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Cooper International Competition for Violin returns for 2026

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by Mike Telin

We all know the names of the superstar violinists who regularly grace the stages of the world’s famous concert halls. But what they have in common is that they were all once young musicians honing their skills in hopes of having a career that would lead them to those renowned venues.

Beginning on Thursday, August 6 and continuing through Monday, August 10, you can hear eighteen superstars in the making when the Cooper International Competition presents the 2026 edition for violin. All sessions will be held in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory and are free and open to the public. The competition will also be streamed live on oberlin.edu and The Violin Channel. Click here for a complete schedule and here to view the participants.

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Cooper International Violin Competition Moves from Summer to January

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By Mike Telin

Now that the new calendar year is upon us, it’s interesting to see which of the area’s classical music organizations are going to be leading the way into 2025.

When it comes to competitions, that honor goes to Oberlin’s Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, which alternates annually between piano and violin.

Usually held in August, due to construction at the Conservatory this year’s violin competition needed to find an alternative time period. “We wanted the competition to happen so we moved it to January as a one-time thing,” competition director and jury chair Sibbi Bernhardsson said during a telephone conversation.

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Sibbi Bernhardsson brings Mozart’s “most perfect” violin concerto to CityMusic Cleveland

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by Stephanie Manning

Enduringly popular ever since it was written in 1775, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 is a staple in any violinist’s catalog.

“ It’s a concerto that we all have to learn and teach,” Sibbi Bernhardsson said in a recent interview. “But this will actually be my first time performing it with an orchestra, so I’m really, really excited.”

The violinist will join the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra for a series of free performances beginning on December 12 at venues around the city. Conductor John McLaughlin Williams will lead the group in a program that also includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Leó Weiner’s Serenade for Small Orchestra. More information on locations and times is available here.

Bernhardsson, who serves on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory, has performed with CityMusic twice before, once as a member of the Pacifica Quartet and once as part of the group’s chamber music series. But he’s known about the ensemble for more than 20 years.  [Read more…]

The Cooper International Violin Competition Returns to Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

Since 2010 the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition has brought talented young violinists and pianists to the campus of Oberlin College and Conservatory every summer.

After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Competition will return beginning on August 15. The 2022 edition for violin will feature a revised format and the largest prize package in the competition’s history.

The competition includes a week of performances in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall. To kick things off, all eighteen participants will give 30-minute recitals with piano on August 15 and 16. [Read more…]

ENCORE: A Tasteful showcase— “Tales of Travel & Transformation” (July 3)

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by Jacob Strauss

ENCORE Chamber Music held a musical tasting on Sunday afternoon, July 3rd at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts. “Tales of Travel and Transformation” featured members of the Verona Quartet, artistic director Jinjoo Cho, and other faculty of the summer institute.

Cellist Max Geissler led off with composer-in-residence Andrew Rindfleisch’s Quiet Music for Solo Violoncello. Gymnastic hand positions land on natural harmonics in “Waltz Music.” Heavy rhythmic lines roll under chords played assertively by Geissler in “Fast Music,” then become quiet while wind chimes glisten in “Slow Music.” [Read more…]

Richard Hawkins & Friends at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

When the Oberlin Conservatory’s Richard Hawkins was asked to curate a concert for the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, he knew right away that it was an opportunity to program works that would include his Oberlin Conservatory faculty friends. “It’s always nice to present chamber music for winds and strings that people might not know,” the clarinetist said during a telephone conversation.

On Monday, February 28 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Hawkins will be joined by Sibbi Bernhardsson (violist), Kirsten Docter (viola), James Howsmon (piano), Dmitry Kouzov (cello), Drew Pattison (bassoon), and Jeff Scott (horn) in a forgotten quintet from the turn of the 20th century, a light-hearted trio from the early 1980s, and a masterpiece sextet from 1935. The performance is free and face masks are required. The event will be live streamed on the RRCMS Facebook page. [Read more…]

Music, Sports, and Ancient Greece festival: Oberlin faculty recital (Oct. 10)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

To open the academic calendar in recent years, Oberlin Conservatory violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson has organized interdisciplinary festivals centered around intriguing themes. That continued earlier this month with “Music, Sports, and the Enduring Influence of Ancient Greece,” a topic that was examined through a variety of events, musical and otherwise, over the course of two days. I caught the tail-end of the festival via live stream: the fourth and final faculty recital in Warner Concert Hall on the evening of October 10.

The program was fresh and eclectic, featuring several works by lesser-known composers, and spanning from traditional classical to contemporary music and jazz — not to mention poetry.

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Beethoven’s complete String Quartets in two and a half days at Oberlin

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by Mike Telin

In case you’re not aware, 2020 marks Beethoven’s 250th birthday. Although the actual day is not until December, arts organizations around the globe are already knee deep in celebrations, and Oberlin is no exception. From Friday, March 6 through Sunday, March 8, Conservatory string students will present tag-team performances of all of the composer’s sixteen quartets in five free concerts in Stull Recital Hall. The marathon begins at 4:30 pm on Friday, with other concerts scheduled on Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm and 7:30 pm. You can join the live webcasts here.

“This undertaking is unique to other schools in that all the performers are students,” violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson said during a conversation in his studio. “The students are so excited — we’re all excited about this project, and it’s been all hands-on-deck. The entire string faculty is involved coaching the groups. And some of the theory professors have been coaching as well by offering their perspectives. Some are highlighting the quartets in their courses. So there’s a great synergy around the project. Presenting the complete quartet cycle is exciting no matter where you are, but we’re doing it in five concerts over two and a half days.” [Read more…]

Oberlin’s second opening festival to consider “End of Life, End of Time”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Last September, Oberlin violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson was the catalyst for a two-day festival, “Creative Arts & Music in the Shadow of War,” marking the centenary of the end of World War I with four concerts, two panel discussions, and parallel events at Oberlin’s Allen Art Museum.

That festival built on Bernhardsson’s fascination with music written during The Great War, and proved to be a great success. “Although the topic was somber, it ended up being an energizing and fun project — a way to collaborate with different professors in the College and the Conservatory, and a great opportunity for students to kick off the school year and see the faculty in action as performers and speakers,” the violinist said in a telephone conversation. “Since Oberlin has so many intellectual and musical resources, I wanted to do some kind of compelling project as a follow-up.”

The impetus for this year’s Festival came from Bernhardsson’s colleagues, who wanted to perform Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, written and performed in a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. “It’s such a great and important work that it’s not the kind of piece you play on a Sunday afternoon faculty recital and then go out and have a dessert afterward. But it occurred to me that maybe it would be a great work to build a festival around.” [Read more…]

Three ENCORE concerts (June 28 & 30, July 5)

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by David Kulma

The theme of ENCORE Chamber Music’s fourth season is “La Bohème: Art and Freedom,” mixing meanings of Bohemianism. It has brought together the 19th-century artistic movement that sought to break down conventions (think the characters from Puccini’s opera) with composers from Bohemia, of which Dvořák is the most famous. I attended three concerts where the overarching theme was successfully bent to include music from Mozart to living American composers.

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