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A guide to staying home and streaming videos of concerts

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Live streams, re-broadcasts, digital archives, and YouTube channels — here are some videos of performances to keep you occupied during social distancing.

Beginning locally, some performances are still taking place via live stream, without an audience. On Thursday, March 19 at 4:30 pm, Oberlin Conservatory will stream a faculty and guest concert from Stull Recital Hall. Flutist Alexa Still, cellist Mihai Tetel, and pianist Evan Hines come together in Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Játo (“Jet Whistle”) and Valerie Coleman’s 2019 Amazonia.

Piano Cleveland, the presenting organization of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, has announced a new weekly series called The Quarantine Concerts, to be streamed every Thursday at 7:30 pm from Steinway Piano Gallery Cleveland. The first concert, on March 19, will feature pianist Yaron Kohlberg as well as the piano duo of Natsumi Shibagaki and Irwin Shung. Online audience members have the opportunity to offer their support directly to these artists by donating to Piano Cleveland’s Musicians’ Fund.

[Read more…]

Quire Cleveland at St. John Cantius (Feb. 28)

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by Peter Feher

Quire Cleveland doesn’t box itself into one time period. True, the early music vocal ensemble sang a program of exclusively 16th-century music on February 28 at Cleveland’s St. John Cantius Church (the first of two performances). But the music’s inspiration was older, even while the performers’ sensibility was thoroughly new.

[Read more…]

Quire Cleveland to sing Lamentation settings in two local churches founded by immigrants

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by Daniel Hathaway

Jay White will lead Quire Cleveland in two performances of “Journey Home: Finding Unity after Loss,” a program of music based on the theme of exile, on Friday, February 28 at 7:30 pm at St. John Cantius Church, and Saturday, February 29 at 5:30 pm at St. Vitus Church. The performances are free, but freewill offerings will be received (suggested donation, $25) and each will be followed by a reception.

The concerts will be bookended by settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah by 16th-century English composers Thomas Tallis and Robert Whyte that mourn the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar in the late 6th century BCE.

In his program notes, White writes, “Those who were important to the king were taken into captivity in Babylon. The remainder either fled for their lives or were killed. Those fortunate to escape became refugees in their own land, feeling forsaken by God.”

In a recent telephone conversation, White noted that Quire’s program grew out of his interest in engaging with Cleveland’s immigrant communities. “The idea of programming music about leaving home and moving miles away was a way of tying into those immigrants.” [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland: Carols for Quire X (Dec. 21)

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by David Kulma

In Paris, 1534, Pierre Attaingnant published a book of motets that utilized the aptly named “O Antiphons.” His Motettorum Liber Book 7 includes six Advent antiphons, which are traditionally sung at Vespers from December 17 through 23, one per evening. Derived from the prophecies of Isaiah, each begins with “O” and names a specific attribute of the Messiah — Sapientia (Wisdom), Adonai (Lord), Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse), Clavis David (Key of David), Oriens (Daystar), Rex Gentium (King of Nations), and Emmanuel (God with us). They are best known in the hymn “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” which brings them all together to create one beautiful Christmas carol.

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Quire Cleveland: Jay White talks about Carols for Quire X

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by Daniel Hathaway

There are myriad ways to organize a concert of carols. For Quire Cleveland’s tenth “Carols for Quire” program, to be presented by his professional singers in three venues from December 20-22, conductor Jay White turned to Renaissance settings of ancient antiphons for structure. “These three concerts are sponsored by the letter O, just like in Sesame Street,” he said in a phone conversation from his studio at Kent State University.

Let’s explain. By the eighth century, the Roman church had developed a series of devotional antiphons to be sung one-per-day during the last week before Christmas as introductions to the Magnificat hymn at Vespers. Derived from the prophecies of Isaiah, each begins with “O” and names a specific attribute of the Messiah — Sapientia (Wisdom), Adonai (Lord), Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse), Clavis David (Key of David), Oriens (Daystar), Rex Gentium (King of Nations), and Emmanuel (God with us).

These antiphons will be familiar to those who know the hymn O come, O come, Emmanuel, a compilation of the “O” antiphons in poetic form which appeared in Germany during the early 18th century, originally with only five stanzas. Paired with a 15th-century French melody in the widely-adopted Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861, the hymn came into general use in English-speaking countries. [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland — “Ave Maria: England’s Rose” at St. Peter (May 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

To close out their first season under the leadership of Jay White, Quire Cleveland presented “Ave Maria: England’s Rose,” two concerts of early English church music devoted to the cult of the Virgin Mary. On Sunday afternoon, May 5, Quire’s commanding performances reveled in the sumptuous acoustic of Historic St. Peter Church in downtown Cleveland. Appropriately, a statue of the Virgin gazed on nearby. [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland to present “Ave Maria: England’s Rose”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Quire Cleveland’s spring program, to be performed on Saturday, May 4 at 7:30 pm at Lakewood Congregational Church and Sunday, May 5 at 4:00 pm at Historic St. Peter Church in downtown Cleveland, will be devoted to Marian music of the early English church.

Both concerts are free, and will cover a wide range of pre- and post-Reformation music by John Dunstable, Leonel Power, William Cornysh, William Byrd, Richard Dering, Peter Philips, Robert White, and Robert Parsons. Quire is also inviting the public to witness the final polishing of the repertoire by attending a free rehearsal on Friday, May 3 from 6:45 to 9:30 pm at the Lakewood venue (online registration is required).

I reached Quire’s artistic director Jay White by telephone at his studio at Kent State University to chat about the music he has chosen for this program. I began by asking why English music of the period seems so rich in references to Mary. [Read more…]

Les Délices & Quire Cleveland in Charpentier Noëls (Dec. 23)

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by Timothy Robson

In what must have been among the most alluring Christmas music concerts of this season, period instrument ensemble Les Délices (Debra Nagy, director) and Quire Cleveland (Jay White, director) teamed up to present French Baroque music for Christmas, highlighted by the Messe de Minuit (“Midnight Mass”) by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704). [Read more…]

Les Délices & Quire Cleveland: a conversation with guest conductor Eric Milnes

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by Daniel Hathaway

If you stop to think about it, most of our American Christmas traditions have their roots in British and German culture. Far fewer trace their origins to France, even though colonization brought French influence to a large portion of what is now the United States. Les Délices, Cleveland’s French Baroque ensemble, will join the singers of Quire Cleveland this weekend to explore this less-familiar, Gallic side of Christmas in three concerts of music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier led by guest conductor Eric Milnes.

The concerts, at Holy Trinity Lutheran in Akron on December 21 at 7:30 pm, at Lakewood Congregational on December 22 at 8:00 pm, and Our Lady of Peace on December 23 at 4:00 pm, will be anchored by Charpentier’s unique Midnight Mass on French Noëls. “There are eleven French Noëls incorporated into the Mass either in instrumental interludes or in ingenious interpolations throughout the text,” Milnes said in a telephone conversation. “Almost every main motive is derived from a carol tune. It’s hard for us in our Anglo-German culture to imagine a mass built on Silent Night or Joy to the World.”

Will all those tunes be as familiar to the audience as the carols he mentioned? “Maybe one or two of them have made their way into our holiday traditions, maybe not,” Milnes said. “I have the benefit of working a lot in Québec, so I get to experience more directly how that population relates to the tradition. But these carols are still far less known, far less performed, and far less familiar than their German or English counterparts, even in the Baroque community.” [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland at St. John’s Cathedral (Nov. 2)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Quire Cleveland began its eleventh season on November 2 with new artistic leadership. Under the direction of Jay White, the professional chorus marked the dual celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day with a cleverly devised, masterfully sung program at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland. [Read more…]

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