Soo Han Archives - Cleveland Classical

Director Dirk Garner fills us in on Baldwin Wallace’s 87th Bach Festival

April 9, 2019 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

Founded in 1932 by Albert Riemenschneider (probably best known today for his edition of Bach’s 371 harmonized chorales), the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival turns a spry 87 years old this year. Festival director Dirk Garner continues to infuse the extended Festival weekend with new ideas. We chatted with him by phone to ask what’s new on the agenda for 2019.

“There are two or three changes this year. We’ve added a Thursday evening concert specifically to celebrate our new orchestra conductor, Soo Han. He’s just been here a year, but he’s making a big splash. He’s a wonderful musician, and the students love him.” That opening concert on Thursday, April 11 at 7:00 pm in Gamble Auditorium includes Leopold Stokowski’s arrangement of Bach’s Air on the G String from the third orchestral suite, Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D, and Christopher Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body.

“The Stokowski arrangement ties into what I think is so cool about this year’s Festival,” Garner said. “It shows the many faces of Bach in the 21st century. [Read more…]

Cleveland Opera Theater {NOW} Festival: a celebration of new opera

February 2, 2019 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

The creation of new operas is a passion of Scott Skiba, Cleveland Opera Theater’s executive artistic director. The company will host the third annual {NOW} Festival at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory beginning on Monday, February 4 and running through Sunday, February 9. All Festival activities are free and open to the public.

This year’s Festival will include partnerships between Baldwin Wallace, Bowling Green State University, the Cleveland Composers Guild, Hiram College, and Oberlin. “Every year we try to make the institutional collaborations and student engagement more rich,” Skiba said during a telephone conversation. “And this year we’ve got great energy around everything that’s happening.”

The Festival will also include an American Futures Residency by composers Jake Heggie and Griffin Candey, and soprano Ann Moss. “We started putting the plans for this together during the first {NOW} Festival,” Skiba noted. “The residency will allow us to bring these three exceptional artists to the BW campus to work and collaborate with Conservatory students.” [Read more…]

No Exit: New Season, New Sounds at SPACES Gallery (Oct. 19)

by Daniel Hathaway

No Exit New Music’s events are like carefully curated art shows, and come complete with printed programs that more resemble exhibition catalogs than what you’d normally be handed at the door of a concert venue.

It takes some space to present the often complex back stories of contemporary works, and the ensemble’s triad of October programs, simply titled “New Season, New Sounds” was accompanied by a colorful, artsy, 39-page booklet that could become a collector’s item.

I joined a good-sized and enthusiastic audience to attend the third performance at SPACES Gallery on Saturday evening, October 19. [Read on…]

Apollo’s Fire opens Bach-focused season with Brandenburgs (Oct. 18)

by Peter Feher

If it weren’t for J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, there might not be period-instrument ensembles like Apollo’s Fire. Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra, now in its 33rd season, opened its concert year with a solid program built around these staple pieces.

A lively performance of four of the concertos at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday, October 18 was the first of half a dozen outings for Apollo’s Fire this month (with slight changes in repertoire and personnel along the way).

Bach’s music, in all its consolations and complexities, could easily fill an ensemble’s entire schedule. In fact, that’s sort of what Apollo’s Fire has planned for 2024–25, with artistic director Jeannette Sorrell conceiving of the composer as a “guide star” for the season. The yearlong focus on Bach is set to conclude this spring in a “Bachanalia,” a full month of concerts and workshops around Northeast Ohio. [Read on…]

Les Délices conjures Arcadia in high quality (Oct. 20)

by Stephanie Manning

Arcadia: that mythological Eden, that utopian natural paradise. The members of Italy’s Arcadian Academy, established in the late 17th century, aimed to replicate that pastoral life via the arts. And on October 20, Les Délices sought to do the same, by performing the music of composers from the Academy and beyond.

“Arcadian Dreams,” a program featuring soprano Hannah De Priest, gave the Harkness Chapel audience a taste of the early music group’s next recording. In fact, the musicians were gearing up to get in the studio the very next day — and they delivered a suitably high-quality performance in the process. [Read on…]

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