farrington

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by Delaney Meyers

FarringtonChamberFest’s Tuesday, June 19 concert, “A Free for All,” will take place in the Crawford Rotunda at The Cleveland History Center, which houses the restored Euclid Beach Park Grand Carousel. Bassist Nathan Farrington says it will feature “a spectrum of pieces,” offering everyone at least one thing they can “dip their toes into.”

The unconventional program will include music by virtuoso fiddler and composer Mark O’Connor, a diverse set of old folk songs played by Farrington and clarinetist Franklin Cohen, Dvořák’s folk-inspired Songs My Mother Taught Me with soprano Amanda Powell. In a phone conversation, Farrington said he is most looking forward to playing one of the lesser known pieces on the program: Krzysztof Penderecki’s Duo Concertante for violin and bass, written in 2010 and inspired by the composer’s long-term friendship with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter.
[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…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “A Soldier’s Tale” at Maltz Performing Arts Center
(July 2)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CFC-July-2-5The twelfth and final event of ChamberFest Cleveland 2016 was a festive, multimedia concert at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on Saturday, July 2. The event was built around Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, complete with puppetry and video projections — with free admission for 17 and under, and ice cream for all afterwards. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Schubert Journeys” at Reinberger Chamber Hall (July 1)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CFC-July-1-2Expanding its “Tales & Legends” theme in the direction of expeditions, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Schubert Journeys” on Friday, July 1 in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance. In this case, the composer’s journeys were either brief and dramatic (in the Quartettsatz in c) or agreeably rambling — like a stroll in the countryside with no destination and no timetable (in the Octet). In between, Kurt Rohde’s … maestoso … mysterioso … sent two musicians off into uncharted territory with a curious set of tools. [Read more…]

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