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Jeremy Denk brings a celebration of women composers to Oberlin Artist Recital Series

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by Mike Telin

Like many, Jeremy Denk’s time as an undergraduate at Oberlin was filled with emotion. “When I arrived I had so much growing up to do,” the celebrated pianist recalled. “So every place in Oberlin is kind of covered with those memories — emotional memories, discoveries, and stress, of course. I was trying to do a double degree — trying to be a pianist and a chemist, and in some ways I really wanted to be an English major. I wanted to be a lot of different things.”

As part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series, Jeremy Denk will perform a program that celebrates women composers from the 19th to 21st centuries along with works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms on Thursday, November 30 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel. Tickets are available online.

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Refreshed Oberlin Artist Recital Series Returns This September

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This article is posted with the permission of the Oberlin Conservatory

Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series has presented celebrated musical artists for more than 140 years. That legacy continues with this season’s lineup of brilliant performers and ensembles whose music ranges from classical to gospel to jazz to world music.

The series kicks off on September 22 with the Emerson String Quartet as they give one of their “Farewell Concerts”—and their only performance in Ohio this season—after nearly five decades of performing together. The following programs through April will showcase artists and ensembles presenting an expanded range of music and musicmakers for this historic series, concluding with a performance of folk and ancestral music by Silkroad.

All programs on the six-concert series will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Finney Chapel at 90 N. Professor Street in Oberlin.

A bonus concert at 7:30 p.m. on March 7, featuring Imani Winds, will be held in the Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall.

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Chopin Competition Winner Bruce Liu To Perform on Oberlin Artist Recital Series

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This article is posted with the permission of the author and Oberlin Conservatory 

by Cathy Partlow Strauss

Rising Canadian pianist Bruce Liu, winner of the 18th Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland, will perform the closing program on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series 2022-23 season. The concert is at 2:30 p.m. on April 30 in historic Finney Chapel.

Liu will play pieces by Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt—two great pianist-composers who expanded the piano repertoire in ways that still astound and move artists and audiences.

He describes the music on his spring recital programs as “operatic and full of romantic scenes.”

This concert features Chopin—the poet of the piano—at two distinct stages in his tragically brief career: his early time in Poland in the 1820s, and his artistic maturity during the following decade in Paris. [Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Verona Quartet with Wu Man (Feb. 25)

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by Mike Telin

If you are familiar with the Pipa — a Chinese lute-like instrument with a history that dates back more than 2,000 years — chances are that you first heard it played by Wu Man.

On February 25 in Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, the world’s premiere pipa virtuoso joined the Verona Quartet — Jonathan and Dorothy Ro (violins), Abigail Rojansky (viola), and Jonathan Dormand (cello) — for a program that traveled the musical globe to explore the question, What is home? The concert was presented as part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.

Throughout the evening, the large audience was treated to a musical collaboration that never felt forced. As always, Wu Man’s innate sense of musicality proved that great virtuosity is not always about fast technical passages, it can also be found in the nuances of serenity. And the Verona, Oberlin’s Quartet-in-Residence, were unified partners, producing musically intelligent and technically flawless playing that seamlessly moved in and out of a spectrum of colors and stylistic emotions.

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Oberlin Artist Recital Series April 2: A conversation with bass-baritone John Relyea

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by Mike Telin

RELYEA-John-(Shirley-Suarez)[Editor’s note: John Relyea was forced to cancel his appearance due to illness. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe agreed to step in for him, but fell ill herself and cancelled shortly before the performance on April 2.] Choosing repertoire for a solo recital is not an easy task when you’re a bass-baritone. “The bass voice is often put into dramatic dark territory, and maybe that’s because of the way people heard the color of the voice lending itself to the mood of the poetry,” bass-baritone John Relyea said during a telephone conversation. “I’m always looking for songs to sing that have more positive, less depressing texts.”

On Thursday, April 2 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin College’s Finney Chapel, opera superstar John Relyea and pianist Warren Jones will present a recital featuring works by Richard Strauss, Jacques Ibert, Samuel Barber, Modest Mussorgsky and Peter Warlock. The concert is presented as part of Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series.

The Canadian-born and 2003 Richard Tucker Award winner John Relyea, has earned critical acclaim for his performances in opera houses around the world including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera (where he is an alumnus of the Merola Opera Program and a former Adler Fellow), Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Vienna State Opera, Theater an der Wien, and the Mariinksy Theater. A snapshot of his current opera schedule includes the roles of Henry VIII in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Landgraf in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, both for Lyric Opera of Chicago (January and February). In May, he will perform the title role in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with the Canadian National Opera. [Read more…]

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