by Mike Telin
If you’ve ever tried to define the term “contemporary classical music” in clear and decisive language, chances are that you’ve found it impossible. Modernism, post-modernism, spectral music, polystylism, historicism, neo-romanticism, new simplicity, and new complexity, as well as minimalism and post-minimalism — encountering these categories might leave you throwing up your hands in frustration. Honestly, the best way to understand the breadth of contemporary classical music is to experience it live — as often as possible. [Read more…]
On Saturday, November 14, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra presented a program at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights that could be described as a showcase for some of Cleveland’s most talented musicians. Led by founder and conductor Carlton Woods, the ensemble performed three sublime and challenging works by Gabriel Fauré, Giuseppe Maria Cambini, and Francis Poulenc. These high-energy pieces, calling for technical bravado and some for lush romanticism, seemed to be joined at the hip, and made for an evening that was both serene and breathtakingly beautiful. 
1935, 1936, 1940, 1946, 1947, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1963, 1967, 1971, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2011 — and now 2015. Those are the 23 years in which the 83-year-old Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival has featured Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Great Catholic Mass,” as his sons described it. That makes it a tradition, for sure, but Dirk Garner’s concept in his first year as the festival’s new artistic director was notable for its infusion of new energy and vitality into a work that needs a regular shaking-out in order to remain fresh. 
On Saturday evening, February 28 at the Breen Center for the Performing Arts, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of guest conductor Raphael Jiménez, performed a sumptuous program of two works by giants of the Romantic era, Gabriel Fauré and Johannes Brahms. 
Carlton Woods and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra had a fine time celebrating the Halloween weekend in their concert at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Saturday evening. The featured work on the program was Jon Deak’s The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, an action-packed concerto for string quartet and orchestra, with narration read by WCLV president Robert Contrad. 
