Simon Fisher Turner Archives - Cleveland Classical

The Epic of Everest: austere mountain, austere score

June 24, 2015 by Jeremy Reynolds

by Jeremy Reynolds

In 1935, Frances Bolton acquired the Cleveland Museum of Art’s first film projector and began hosting screenings of works by prominent filmmakers. Now, 80 years later, the program is still going strong, with around 90 annual screenings of historic and avant-garde movies alike. According to the Museum’s website, the program is one of the oldest in the nation, and it continues to draw thousands of patrons over the course of the year.

On Friday evening, June 19, a modest crowd gathered in Morley Lecture Hall in the Museum. A projection screen hangs in the front of the hall, with speakers dotted around the room to provide an optimal surround sound experience. At precisely 7:00 pm, the lights dimmed and the night’s program began, though latecomers continued to trickle in. [Read more…]

The Epic of Everest: a conversation with composer Simon Fisher Turner

June 16, 2015 by Daniel Hathaway

by Mike Telin

In June of 1924, English mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared while attempting to scale the world’s highest mountain. Their journey up Mount Everest was documented by mountaineer and filmmaker John Baptist Lucius Noel. Shot with a hand-cranked camera, Noel’s film is also one of the earliest filmed records of life in Tibet. Restored by the British Film Institute with the addition of a musical score by Simon Fisher Turner, The Epic of Everest will have its Cleveland revival premiere on Friday, June 19 at 7:00 pm in Morley Lecture Hall at the Cleveland Museum of Arts.

Simon Fisher Turner began his diverse career as a musician, songwriter, composer, producer, and actor portraying Ned East in the 1971 BBC TV adaptation of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. His musical work in film began with director Derek Jarman, for whom he scored many feature films — from Caravaggio (1986) through to Jarman’s final work, Blue (1993). [Read more…]

Oberlin Opera stages a Cendrillon of professional quality (Nov. 10)

by Daniel Hathaway

Any regional opera company would be popping its buttons with pride to have produced such an impressive performance of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillion (Cinderella) as Oberlin Opera did in Hall Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, November 10.

Imaginative staging by Stephanie Havey, skillful pacing by conductor James Feddeck, beautiful set design and costuming by Laura Carlson-Tarantowski and Chris Flaharty, respectively, plus dramatic and — for the fairies — enchanting lighting by Jeremy K. Benjamin provided a supportive environment for splendid singing by the cast and brilliant playing by the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra.

Literally thousands of versions of the Cinderella tale exist in cultures around the globe, but many of the details of Massenet’s opera date back to Charles Perrault’s 1697 Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre, which adds what have now become essential elements to the tale: a young girl mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, who temporarily attracts the attention of a handsome prince at a royal ball and is eventually reunited with him to become a princess herself. [Read on…]

Seraph Brass dances through musical travels in Rocky River (Nov. 11)

by Stephanie Manning

Before Seraph Brass arrived in Ohio on November 11, the group’s fall touring season had taken them on the road to Missouri, Florida, New York, and even Peru. And at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, they gave the audience a taste of the traveling life right from the first piece.

The “Prelude” from Edvard Greig’s Holberg Suite whisked listeners away to Norway, with a melody surely familiar to many. It was extra familiar to the brass quintet themselves, who launched into their opening number without sheet music. Playing memorized is part of the group’s trademark, and they smoothly alternated using music and no music throughout the evening. Either way, the wide-ranging program had those at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church spellbound.

Trumpet players Mary Elizabeth Bowden and Raquel Samayoa, horn player Layan Atieh, trombonist Lauren Casey-Clyde, and tuba player Robyn Black sounded equally comfortable in Romantic and contemporary repertoire, flipping between both with practiced ease. [Read on…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Concerto Cycle performance featured pairing of rising star and mentor (Nov. 15)

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

By Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND, Ohio — For the third program in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle, the pairing of 20-year-old Korean pianist Yunchan Lim with his mentor Minsoo Sohn was an astute programming decision.

Well-established names on the concert circuit — Orion Weiss, Sir Stephen Hough, and Garrick Ohlsson — had already filled the empty solo spots for the composer’s Triple Concerto and solo concertos 2, 3, and 4. But the choice of the youngest pianist ever to win the Van Cliburn Competition to close out the Cleveland series packed Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Friday evening, November 15, with a near-capacity audience teeming with enthusiastic young people.

[Read on…]

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