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Oberlin students add their personal touch to silent films at the Birenbaum (Feb. 15)

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by Stephanie Manning

What do you get when you combine the sounds of an organ, accordion, guitar, violin, and piano? A creative soundtrack to Les Vampires, of course.

This unusual ensemble made up one of three groups from “Performing Silent Film Scores from Historic Photoplay Music,” an Oberlin Conservatory Winter Term project led by Oberlin musicology professor Emily Laurance with the assistance of Rodney Sauer, director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Using resources from Sauer and his group, the students in the project compiled their own scores to a variety of silent film selections, culminating in a performance on Tuesday, February 15 as part of the inaugural Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium.

[Read more…]

Delving into the silent era:
Cleveland Silent Film Festival & Colloquium (first of two articles)

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by Mike Telin

When we think of film composers, the names Miklós Rózsa, John Williams, and Randy Newman immediately come to mind. But who were the important composers from the silent era?

Next week, a consortium of area arts organizations will come together to present a festival celebrating some of the major masterworks of silent cinema. To highlight the local connection, the inaugural Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium will focus on the music of Cleveland native and film music pioneer John Stepan Zamecnik.

The Festival kicks off on Sunday, February 13 at 3:00 pm at the Hermit Club, when violinist Isabel Trautwein and other members of The Cleveland Orchestra will join Rodney Sauer, music director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, in a concert of chamber works by Zamecnik and his mentor, Antonín Dvořák.

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Music, Sports, and Ancient Greece festival: Oberlin faculty recital (Oct. 10)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

To open the academic calendar in recent years, Oberlin Conservatory violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson has organized interdisciplinary festivals centered around intriguing themes. That continued earlier this month with “Music, Sports, and the Enduring Influence of Ancient Greece,” a topic that was examined through a variety of events, musical and otherwise, over the course of two days. I caught the tail-end of the festival via live stream: the fourth and final faculty recital in Warner Concert Hall on the evening of October 10.

The program was fresh and eclectic, featuring several works by lesser-known composers, and spanning from traditional classical to contemporary music and jazz — not to mention poetry.

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Oberlin Conservatory goes Global (first of two articles) 

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by Mike Telin

Oberlin Conservatory has announced that its successes in implementing online education over the past year have given rise to entirely new opportunities for virtual learning developed for a worldwide audience. This summer marks the launch of Oberlin Conservatory Global, which begins with a series of courses designed for music students, teachers, and lifelong learners of all backgrounds.

“The intergenerational possibility of these classes is something we are promoting,” Joseph Lubben, executive director of OC Global and associate professor of music theory at Oberlin, said during a Zoom interview. “I think a number of institutions around the world understand that one part of classes like these is connecting to the local community. Another part is connecting to their alumni who also cross all generations. I’m very excited about all of that — but it’s new territory for Oberlin.” [Read more…]

Du Yun to be featured on YSU’s virtual Pipino Series February 24

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by Daniel Hathaway

What should viewers expect when they tune in to composer/performer/curator Du Yun’s master class and presentation on the Donald Pipino Performing Arts Series from Cliffe College at Youngstown State University on February 24?

Publicist Maggie Stapelton described this fascinating artist last October in a press release for one of New York’s Bang on a Can Marathons:

Du Yun has a secret life. Several secret lives, actually — she is not only a composer of socially activated opera but she is also a pop diva, an extreme improviser, a high energy new music storyteller. When she performs her own music on the Marathon, at least one of these personalities will be on display.

A native of Shanghai, China who took up the piano at the age of four, Du Yun studied composition with Randoph Coleman at the Oberlin Conservatory, going on after graduation to study at Harvard, where she earned a master’s and a doctorate in composition with Bernard Rands and Mario Davidovsky.

Northeast Ohio had its most recent look at Du Yun’s work when Oberlin Winter Term Opera gave five sold-out performances of her Pulitzer Prize-winning work Angel’s Bone in late January and early February of 2018. The opera, directed by Christopher Mirto, explores a dark topic with alluring words and music. [Read more…]

Black History Month at Oberlin:
a conversation with Jeff Scott
(first of two articles)

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by Mike Telin

“What a series of events — Oberlin really has pulled out all the stops,” associate professor of horn Jeff Scott said during a telephone conversation. “Even more than just showcasing the arts, there are so many talks and conversations happening — moments when you can just listen to perspectives about history and current events. It’s important to combine all of that because it’s more than just a month, it’s a long continuous conversation that this country needs to have.”

On Thursday, February 25 at 7:30 pm, Oberlin Black History Month: A Celebration of Black Artistry continues on Stage Left with a pre-recorded program hosted by Jeff Scott. The evening features three of his own compositions as well as works by Ulysses Kay and Duke Ellington. In addition to Scott, performers include Mark Dover (clarinet/keys), Drew Pattison (bassoon), James Howsmon (piano), the Verona Quartet, and the Oberlin Orchestra. The concert is free. Click here at start time.

Although this is his first year on the Oberlin faculty, Scott has spent a lot of time in Ohio as a member of the acclaimed Imani Winds. “We’ve been all over the state many times and during those twenty-some odd years, there are a few places we call our second home — and Akron’s Tuesday Musical is one of them. It’s great to have presenters who aren’t afraid to take risks with artists,” Scott said. [Read more…]

Oberlin Conservatory Honors Black History Month 

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by Mike Telin

Beginning this week, Oberlin Conservatory will honor Black History Month with a series of events titled To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. It begins on Thursday, February 4 at 7:30 pm with a series overview hosted by Chris Jenkins, the Conservatory’s associate dean for academic support and liaison to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. The programs, which continue throughout the month, will be broadcast live on Oberlin Stage Left. A calendar of events can be found at the bottom of this article. 

Saturday, February 6 at 1:30 introduces “Decentering the Canon in the Conservatory.” Moderated by Chris Jenkins, the symposium is the result of conversations held by Conservatory faculty over the summer of 2020 — talks dedicated to responding to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and other tragedies linked to systemic racism. The event is presented as part of the Richard Murphy Musicology Colloquium.

What is the canon and what does decentering the canon mean? “The panelists have written extensively on this topic,” Jenkins said during a recent interview. “Although they come at it from different points of view, they agree that the canon has centered esthetically and conceptually on the idea of whiteness and on works by white composers. Beethoven and Brahms have certainly been elevated by the quality of their work, but just as much because of the obsession with Germanic culture that characterized American classical music in the 20th century. The panelists are talking about music that is other, which has its roots in cultures of people of color, and has been systematically excluded for reasons other than quality.”

[Read more…]

Rhiannon Giddens: Oberlin Stage Left 

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by Staff

Rhiannon Giddens, a 2000 Oberlin Conservatory alumna who has forged a remarkable — and remarkably wide-ranging — career in music, returns to her Oberlin roots for an appearance on Oberlin Stage Left on Thursday, December 10 at 7:30 pm.

She will perform with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, with whom she created her most recent recording. Their set will span traditional Irish and Scottish tunes, as well as blues, bluegrass, gospel, and more. It will be preceded by a conversation between Giddens and music theory professor Jan Miyake that touches on the performer’s career and her longstanding commitment to social justice issues.

[Read more…]

The Legacy of Black Classical Music: Shirley Graham Du Bois

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by Lilyanna D’Amato

As America finds itself in the midst of a centuries-overdue reckoning, classical music must follow suit. A tradition long criticized for its exclusionary, Eurocentrist snobbery and stark lack of diversity, there remains a cruel, discriminative legacy behind the classical canon. One that, very purposefully, led us to Brahms and Wagner but kept us from Bologne, Price, and Still.

“The Legacy of Black Classical Music” hopes to remind us of those musicians and composers whose voices went largely unheard, whose careers were left obscured by the pernicious disease that is systemic racism. In this weekly series, we will explore the lives and contributions of Shirley Graham Du Bois, Florence Price, Josephine Baker, William Grant Still, and Joseph Boulogne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) — rich and valuable lives largely omitted from Western music history. Let us listen and learn together, celebrating their mastery while also taking the time to critically consider our own complacency in their erasure. For, in this admission lies the beginnings of vital change.

The first musician on our list is Shirley Graham Du Bois, whose tenacity, creative ferocity, outspoken personality, and intellectual prowess led her on a career spanning the globe. Born in Indianapolis in 1896, she spent her childhood immersed in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where her father served as a preacher and activist. [Read more…]

Join an Oberlin organ tour from the comfort of your home

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by Daniel Hathaway

Do you enjoy pub crawls for comparing the ambiance of different watering holes? Organ crawls can be just as pleasurable for organophiles — who often combine bending the ear and the elbow to double the fun. Now that the pesky coronavirus has crashed the party, moving about in groups from one venue to another is not in the cards for the foreseeable future, but thanks to the faculty of the Oberlin Summer Organ Academy, you can at least take a virtual tour of some of the Conservatory’s impressive instruments and hear them played in two online programs on Thursday and Friday.

On June 25 at 7:30 pm, organ professors Jonathan Moyer and Christa Rakich will join organ curator David Kazimir on Oberlin Stage Left to tell about the distinguished history of organ instruction at Oberlin. They’ll also lead a video tour to four of Oberlin’s concert organs — just a few of the instruments in the Conservatory’s impressive keyboard fleet, which includes practice and studio instruments of all styles and sizes. The virtual tour will include brief performances. [Read more…]

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