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Rocky River Chamber Music Society opens season with Diamond Brass Quintet

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by Jarrett Hoffman

After COVID struck, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society was one of the area’s first organizations to set up a live-streamed concert, the Society’s season finale in May.

One of the performers that night was trumpeter and board member Amanda Bekeny, who now brings her Diamond Brass Quintet colleagues to West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church to open the series’ 62nd season on Monday, October 12 at 7:30 pm.

Joining Bekeny will be trumpeter Nina Bell, hornist Greg Hills, trombonist David Mitchell, and tubist J.c. Sherman. Their program, live-streamed only, will include works by J.S. Bach, Victor Ewald, Stravinsky, Eric Ewazen, and Anthony DiLorenzo, and can be accessed on Facebook or YouTube.

Phenomenal player, great teacher, superstar freelancer: those are the words that RRCMS music director Dan McKelway used to describe Bekeny back in May.

I’ll add to that a few adjectives of my own. First, humble — the trumpeter gave a hearty laugh after I shared McKelway’s “superstar” compliment. And second, down-to-earth — after a very short delay at the start of our Zoom call, she explained that she hadn’t had the right TV show on for her 3-year-old. (Apparently, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood wasn’t good enough.)

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: “Chamber Music in the Pandemic”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

When live music as we know it came to a halt at the start of the pandemic, clarinetist and Rocky River Chamber Music Society board member Daniel McKelway knew he wanted to do something for concertgoers who live in retirement communities in the area.

“I immediately had a sense that these people are not going to have the connections that are so important to their lives and their happiness in their later years,” McKelway said during a recent telephone call. “These are people who have not been able to have contact with their children and their grandchildren, and who are at greater risk than younger people if they do get the virus.”

His idea was to put on a live concert of chamber music, with generous measures of social distancing to be followed by the performers, and without a live audience in attendance, to be viewed for free over the web. That’s exactly what the Rocky River Chamber Music Society will present on Monday, May 18 at 7:15 pm.

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Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Mario Diaz-Moresco & Spencer Myer (Mar. 9)

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by Nicholas Stevens

That old saw about absence making the heart grow fonder: how true it feels now! With concerts canceled to prevent the kinds of confined massing that facilitates the spread of COVID-19, musicians are suffering. Critics have already filed reports on the grim uncanniness of clear schedules and empty halls. Just before this writer’s exile from the scene, however, a spark of life shot skyward, and now stands as a last memory of live performance before social distancing. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society:
pianist Spencer Myer &
baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco

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by Jarrett Hoffman

On Monday, March 9 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society will present pianist Spencer Myer and baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco in a free program of art song and solo piano works by Beethoven, Debussy, Barber, and Bolcom.

The recital begins with Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, a work that deserves a special asterisk in the repertoire of this duo and couple: they read through it on their first date. (As Diaz-Moresco said by telephone, they also sang Schumann’s Dichterliebe. He laughed, adding that things have happily turned out better than they do in those poems by Heinrich Heine.)

Asked about that first time reading music together, Myer said in a separate phone call that he remembers an instant connection. “And that’s kind of how our relationship has been the entire six years. Everything has just been easy and natural, and I think that comes through when we perform together as well.” [Read more…]

Phaeton Trio on Rocky River Chamber Society Series (Feb. 10)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Every so often, the first seconds of a concert bring neither anxiety over how the rest will go nor twitchy overstimulation, neither boredom nor ecstasy, but a satisfying assurance. Some performances click right away, the musicians’ technique unimpeachable, their artistry and expression powerful, their manner warm but professional. Such concerts hold attention in a special way — the chances of a misstep negligible enough that listening never involves comparison to an abstract standard. In the Phaeton Trio’s recent tour de force in Rocky River, the initial gestures of the performance set a high standard that held throughout. [Read more…]

Phaeton Piano Trio from Germany up next on Rocky River Series Feb. 10

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by Daniel Hathaway

Only nine years younger than its East Side counterpart, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society will continue its 61st season with a concert by Germany’s Phaeton Piano Trio on Monday, February 10 at 7:30 pm. The performance at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church is free, but donations are welcome.

While violinist Friedemann Eichorn, cellist Peter Hörr, and pianist Florian Uhlig have been performing together and with colleagues in various combinations for 20 years, the Phaeton Trio is a relatively recent development. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Olsen & Saxton — organ and trumpet (Nov. 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Monday evening, November 18, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society took the welcome step of acknowledging that their performance space houses a pipe organ by presenting organist Timothy Olsen and trumpeter Judith Saxton in a program of music that effectively conjoined the two instruments. A popular combination in France, solo trumpet with organ is not so often encountered in the States, though there’s plenty of literature to explore. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Hungarian evening with Alexander Fedoriouk (Oct. 14)

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by Nicholas Stevens

The music of Hungary occupies a unique place in the world of classical music. Musicians active between the mid-1800s and early 20th century understood the nation as either a land of best-kept secrets and hidden musical diversity, or as a foreign wonderland where exotic dance tunes and virtuosic fiddling occupied a lonely throne. In a recent concert, cimbalom soloist Alexander Fedoriouk and members of The Cleveland Orchestra explored both sides of the old divide: the Hungary that one expects and the richer, stranger version as well.

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Rocky River Chamber Music Society to feature cimbalom player Alexander Fedoriouk

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society will explore “Chamber Music of Hungary” to begin its 61st season on Monday, October 14 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church.

Four Cleveland Orchestra members — violinists Katherine Bormann and Emma Shook, violist Stanley Konopka, and cellist Martha Baldwin — will open the program with Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2.

The second half is all trios: Shook will join another Orchestra colleague, bassist Henry Peyrebrune, and cimbalom player Alexander Fedoriouk in traditional folk music from Hungary and Romania, and in works by Brahms and Vittorio Monti. A freewill offering will be taken.

The largest instrument in the hammered dulcimer family, as Fedoriouk expalined in an interview, the cimbalom is struck with wooden hammers to create sound. One feature that distinguishes the instrument from other dulcimers is its damper pedals, an innovation of József Schunda in the 1870s.

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Carpe Diem String Quartet (May 20)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Distinct schools of thought emerge in any generation of musicians. Sometimes, this expresses itself in well-defined groups and ideological manifestos. In other cases, style comes before labels. When the Carpe Diem String Quartet visited Northeast Ohio last week, they brought not merely new music, but a recognizable approach that draws on certain corners of the classical tradition. Audiences enjoyed a concert of fresh fare that concluded with a Romantic mainstay — one that, in context, felt like a clear ancestor to the other material. [Read more…]

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