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Summers at Severance makes triumphant return (July 11)

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by Stephanie Manning

In between their already-packed schedule at Blossom Music Center, the musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra appeared at their usual venue — Severance Music Center — for an exciting offering on July 11. Returning after a five-year absence, the Summers at Severance series kicked off with a high-quality evening of Mandel Concert Hall debuts.

Conductor Oksana Lyniv, joining the Orchestra for the first time, brought a graceful precision and strong sense of tempo to the podium. The synergy between conductor and orchestra was evident from the opening piece, Leoš Janáček’s Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen, [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra revives Summers at Severance series

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by Stephanie Manning

Four years on from pandemic disruptions, some ensembles are still working on returning to 100% of their pre-2020 programming. Case in point from this summer: The Cleveland Orchestra, which is reviving its Summers at Severance series for the first time in five years.

“As we’ve been coming back to ‘normal,’ there is definitely an appetite for more of our classical offerings during the summer,” artistic administrator Michael Gandlmayr said in a recent interview. While the Orchestra’s home at this time of year is unquestionably Blossom Music Center, performing a few times at Severance Music Center gives audiences more options to enjoy their programming. “It’s also a great opportunity for us to see some new and returning faces, both on the podium as well as soloists.”

[Read more…]

Leonard Slatkin to lead
CIM Orchestra at Severance

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Over the past month, Leonard Slatkin has gone back to school.

The recent college visits, so to speak, for the renowned conductor — who is currently Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony, Directeur Musical Honoraire of the Orchestre National de Lyon, Conductor Laureate of the St. Louis Symphony, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria — have included concerts at Manhattan School of Music and Carnegie Mellon University.

Slatkin will cap off that run when he guest conducts the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra on Tuesday, February 27 at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center for a night of music “From the New World.” The program includes that famous symphony by Antonín Dvořák as well as Cindy McTee’s Double Play and Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, which will feature CIM student Jazmin Pascual as soloist. Tickets are available here.

I reached Slatkin on Zoom to discuss working with students, how he became interested in conducting, his multi-generational musical family, and his writing — ranging from his early interest in science fiction all the way up to his fourth book. Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Twentieth Century: A Study Guide for Conductors will be published by Rowman & Littlefield on March 5.

[Read more…]

Daniel Singer: falling in love
with Fauré’s Requiem

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by Mike Telin

“The first time I heard the Fauré Requiem was during my freshman year in college,” Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus director Daniel Singer recalled in an interview, adding that he instantly fell in love with the work. “It’s just a beautiful piece of choral music. It’s so melodic, and Fauré knew how to spin a tuneful melody.”

On Sunday, February 18 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, the Chorus will join forces with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra for a performance of Fauré’s beloved work. The program, under the direction of Daniel Reith, also includes Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra MLK Celebration Concert: a conversation with violinist Amaryn Olmeda

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by Mike Telin

It’s always fun to ask someone how it feels to be making their debut performance with The Cleveland Orchestra. And while all the responses come with excitement, there was a bit of extra enthusiasm in the voice of Amaryn Olmeda.

“I can’t wait,” the 15-year-old violinist said during a recent interview. “It’s just so crazy to me because I grew up listening to all their recordings — putting them on my playlist and playing along with them. Then all of a sudden I’m performing with them. So I’m very excited for this opportunity and I’m very honored that they chose me to play with them at their Martin Luther King concert.”

On Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Daniel Reith and William Henry Caldwell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus in a program that commemorates 60 years since the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. The concert will feature works by J. Rosamond Johnson, Adolphus Hailstork, Jame P. Johnson, and the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, Allison Loggins-Hull. Click here for free tickets.

The program will also include Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane with soloist Amaryn Olmeda, winner of first prize and the audience choice award at the 24th Annual Sphinx Competition. I reached the violinist by phone and began by asking her how she came to choose the piece.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Chorus:
Whitacre’s The Sacred Veil (Oct. 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The Sacred Veil, as one might expect from an hour-long work about death and grief, is not an easy listen. Eric Whitacre’s music, evocative and emotional, makes potent company with Charles Anthony Silvestri’s words, a chain of poems on the loss of his wife Julia Lawrence Silvestri (Julie), who died of ovarian cancer in 2005 at the age of 36. The inclusion of Julie’s own poetry, along with Whitacre’s, increases the impact.

On Friday, October 20 during a performance by The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, the Severance Music Center audience, perhaps expecting lighter fare, listened closely, though gloomily. Told through particularities — one couple’s experience of early love and childbirth, the young woman’s diagnosis, prognosis, and ultimately her death — Sacred Veil’s power lies in its wider applicability. The words, projected in supertitles above the stage, penetrated the heart; the music sealed the deal.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Women’s Orchestra shines in music by White, Sibelius & Dvořák (Apr. 30) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

In 1993 Dolores White was commissioned by the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra to write Celebration, Salute to the Arts for the centennial celebration of the Chicago World’s Fair, and the resulting work was premiered by CWO that year at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is fitting, then, that the Orchestra’s program on Sunday, April 30 featured that work, both as tribute to the longtime Cleveland-based composer — who died on March 23 — and as a wider celebration of the arts and women’s contribution to it. The concert at Severance Music Center also featured Dane Johansen in a silky performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, and the King Christian II Suite of Jean Sibelius.

Conductor Jungho Kim (pictured) began by describing the orchestra’s commission of Celebration, and his meeting with the composer not long before her passing to discuss the upcoming concert. At age 90, White was so occupied by performances and personal appearances that she only had a few minutes to meet with Kim outside her apartment. Unconcerned by passing cars and street noise, as the conductor recalled, White intently pointed out important passages in the score. Kim was moved by her unflagging energy and attention.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra:
Blomstedt & Ax (Feb. 16)

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by Peter Feher

There are few music directors who know Beethoven better than Herbert Blomstedt. Now 95 years old, the Swedish-American conductor has a lifetime of serious study and performing experience to draw on, but this isn’t to say his interpretations are set in stone.

The mix of curiosity and thoroughness that’s sustained Blomstedt throughout his career was just as apparent in his program with The Cleveland Orchestra on February 16. If he’s slowed down somewhat since his last appearance here — the biggest change is that he now conducts seated at the podium — there was nonetheless a sense of coming full circle as he led Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra
MLK Celebration: a chat 
with emcee Peter Lawson Jones

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by Mike Telin 

“When I was ten or eleven, my father was going to an MLK march. He asked me if I wanted to go and I didn’t. And that has been a regret of mine for a very long time,” Peter Lawson Jones recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “But this night will celebrate all that Dr. King did and I look forward to being part of it.”

On Sunday, January 15 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Jones will act as narrator and emcee when The Cleveland Orchestra presents its free, annual concert in honor of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. under the direction of Daniel Reith. Jones will be joined by bass and narrator Soloman Howard and the all-volunteer Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, directed by William Henry Caldwell. Although the concert is sold out, it will be broadcast live on WCLV 90.3 and WKSU 89.7, with simultaneous streaming available at ideastream.org.

A Cleveland native, Jones is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. From 2002 through 2010, he was a member of the Board of Cuyahoga County Commissioners, and its president for three of those years. He previously served two and a half terms in the Ohio House of Representatives, where he was the ranking member of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee and second vice president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus. He has also been the Vice Mayor and a Councilman in the City of Shaker Heights.

[Read more…]

CIM Orchestra: Messiaen and Bruckner at Severance (Nov. 22)

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by Stephanie Manning

Change has been in the air at the Cleveland Institute of Music this year. After officially celebrating its centennial (delayed by the pandemic) in September, the CIM Orchestra returned to Severance Music Center on November 22 as part of their recent partnership with The Cleveland Orchestra. Under the direction of Carlos Kalmar — another recent addition to the school — the students gave great energy to their final concert of 2022.

Though the two composers on the program, Messiaen and Bruckner, were likely familiar to the audience, the pieces chosen were potentially less so. In the absence of written program notes, commentary was given from the stage (and with good humor) from violist Pablo Ronderos. Messiaen’s L’Ascension is “meditative, pensive, and prayer-like,” though not without the characteristic dissonances of the French composer. The early-career work, rooted in Messiaen’s Catholic faith, tells the story of Jesus’ ascent into heaven over four disparate movements.

[Read more…]

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