by Rory O’Donoghue
“This next one will have all the homosexuals in the room grabbing a vodka cranberry,” composer Buck McDaniel said winkingly to a packed crowd at Mahall’s last Friday night, March 29. “Including me,” he added. It was perfect commentary for the energetic kickoff event of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s 6th NEOSonicFest, an evening that celebrated both cocktails and contemporary music.
by Mike Telin
Cleveland Chamber Symphony launches its sixth NEOSonicFest on Friday, March 29 at 9:00 pm at Mahall’s in Lakewood with a concert in partnership with Fresh Perspectives. Uno Lady (Christa Ebert), a one-woman choir, will create electronic loops, harpist Stephan Haluska will present his own electro-acoustical compositions, and Buck McDaniel and Jacob Kirkwood will present a concert version of their live electro-acoustic score written for Cleveland Public Theatre’s Fire on the Water, a meditation on the 50th anniversary of the burning of the Cuyahoga River. The evening will also feature “signature cocktails” available for purchase. Tickets go for $7.
In a recent conference call, Fresh Perspective’s Devin Hinzo said that when they were looking for a venue to present McDaniel’s and Kirkwood’s piece, they immediately thought of Mahall’s. “They support local and emerging musicians as well as music that doesn’t fit any particular genre, so it seemed like a natural fit.”
by Jarrett Hoffman
When a festival runs for long enough, it becomes interesting to look back and remember that it wasn’t always a staple of the local culture. At one time, it was entirely new.
“Last weekend,” Daniel Hathaway wrote in April of 2014, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony “burst suddenly into bloom like a crocus after a long winter with the first of two concerts anchoring its promising new enterprise, NEOSonicFest…”
Back then, music director Steven Smith had been thinking for years about how to keep the name and activities of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony alive, as Mike Telin reported in our very first preview of NEOSonicFest. The retirement of the orchestra’s founder, Edwin London, and the end of its residency at Cleveland State University had slowed the group’s momentum.
by Daniel Hathaway
The final event in the Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s 2018 NEOSonicFest gave eight young composers the opportunity to hear their creations played by a professional orchestra led by Steven Smith — himself a composer. The pieces were performed in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace University on Wednesday, April 11.
by David Kulma
The Syndicate for the New Arts kicked off their new Transmitter series at Historic St. John’s on Tuesday night, April 10. Focusing on a collaboration among experimental noise musicians and video and performance artists, this first night had the Parish Hall both visually and aurally glowing. [Read more…]
by David Kulma
Concerts by CIM’s New Music Ensemble have such startlingly high levels of performance that it’s hard to remember that the musicians are, in fact, students. In their concert on Saturday night, April 7 at the Bop Stop as a part of this year’s NEOSonicFest, the ensemble gave immaculate performances of works selected from their 2017-2018 repertoire. [Read more…]
by David Kulma
This year’s NEOSonicFest — the new music festival presented by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony — held its second concert on Friday, April 6th with a program by the venturesome ensemble No Exit at Heights Arts. The musicians of No Exit and two guest trumpeters were in top form for this potpourri of chamber music. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
Éliane Radigue creates works that often suit the gallery better than the concert hall. Best known for drone compositions of almost cosmic proportions — OMNHT, her current installation at MOCA Cleveland, runs for several decades before looping — her works tend to defy conventional notions of performance. But last week, Northeast Ohio concertgoers took in a rare experience: hearing some of Radigue’s recent acoustic works for live performers, while seated inside the installation.
by Mike Telin
Since 2014, the Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony has sponsored NEOSonicFest, a festival of new music performed by musicians from Northeast Ohio and beyond. The 2018 festival will run from April 5 through 11 (see below for concert dates and times).
Clarinetist Carol Robinson and trumpeter Nate Wooley will kick things off by performing selections from Éliane Radigue’s Occam Ocean on April 5 at MOCA. The composer describes her work as “an ongoing acoustic work with influences ranging from electromagnetic waves, to William of Ockham’s philosophies, to science fiction mythologies.”
The always creative No Exit will return to the Festival on April 6 at Heights Arts. The ensemble was founded by composer Timothy Beyer as an outlet for the commissioning and performance of contemporary avant-garde concert music. No Exit is committed to promoting the works of living composers, particularly the music of young and emerging artists who haven’t yet received either the opportunities or exposure of their better-known counterparts. (Works by Leo Ornstein, Ty Emerson, Per Nørgård, James Praznik, Andrew Rindfleisch & Tristan Murail).
by Mike Telin
If you’ve ever tried to define the term “contemporary classical music” in clear and decisive language, chances are that you’ve found it impossible. Modernism, post-modernism, spectral music, polystylism, historicism, neo-romanticism, new simplicity, and new complexity, as well as minimalism and post-minimalism — encountering these categories might leave you throwing up your hands in frustration. Honestly, the best way to understand the breadth of contemporary classical music is to experience it live — as often as possible. [Read more…]