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Salar Nader and Homayoun Sakhi bring Afghan music to Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

“I can’t wait to be back — Cleveland is like a second home,” tabla virtuoso Salar Nader said during a telephone conversation. “I have so many fond memories of performing at the Cleveland Museum of Art and in The Kite Runner at Cleveland Playhouse back in 2010. And of course working so many times with Jamey Haddad at the Bop Stop, Nighttown, and Tri-C JazzFest. And I love Oberlin — to be there with Homayoun and working with the students is going to be a beautiful thing.”

On Sunday, October 6 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel, Salar Nader and rubâb player Homayoun Sakhi will present a program featuring music of their Afghan homeland, pushing artistic boundaries that reflect their country’s position at the confluence of Persian, Central Asian, and Indian cultures. The program also includes Oberlin Conservatory’s Performance and Improvisation (PI) Ensemble, directed by Jamey Haddad.

On Saturday, October 5 at 1:00 pm, Nader and Sakhi will present a public master class in Stull Recital Hall. Click here for more information. Both events are free.

Nader said that Haddad has been a longtime friend and mentor since meeting in the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain in 2007. “DJ Cheb i Sabbah brought us together, and it was like we were long-lost brothers by the time we played the show. Ever since then he has always been so welcoming. The thing that I learned from him and people like Stanley Clark, is that they all have a similar attitude when it comes to welcoming the different musics of the world.”

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ENCORE: “Director’s Carte Blanche” at Oberlin (June 14)

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by Max Newman

This year’s ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival, themed around “Planet Earth,” graced the Cleveland area with some brilliant performances over the course of this month. One of those came on the evening of June 14, when Oberlin Conservatory played host to the series. 

Violinist and founder Jinjoo Cho, violinist Mathieu Herzog, and pianist Hyunsoo Kim starred in a terrific performance at Warner Concert Hall. The event also featured a conversation with Chris Stanton, the Senior Naturalist at Lorain County Metro Parks, which perfectly served ENCORE’s season theme as an ode to the natural world.

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The Many Moods of Melodrama:
Sentiment, Satire, Horror, and Noir in silent film

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by Mike Telin

When we think of modern-era film composers, the names Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Danny Elfman, and Howard Shore immediately come to mind. But who was responsible for creating the music that accompanied films during the silent era?

During the past three and a half months, a group of Oberlin students have been diligently learning how to create film scores from a historical perspective.

Emily Laurance, a visiting associate professor of musicology at Oberlin Conservatory and executive director of the Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium, said during a telephone conversation that one of the objectives of her class — Music and Melodrama on Stage and Screen — was for the students “to get a feeling of music in melodrama, and to get a sense of the history of the silent film genre by learning how to compile a musical score.”

The class will culminate in a performance on Friday, May 10 at 7:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Transformer Station. [Read more…]

Peter Takács—A Half Century Celebrated

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by Stephanie Manning
This article was originally published on the Oberlin Conservatory website.

Peter Takács may be retiring from Oberlin, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stop coming to campus anytime soon.

“They can’t get rid of me quite so easily,” the piano professor says, with a knowing smile. After all, he and his wife live in town, and there are still performances and recording sessions to look forward to.

Still, this spring marks the official conclusion of Takács’ tenure, after an incredible 48 years of teaching. Many of his former students from around the world are set to convene— either live or via video—for a celebratory concert in Warner Concert Hall on May 12. A reception and Piano Play-a-thon will round out the festivities that day.

Born in Bucharest, Romania, Takács studied piano in France and the United States before accepting his teaching job at Oberlin in 1976. Described by The New York Times as “a marvelous pianist,” he has performed and given master classes around the world.

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Oberlin Presents Grammy-Winning Imani Winds in Concert

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by Stephanie Manning

Reposted courtesy of Oberlin College and Conservatory

When flutist Brandon Patrick George ’08 attended Imani Winds’ Artist Recital Series performance back in 2007, he never imagined that he would one day sit in the flute chair. “Being able to perform with my colleagues is such an honor,” he says about returning to Oberlin with the pioneering wind quintet on March 7. The ensemble last appeared in Warner Concert Hall in 2021 when they gave a short performance and enjoyed a wonderful dialogue with students during a generous Q&A.

The ensemble—who recently won their first Grammy for their album Passion for Bach and Coltrane—will present a contemporary program that George says is connected to two key parts of Imani Winds’ mission: “to highlight the shared humanity between all individuals from all walks of life, and to advocate for change.”

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David Hurd to play David Boe Memorial Concert at Oberlin

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin Conservatory alumnus David Hurd has been tapped to play a David Boe Memorial Concert on the Fisk organ in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel on Sunday, March 3 at 4:30 pm. His program comprises some two decades of his own compositions.

Boe was a beloved professor of organ at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music from 1962 to 2008 who also served as the ninth dean of the Conservatory.

David Hurd is among the most celebrated church musicians and concert organists in the United States. He received the American Guild of Organists’ Distinguished Composer award in 2010, and currently serves as organist and choirmaster of the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City.

I reached Hurd at home in New York via Zoom to talk about his career, his experiences at Oberlin, and his program on Sunday. I began by asking him about his relationship to Boe as a student. [Read more…]

Fourth Year Soprano Elizabeth Hanje Wins Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition

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The operatic singer emerged from 900 international applicants.

by Cathy Strauss

Reposted courtesy of Oberlin College and Conservatory

After an exhaustive international search and multi-round competition, Oberlin Conservatory fourth-year soprano Elizabeth Hanje has won first prize and $10,000 at the 36th Annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers. Hanje is a student of Professor Salvatore Champagne.

While this is a highly anticipated vocal competition, the event also serves as a job interview for the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio, one of the world’s most prestigious operatic training programs for young artists. Each of the young artists in the Studio has access to regular coaching sessions with industry professionals, roles in Houston Grand Opera (HGO) mainstage productions, recital performances, and other concert engagements. HGO is one of the largest, most innovative, and most highly acclaimed opera companies in the United States.

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Linking Legacies to perform at CMA, Oberlin & TMS: celebrating Black performers & composers with local ties

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Think of the people from the past who lived in your town, crossing the same crosswalks, pushing open the same doors as you. Or, as the thought occurred to violist Chris Jenkins and pianist Dianna White-Gould, performing in the same room as them.

Collaborating in a piece by H. Leslie Adams in January 2020 for a concert at The Music Settlement honoring Martin Luther King, they realized that White-Gould’s parents — composer-pianist Dolores White and cellist Donald White — had performed together as a duo decades earlier in the very same space.

More ties came to mind between past and present, time and place. “We thought, it’s so interesting to be here,” Jenkins (pictured) said during a recent interview over Zoom. “Leslie is here, and Dianna’s parents have played in this space, and we’re here now. Leslie and Dianna went to Oberlin, and her mother went to Oberlin and CIM, and I work at Oberlin.” (Jenkins is the Associate Dean for Academic Support, Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology, and Liaison to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion). “All those connections — it was so interesting.”

The thought of those connections led to the creation of Linking Legacies, a chamber collective headed up by Jenkins that features multiple generations of African American classical musicians performing classical works by African American composers — with a focus on deep ties to the area for both performers and composers.

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Oberlin’s Sonny Rollins Ensemble wows at the ‘Sco (Jan. 13)

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by Max Newman

If you’re looking for a display of collegiate jazz brilliance, look no further than Oberlin Conservatory’s Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble. Selected through an extremely competitive audition process, this premier ensemble was formed in 2018 after a generous donation from its namesake. The group often tours the nation, wowing audiences with their remarkable performances and showcasing the next generation set to make their mark on jazz.

On January 13, the ensemble, led by jazz guitar professor Bobby Ferrazza, performed at Oberlin’s Dionysus Club (known as the ‘Sco), previewing ten pieces for their upcoming tour to San Francisco. The group transfixed the audience with performances that were at times lively, at times sultry, at times laid back, and always supremely impressive.

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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.

[Read more…]

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