by Sicily Xiao
On January 21, a serene Sunday afternoon, the Cleveland Composers Guild curated the second concert of its 2023-2024 season at Fairmount Presbyterian Church. The program, dedicated to cutting edge chamber music compositions, included the 1st prize winner of the Guild’s 11th Collegiate Composition Contest.
The concert began with Ty Alan Emerson’s Pan Songs played by percussionist Dylan Moffitt on a version of the modern steelpan which avoided precise tuning, resulting in a distinctive harmonic and spatial system. The emphasis on sound, color, and rhythm beautifully showcased Emerson’s concepts. In the second movement, Moffitt traded mallets for brushes, more commonly used in jazz, adding a layer of flexibility to the timbral palette.
The Cleveland Composers Guild’s annual collaboration with music students in the area couldn’t go ahead as usual this year (I’ll let you guess why). But that didn’t stop the Guild and these young players from putting together something virtual.
It was another fascinating afternoon of recent music by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild at CSU’s Drinko Recital Hall on Sunday, October 13. Opening the Guild’s 60th anniversary season, the concert featured chamber music by eight local composers in the usual explorative potluck format.
Since 2014, the Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony has sponsored 
In an age when the word “opera,” to most, means the historical canon — that body of works that recirculate through the world’s houses each year — it bears repeating as often as possible that new efforts in the genre have flourished of late. Thanks to the combined efforts of the Cleveland Opera Theater, the Maltz Performing Arts Center at the Temple-Tifereth Israel, the Cleveland Composers’ Guild, and the Baldwin Wallace and Oberlin Conservatories of Music, Northeast Ohio audiences recently had a chance to hear scenes from three new works-in-progress by area composers and librettists.
