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Rocky River Chamber Music Society opens season with Stout premiere (Sept. 25)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program of Cleveland discoveries on Monday, September 25, a lively crowd at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church got to hear Richard Stout’s new work, Songs of Correspondence, based on letters of early 20th-century American author Willa Cather.

Featured performers were mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, faculty at Baldwin Wallace, and the Poiesis Quartet (Sarah Ma and Max Ball, violins, Jasper de Boor, viola, and Drew Dansby, cello), who formed at Oberlin Conservatory and were Grand Prize winners of the 2023 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. The concert kicked off the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society to present new work by Richard Stout

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 by Mike Telin

When you’re looking for a source of inspiration, sometimes you find it sitting right in front of you. Such was the case with Richard Stout. “I wanted to write some songs for mezzo-soprano and string quartet and I was looking for material,” Stout said during a phone conversation. “I looked at this book — Selected Letters of Willa Cather — that I had sitting at home that my mother had co-edited, and thought, ‘There’s some beautiful material in here.’”

On Monday, September 25 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Poiesis Quartet — Sarah Ma and Max Ball (violins), Jasper de Boor (viola), and Drew Dansby (cello) — will join mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby to perform Stout’s Songs of Correspondence during the opening concert of Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s 2023-24 season. The program will also include Brahms’ String Quartet No.1 in c. The concert is free and will be livestreamed.

Stout, who is a member of The Cleveland Orchestra’s trombone section and a faculty member at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, said that after he wrote the first few songs he realized that he should ask for permission to use the letters. [Read more…]

All-Stravinsky in Rocky River: variety and charm (May 15)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Variety and charm abounded in an all-Stravinsky program at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church Monday evening, May 15, presented by the Rocky River Chamber Music Society. How delightful to hear this repertoire — Stravinsky’s droll and cerebral inventions in small combinations — heard almost exclusively on conservatory or college programs these days. Top-flight musicianship on the part of Cleveland Orchestra members and fellow professionals helped make the case. Congratulations to trumpeter Amanda Bekeny and clarinetist Daniel McKelway for putting it all together.

The succinct duos that opened the program, Fanfare for a New Theatre for trumpets and Lied Ohne Name for bassoons, made a nice pairing for their length and affective dissimilarity. Where the trumpets skirmished, the bassoons chatted dispassionately — both in under a minute. Accurate and faithful playing of both works only left us wanting more.

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society goes all-Stravinsky for season closer

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Clarinetist Daniel McKelway and trumpeter Amanda Bekeny are familiar collaborators in a sense. Both are on the board of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society and both are frequent performers on the series — although it has never actually brought them face-to-face, instrument-to-instrument, bell-to-bell, onstage together at the same time for the same piece. Something they decided they ought to change.

To be fair, there isn’t a whole lot of music that could bring them together. But there is a pair of beloved pieces with unusual, colorful instrumentations, both by the same composer. “I don’t know which of us thought of it first, but there was an immediate idea of, ‘Wait a minute — Stravinsky,’” McKelway said during a recent interview.

They were thinking in particular of the Octet, which combines woodwinds and brass, and L’Histoire du Soldat (“Soldier’s Tale”), which brings together woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion — plus narrator, telling the story of a soldier who strikes an ill-advised bargain with the devil.

Those two pieces and those two people — L’Histoire, the Octet, McKelway, and Bekeny — form the nucleus of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season-ending concert, which will take place on Monday, May 15 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Attendance is free, and the concert will also be livestreamed. [Read more…]

New Morse Code at Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

For over a decade, the innovative duo New Morse Code — Hannah Collins (cello) and Michael Compitello (percussion) — have been creating projects that shed light on society’s pressing issues. These include The Emigrants, a documentary chamber work by George Lam, and dwb (driving while black), a chamber opera by Roberta Gumbel and Susan Kander.

The ensemble was recently named the inaugural grand prize winner of the Ariel Avant Impact Performance Prize, which supports the development and touring of new works that address sustainability goals and scientific innovation.

On Monday, March 13 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Rocky River Chamber Music Society will host New Morse Code in a program that will include works by Caroline Shaw, Sam Suggs, Andy Akiho, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Honstein, Florent Ghys, and Viet Cuong. The concert is free.

I caught up with both the cellist and percussionist by phone and began our conversation by asking why they chose these pieces for their program. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: The Butler Piano Trio (Feb. 6)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On February 6, the Butler Piano Trio (Sandy Yamamoto, violin, Joshua Gindele, cello, and Colette Valentine, piano), treated the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church audience to a compelling evening of generous and potent music making.

Abundantly evident in the performance of Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No. 1 — a cohesive single-movement work written when the composer was just nineteen — was the Butlers’ special chemistry. The group seemed to exhibit an extrasensory awareness of shared phrasing, expression, and rhythmic timing. Valentine managed Rachmaninoff’s virtuosic piano writing with ease, trading iterations of the elegiac theme with the strings in powerful combination. Three instruments were present onstage, but the music seemed to emit from a single voice.

Beethoven’s Trio in D, Op. 70, composed in 1808, is nicknamed “Ghost” for its eerie Largo movement. According to the unsigned program notes, Carl Czerny thought it evoked Hamlet’s meeting with the ghost of his father, but it was in fact part of Beethoven’s sketch for a never-completed Macbeth opera. The Butlers’ performance was taut and aptly unnerving. In the dramatic Largo the group relentlessly pressed the repeated rhythmic figure (triplet and sixteenths), conjuring a doomed march imposed by a spectral martinet. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society to present the Butler Trio

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by Mike Telin

If you were to ask just about any musician why they enjoy playing chamber music, they will tell you that it’s because they get to make music with people they enjoy. Case in point, the Butler Trio — Sandy Yamamoto (violin), Joshua Gindele (cello), and Colette Valentine (piano).

“We are all on faculty at the University of Texas, but the Trio formed when I left the Miró Quartet back in 2011,” Yamamoto said by telephone from Austin. “Josh [the cellist in the Miró] and I weren’t quite ready to be done with making music together, so we talked about playing in a piano trio. At the time Colette had joined the faculty so we asked her if she would play some trios with us.”

On Monday, February 6 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the  Rocky River Chamber Music Society will play host to the Butler Trio. The program will include Rachmaninoff’s Trio Élégiaque No. 1, Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D (“Ghost”), and Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat with guest violist Lembi Veskimets. The concert is free. Click here to access the live stream.

[Read more…]

Boston’s Balourdet String Quartet opens Rocky River series (Sept. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society opened its 64th season on Monday, September 26 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church with a performance that symbolized part of what the organization is all about.

RRCMS regularly ferrets out ensembles that have only recently arrived on the world stage and presents them free of charge. The Balourdet String Quartet, which hangs its shingle in Boston at the New England Conservatory, is such a group, having been formed at Rice University in 2018 and quickly built a following and an impressive list of engagements.

Well-earned, because they’re terrific. Named after Antoine Balourdet, the celebrated head chef at the Hotel St. Bernard in Taos, New Mexico near the Taos School of Music, the Balourdet offer up well-curated, delectable musical menus that are apparently analogous to the chef’s wizardry in the kitchen. [Read more…]

Richard Hawkins & Friends at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

When the Oberlin Conservatory’s Richard Hawkins was asked to curate a concert for the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, he knew right away that it was an opportunity to program works that would include his Oberlin Conservatory faculty friends. “It’s always nice to present chamber music for winds and strings that people might not know,” the clarinetist said during a telephone conversation.

On Monday, February 28 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Hawkins will be joined by Sibbi Bernhardsson (violist), Kirsten Docter (viola), James Howsmon (piano), Dmitry Kouzov (cello), Drew Pattison (bassoon), and Jeff Scott (horn) in a forgotten quintet from the turn of the 20th century, a light-hearted trio from the early 1980s, and a masterpiece sextet from 1935. The performance is free and face masks are required. The event will be live streamed on the RRCMS Facebook page. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Arsentiy Kharitonov, piano (Nov. 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Russian pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov played the second concert in the Rocky River Chamber Music Society Series on Monday evening, November 15, not in the Society’s home venue — West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church — but at Lakewood Congregational Church, due to COVID-19 concerns. I watched the recital, a hybrid event with in-person attendance permitted, via the live stream.

Unlike most concert pianists, who seem to have taken to the keyboard while they were still learning to walk, Kharitonov only began his studies at the age of 16. But he plays with such naturalness and easy virtuosity that you’d never imagine he came late to the party. [Read more…]

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