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Cleveland Museum of Art debuts Cenk Ergün’s Formare (May 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland audiences had their first live encounters with the music of Turkish-born composer Cenk Ergün in March of 2016, when the JACK Quartet premiered his commissioned works Sonare and Celare in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Ergün’s second appearance at the Museum earlier this month came in the form of a Cleveland Foundation Creative Fusion project. On Wednesday evening, May 8, the composer (seated on the pavement above) unveiled his hour-long Formare, turning the Ames Family Atrium into a vast sound installation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art to present world premiere of Ergün’s Formare

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by Mike Telin

Since its inception in 2008, the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program has brought more than 80 international artists to Cleveland for residencies. For the program’s latest edition, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is partnering with the Foundation in the commissioning of six new works by composers from across the globe under the auspices of the Museum’s Performing Arts Series.

On Wednesday, May 8 at 7:30 pm in the Museum’s Ames Family Atrium, composer Cenk Ergün will present Formare, the second premiere of the series. The work is scored for female choir, children’s choir, harpsichords, and trombones. The hour-long concert is free.

Responding to questions by email, Ergün said that the work’s title, Formare, means “to form” in Latin, and refers both to the formation of sound, and to the positioning of the performers within the space. Ergün will use both the ground level and second-floor allées of the atrium.

“The four trombones are divided into pairs and placed on the west and east allées,” Ergün said. “Four of the twelve singers are spread across the north allée, and the other eight, along with three harpsichords and a children’s choir, are positioned evenly across the ground floor. [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland in “Hear My Voyce” at St. John’s Cathedral (October 6)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Quire2017BethSegalQuire Cleveland began its tenth anniversary season with concerts in Painesville and Cleveland devoted to liturgical music by the 17th-century British composer Henry Purcell. On Friday, October 6 at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland, Quire was in fine “voyce” as its 21 singers under the direction of founder Ross W. Duffin sang repertoire Purcell composed for the choir of the Chapel Royal between his appointment in 1682 and his untimely death at the age of 35 in 1695. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Sacred Bach — a spiritual journey” at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights (Mar. 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Gascho-JosephHaving paid tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach’s prowess as a composer of orchestral music in its last set of concerts, Apollo’s Fire and Apollo’s Singers presented expertly performed examples of his Leipzig liturgical works at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Heights on Friday, March 24 with guest conductor Joseph Gascho at the helm. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Resplendent Purcell” at First Baptist Church (October 8)

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by Nicholas Jones

purcell-henryThe short-lived English composer Henry Purcell wrote works that rank among the masterpieces of the Baroque. But, like many artists of the 17th century, he also had to produce a lot on demand. In his position as organist at both the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, he needed to work up music for a number of royal occasions. Necessarily, while some of his music is deeply personal, other works — like his odes for the queen’s birthday — were clearly more routinely produced. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland at Sagrada Familia Church (December 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Missa-Criolla-rehearsal-2CityMusic Cleveland continued to move into new territory with the first of its five “Holiday Concerts” on Wednesday evening, December 3. Led by Peter Bennett and collaborating with members of the choirs of Sagrada Familia Parish on their home turf on Cleveland’s West Side, CityMusic ventured into Latino repertoire with a performance of Ariel Ramirez’s forkloric Missa Criolla. The curtain-raiser was a Sinfonia by Antonio Sarrier, a Spanish-born composer and trumpeter who emigrated to Mexico in the mid-eighteenth century. In between, Laura Koepke was the featured soloist in Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto. [Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland: Peter Bennett talks about the December programs

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by Mike Telin

Bennett“I’m very excited to be conducting CityMusic’s Holiday Concerts this year,” Peter Bennett said during a telephone conversation. “And I am particularly pleased to be able to work with the La Sagrada Familia Choir to bring Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla to Cleveland audiences for the first time.” On Wednesday, December 3 at 7:30 at La Sagrada Familia Church, CityMusic will present the first of five free performances featuring Ramírez’s Misa Criolla. (See our concert listings for times and locations.) The concert also includes Antonio Sarrier’s Overture in D, and Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto with CityMusic principal bassoon Laura Koepke as soloist.

“Misa Crioll presents a different kind of challenge for me,” Bennett said. “It’s not the kind of repertoire that I’ve done before, but when Eugenia Strauss asked me to conduct it, it seemed like an amazing thing to do. It’s a great piece, and the fact that we’re involving a Latino church choir is a great way to present it to the community.”

[Read more…]

CityMusic Cleveland plans nineteen performances this season

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by Daniel Hathaway

CityMusic-Schubert-RehearsalCityMusic Cleveland will present four programs during 2014-2015 in multiple venues around metropolitan Cleveland, three of them conducted by the chamber orchestra’s artistic director and composer Avner Dorman, one by CWRU’s Peter Bennett.

Dorman will be featured as a composer in concerts from October 15 through October 19, when his Saxophone Concerto will be played by Timothy McAllister in performances in Lakewood, Cleveland, Willoughby Hills and University Heights, along with Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner”) and Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 (“Farewell”).

The late Argentine composer Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla (1964) will be at the center of the second series of concerts. Incorporating South American folk instruments, the piece will be sung by the choir of Sagrada Familia Church on Cleveland’s west side in performances in Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Willoughby Hills and Lakewood from December 3-7 conducted by Peter Bennett. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire — Praetorius Christmas Vespers at Trinity Cathedral (December 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Michael Praetorius

Michael Praetorius

Well before the more pietistic style of Lutheran church music that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote at Leipzig in the second quarter of the eighteenth century came the Italian-influenced, Renaissance style of Michael Praetorius, the subject of Jeannette Sorrell’s well-crafted and expertly performed Christmas Vespers with Apollo’s Fire, which began a four-concert run at Trinity Cathedral on Friday evening before moving on to three different venues around town.

You could hear the difference in approach in Philip Nicolai’s Wachet auf! Everyone knows the glorious, equal-note setting that ends Bach’s cantata of the same name. Not so familiar is the early form of the chorale tune with its dancelike, uneven rhythms, nor its delightful and ornate elaboration by Praetorius from his 1619 collection Polyhymnia caduceatrix. The latter, already bursting at its seams with exuberance, was decorated even further by Apollo’s Fire’s violinists and cornetto players (Olivier Brault, Johanna Novom, Kiri Tollaksen and Nathaniel Cox), who could barely force themselves to arrive at the final chord at several cadences. [Read more…]

Review: Impressive debut by Avner Dorman with CityMusic Cleveland at Fairmount Church (October 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

DORMAN-Avner2CityMusic Cleveland celebrated the beginning of its tenth season with the debut of its new music director, Avner Dorman, on Wednesday evening, October 23 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights. Dorman skillfully led the 40-piece chamber orchestra in nuanced and nearly flawless performances of his own Concerto Grosso, Vivaldi’s Concerto for two oboes and two clarinets, Schubert’s Symphony No. 3, and the first of five different Mozart concertos with guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine.

Dorman noted both in written and oral notes that he intended to show off the talents of members of the orchestra as much as possible in his first concert, and that principally meant the ensemble’s wind section, whose excellence runs both deep and wide. The Vivaldi concerto boasted pairs of soloists — oboists Rebecca Schweigert Mayhew and Daniel Rios and clarinetists Daniel Gilbert and Ellen Breakfield Glick — who matched each other’s elegant tone perfectly, yet each pair provided cheerful sonic contrasts as oboes tossed phrases off to clarinets. As always, Vivaldi was infinitely resourceful within his time-honored formulas, and he snuck in a strangely arresting rhythmic pattern at the beginning of the last Allegro. Harpsichordist Peter Bennett added stylish decorations to the keyboard accompaniment. [Read more…]

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