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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: David Russell (Apr. 22)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

For the grand finale to this season’s International Series, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society welcomed David Russell in a much-anticipated appearance at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. With easygoing charm and astonishing skill, Russell delighted and flabbergasted the capacity crowd on Saturday night, April 22 in a program of familiar and unfamiliar works.

In his opening remarks, Guitar Society executive director Erik Mann announced that this would be the last CCGS concert to take place at Plymouth Church, with the series moving to the Maltz Performing Arts Center next season. The intimacy of Plymouth will be missed, but the recently refurbished Maltz will give the series an upgrade in prestige.

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The live return of Les Délices:
“Of Gods and Heroes”
and a sense of the meta

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The next concert from Les Délices is indeed about gods and heroes, built around 14th-century songs referencing characters such as Jason and Medea, Ulysses and Circe, and Tristan and Isolde.

But if you’re familiar with artistic director Debra Nagy, who makes a habit of crafting programs both musically and intellectually stimulating, you won’t be surprised that there’s more to these selections than just mythology.

The central idea behind the program — to be presented live February 25-27 in Shaker Heights and Akron — is something more meta. “The funny thing about these 14th-century translations is that they’re not so much about the characters, but about seeing yourself in them, or contrasting your experience with theirs,” Nagy said during a recent Zoom call. “There’s a sense of timeless relatability.”

That timelessness ties into another aspect of the program: the integration of contemporary poetry, including a new poem by former Ohio Poet Laureate Dave Lucas on commission from the ensemble. “A lot of his work draws on or is inspired by myth and storytelling,” Nagy said.

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Guitar Society with Andrea Caballero: Spanish music & mental strategies

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Spanish-born Andrea González Caballero, who in 2016 became the youngest guitarist to receive first prize in the Alhambra International Guitar Competition in Valencia, has chosen an all-Spanish program for her Cleveland debut this weekend.

Presented by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, the recital takes place on Saturday, November 20 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, and features music by Tárrega, Sainz de la Maza, de Falla, Turina, and Albéniz. Tickets and safety policies are available here.

Hailing from Eibar in the Basque Country in northern Spain, Caballero moved to Düsseldorf, Germany in her late teens to study guitar at the Robert Schumann Musikhochschule, then to Baltimore to enroll at the Peabody Institute. These days, she calls Miami home.

“I like it here very much,” she said during a recent telephone call. “The first city that I lived in when I moved to the U.S. was Baltimore, which was a little bit contrasting to what I was used to. Florida, and especially Miami, I find to be a little bit closer to my culture — Hispanic culture.” And the weather certainly isn’t a minus, she added.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: Celil Refik Kaya returns with Sketches

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When Turkish-American guitarist Celil Refik Kaya returns to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society for a recital at Plymouth Church on Saturday, October 23 at 7:30 pm, there will be one important overlap with his program from four years ago: it will include a piece by Celil Refik Kaya.

“Celil, every concert you do for us, you have to play one of your own compositions,” Guitar Society executive director Erik Mann once said to him. Mann laughed as he recalled that line last month in an interview. It was a friendly request, not a stern one, but there was a seriousness behind it born out of respect for Kaya’s music.

Speaking from New Jersey, where he teaches at New Jersey City University, Kaya described the gestation of the work he’ll bring to Cleveland this weekend. “I was planning to compose this piece for a long time — since I was a teenager, actually. My father had a bunch of these surreal, fantastic sketches, and I wanted to write pieces based on them, but I never had a chance to do it.”

Finally, in the pandemic, he found time to return to his old drafts, and Sketches became a reality.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society: the Showcase Concert and into the fall

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by Jarrett Hoffman

As per tradition, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society will kick off its 2021-22 series with the free Showcase Concert highlighting musicians from around the region. This year’s event, which you can attend in person at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on Saturday, September 18 at 7:30 pm, or via livestream, might aptly be described as a Cincinnati sandwich on Cleveland bread.

There will be three sets, with Cleveland-based musicians on either end. Guitar Society educator Andy Poxon will open the concert with Mauro Giuliani’s Grande Ouverture before moving to his own arrangement of Handel’s D-Major Violin Sonata, where he’ll be joined by violinist Jeanelle Brierley.

Occupying the middle portion of the program is guitarist and composer Jeremy Collins, representing his hometown and homebase of Cincinnati, though he also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music as an undergraduate (Cleveland-bred in addition to the Cleveland bread). He’ll perform two of his own pieces, The Starry Night and Reverie, followed by José Luis Merlin’s Suite del Recuerdo.

At the finish, bringing an impressive variety of flavors to the table is the guitar-and-flute Gruca White Ensemble. They’ll open with three miniatures by Stephen Goss (part of his From Honey to Ashes) influenced by music from around the world. They’ll continue with Masamitsu Takahashi’s Homage to the Harvest Moon, in which they’ll imitate the Japanese traditional instruments shinobue and koto. And they’ll finish with two movements from Marshall Griffith’s Jazz Impressions of Cleveland.

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Les Délices begins Concert Series with “Bewitched” Oct. 22

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by Jarrett Hoffman

There are a couple of reasons why “Bewitched” is a fitting title for the first program in Les Délices’ Concert Series, streaming Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 pm and available on demand until the Closing Reception on Monday, November 2, also at 7:30 — tickets available here.

Not only is Halloween drawing near, and not only will Chicago-based soprano Hannah De Priest sing the roles of two witches in Colin de Blamont’s Circé and Louis-Nicolas Clérambault’s Medée, but in a way, the ensemble hopes to cast a spell with a reenvisioning of the traditional concert format, in particular with the creative use of video and lighting.

In a conference call, I spoke to De Priest and Les Délices director/oboist Debra Nagy about the experience of recording in person at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, stepping into the shoes and the vocal cords of those morally ambiguous witches, the role of gender in these stories, favorite Halloween costumes, and one or two possible signature cocktails for the concert.

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Les Délices:
“Torchsongs Transformed”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Les Délices has added a new twist to their acclaimed Baroque-jazz fusion program. Previously known as “Songs Without Words” — in the form of both a live concert and a beautiful album from 2018 — it’s now called “Torchsongs Transformed,” and adds soprano Hélène Brunet to the core of Debra Nagy (Baroque oboe), Mélisande Corriveau (viola da gamba and pardessus de viole), and Eric Milnes (harpsichord).

Here the ensemble explores the relationship between 17th-century French love songs (airs de cour) and 20th-century torchsongs and jazz standards arranged for and improvised by the ensemble. It’s all laid out in the arc of an affair, viewed through the lens of each passing season, as songs like Gershwin’s Summertime and Johnny Mercer’s Autumn Leaves are interleaved with music by Michel Lambert, Jean-Baptiste Lully, and Sebastian Le Camus. See the full program and read Debra Nagy’s notes here. 

Performances take place Friday, March 6 at 7:30 pm at Holy Trinity Lutheran in Akron, Saturday, March 7 at 7:30 pm at Lakewood Congregational, and Sunday, March 8 at 4:00 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Tickets are available online.

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BlueWater Chamber Orchestra at Plymouth Church (Feb. 1)

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by David Kulma

During Daniel Meyer’s short tenure as artistic director and conductor of BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, the ensemble has risen to a new level of quality. On Saturday, February 1 at Plymouth Church, Meyer and his ensemble performed an excellent program titled “A Classical Feast,” focusing on music from the late 18th century.

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Cleveland Classical Guitar Society to present Beijing Guitar Duo

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by Mike Telin

If you’re looking for something special to share with your significant other for Valentine’s Day, why not take in a classical guitar concert? On Saturday, February 15 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church, the Beijing Guitar Duo — Meng Su and Yameng Wang — will return to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society stage with a program of music by J.S. Bach, Debussy, Tan Dun, Chen Yi, and Piazzolla. Buy your tickets in advance here. 

“We’re looking forward to being back in Cleveland,” Meng Su said by telephone from Knoxville, Tennessee, the sixth stop on their month-long, twelve-city tour. I began our conversation by asking her about their eclectic program. 

Mike Telin: You and Yameng are getting down to business from the beginning with Bach’s “Chaconne.”

Meng Su: Yes. This arrangement is after the Busoni arrangement for piano — he added a lot of harmonies and made it more Romantic, but kept the essence of Bach’s writing. The arrangement we’re playing is by the German guitarist Ulrich Stracke. It works very well. We’ve been playing it for many years. The “Chaconne” is such a big task but as you get older you begin to understand it more. Now that Yameng has become a mother — she has a two-month old daughter — and I have started teaching in Hong Kong at the Academy for the Performing Arts, I think we have a deeper understanding of it. I’m sure we will be playing it for the rest of our lives.

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BlueWater: chatting with violin soloists Ken Johnston and Emily Cornelius

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Two founding members of BlueWater Chamber Orchestra will partner as soloists this weekend, when conductor Daniel Meyer and the ensemble perform “A Classical Feast” at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday, February 1 at 7:30 pm.

Concertmaster Ken Johnston and principal second violin Emily Cornelius will play the Op. 13 Symphonie Concertante in G by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who is remembered as the first known classical composer of African origin. One of his contemporaries was Mozart, whose Symphony No. 40 in g closes Saturday’s program. And in between those two works, soprano Laura Pedersen will be featured in Beethoven’s concert aria Ah, Perfido! Tickets are available online.

Johnston and Cornelius have known each other for at least ten years — BlueWater celebrates its own decade in 2020 — but this will be their first time appearing together as soloists. “At this point, she and I are old friends,” Johnston said by telephone last week. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for her musicianship. I think we share the same sense of humor in a lot of ways, and that comes across.”

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