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Charles McGuire on Cleveland Chamber Choir’s “March Choral Madness”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland Chamber Choir’s “March Choral Madness” concerts this weekend won’t feature dueling madrigals vying for slots on basketball-like brackets as they did in 2018. Instead, artistic director Scott MacPherson has chosen an interesting program of works by Johannes Brahms, Andrew Rindfleisch, and Benjamin Britten for the Choir’s mid-season programs on Saturday, March 9 at 7:30 pm at Brecksville Methodist Church and Sunday, March 10 at 3:00 pm at First Baptist in Shaker Heights.

I chatted on the phone recently with Oberlin Conservatory musicology professor Charles Edward McGuire, who will be giving pre-concert lectures 45 minutes before each of this weekend’s performances. What does he plan to tell the audience?

“I’ll be talking about my love for all three of these fantastic composers,” he said, adding that he’s trying to decide how interactive he wants to make the presentations. “You don’t have all the audiovisual aids in a concert venue that you would in a classroom. You have to rely on people’s imagination, slip in the occasional joke, and hope that the handheld microphone works.”

[Read more…]

Dipping into the holidays: chatting with Cleveland Chamber Choir mezzo & managing director Kira McGirr

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by Jarrett Hoffman

One minute, plastic skeletons dangle from rows of porches. Next, the country fixates on turkeys. Then a menagerie of menorahs and evergreens take the scene.

In other words, the last few months can be a lot to handle, even without singing in and managing a choir — or taking care of sick and injured children. “One son has a broken arm, and my other son has pneumonia,” Kira McGirr, Cleveland Chamber Choir mezzo-soprano and the group’s new Managing Director, told me recently over the phone. “So things are a little intense, but they’re both back to school now.”

Speedy recoveries to them. Meanwhile, McGirr and her husband, Oberlin Conservatory musicologist Charles Edward McGuire, will balance caretaking and preparations for the Choir’s first-ever holiday offerings. Their two free concerts led by artistic director Scott MacPherson will take place on Saturday, December 8 at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, and Sunday, December 9 at Christ Episcopal Church in Oberlin, both at 7:30 pm. McGuire will talk about the music at 6:45 pm on both dates.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir at Maltz PAC (Sept. 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The centennial of the armistice that ended World War I has inspired several concerts this fall. The latest of them was “Remembrance: Music of War, Peace & Comfort,” an affecting performance by Cleveland Chamber Choir on the new Silver Hall Series at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. On Sunday, September 23, in an event that was part concert, part memorial service, Scott MacPherson led his 32-voice chorale in a beautifully curated program of music from six centuries that makes a “universal statement about the suffering that war brings to all people, especially the families of loved ones lost.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir to reflect on war and peace in free concerts this weekend

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by Jarrett Hoffman

It was September of 2001, two weeks after 9/11, when Scott MacPherson was at a concert in Germany, hearing a mystery piece that sounded like it was written for the fall of the twin towers.

“I speak German, so I understood the text and I was literally in tears the whole time,” MacPherson, now founding artistic director of the Cleveland Chamber Choir, told me during a phone interview. “There are all these images of a fire coming down from on high, and of the city once being a beautiful place.”

The name of the piece wasn’t printed in the program — it was a surprise addition to commemorate those lost in the attack — but it turned out to be Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst (“How Desolate Lies the City”) by Rudolf Mauersberger, who died in 1971. The text, from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, tells of the destruction of Jerusalem, while the music was written after the fall of another city: Dresden, firebombed during World War II. “It’s an extremely moving piece,” MacPherson said.

This weekend, MacPherson and his Cleveland Chamber Choir will present that work and eleven others as part of “Remembrance: War, Peace, and Comfort.” [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir & BlueWater Chamber Orchestra (May 19)

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by Timothy Robson

CCC First BaptistThe Cleveland Chamber Choir and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra combined forces under Choir conductor Scott MacPherson to play the first of two weekend concerts on Saturday, May 19 at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland.

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BlueWater + Cleveland Chamber Choir: the phone call from Carlton Woods to Scott MacPherson

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Scott MacPherson_2016Last year, Carlton Woods was scheduled to conduct the first joint performance between his BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir. But when Woods fell ill, he called MacPherson (left), who stepped in to lead that concert — the premiere of Sam Guarnaccia’s Emergent Universe Oratorio at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

Another phone call came with worse news. “Carlton was trying to set up his season this year for BlueWater,” MacPherson said during a recent interview, “because he knew he wasn’t going to live to see the day.”

Woods asked MacPherson if he would lead another collaboration between the two chamber ensembles. The BlueWater founder requested two selections for chorus and orchestra, and one for orchestra alone — and that’s what MacPherson will deliver on two dates this weekend.

On Saturday, May 19 at 7:30 pm at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights, then on Sunday, May 20 at 3:00 pm at Baldwin Wallace University’s Gamble Auditorium, MacPherson will lead BlueWater and his own Cleveland Chamber Choir in “Vocal Verve.” [Read more…]

Barnby roars past Monteverdi in March Madrigal Madness upset (Mar. 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CleChambChoir CMA 031818In a clever concert in the Recital Hall of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, March 18, nineteen members of Scott MacPherson’s Cleveland Chamber Choir pitted sixteen madrigals against each other as though they were competing basketball teams in the March Madness bracket, inviting the audience to vote by “applauseometer” on their favorites, and ultimately declaring a champion. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir joins March Madness — with Madrigals

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by Daniel Hathaway

ScottMacPhersonClevelandChamberChoirMaybe you’ve already begun filling out your 2018 NCAA March Madness bracket. But if making predictions about basketball isn’t your passion, why not turn to madrigals instead? Cleveland Chamber Choir director Scott MacPherson will join a reduced contingent of his singers in “March Madrigal Madness” in the Recital Hall of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, March 18 at 3:00 pm to present his own “Sweet Sixteen.”

“At the end of last season, we decided to expand slowly and offer a third program in 2017-2018,” MacPherson said in a telephone conversation. “We thought it would be fun to tie a March program into the NCAA tournament. We can’t really set up a 64-composer draw, but we want the concert to be interactive, so we’ll print the program in the form of a 16-song tournament bracket.”

MacPherson will invite the audience to vote on their favorite madrigal or part song by composers in four national categories — three of them from the 16th century and one from the 19th. [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Cleveland Chamber Choir to premiere Guarnaccia’s Emergent Universe Oratorio

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by Daniel Hathaway

ComposerCleveland Chamber Choir founding artistic director Scott MacPherson will lead his expanded chorus and the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of Sam Guarnaccia’s Emergent Universe Oratorio at the Maltz Performing Arts Center at Case Western Reserve University on Friday, June 30 at 7:30 pm. Designed to underline humanity’s responsibility to protect and preserve planet Earth, the work relates the scientific story of the journey of the Universe from the Big Bang to the emergence of the evolutionary force of human consciousness.

The new work will be performed in conjunction with a congress of the World Union of Jesuit Alumni at John Carroll University — held every four years but meeting in North America for the first time since its founding in 1956. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: Spring at Rocky River Methodist (May 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ScottMacPhersonClevelandChamberChoirEveryone’s favorite season of the year has had tough going in Cleveland this time around, with temperatures lurching back and forth between the high 40s and the mid 80s. But Scott MacPherson and Cleveland Chamber Choir certainly nudged nature along at Rocky River Methodist Church on Saturday evening, May 13 with their attractive program, “No Time Like Spring.” The concert was to be repeated on Sunday afternoon at First Baptist in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]

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