Theron Brown Archives - Cleveland Classical

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: “Exploration CLE” at the Breen (Nov. 20)

December 1, 2021 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

One of the latest instrumental ensembles to announce a new season of concerts, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra began 2021-2022 with an imaginative program on November 20 at the Breen Center at St. Ignatius High School in Ohio City. The time was unusual — Saturday afternoon at 3:00 pm.

Music director and conductor Daniel Meyer built his playlist around Cleveland themes and scenes. “Exploration CLE” made use of engaging selections from the classical canon and beyond that celebrated “what makes Cleveland so special.” Happily, he and his musicians avoided constructing a visual slide show, choosing to let the music speak for itself. [Read more…]

Wine, doodling, flutes, and jazz piano: Urban Troubadour’s “Concert of Creativity”

November 27, 2018 by Jarrett Hoffman

by Jarrett Hoffman

“I’m really excited about the kinds of concerts that we’re making happen,” Urban Troubadour flutist and artistic director Jane Berkner told me during a recent conversation. “They’re not only cultural events, they’re also social events. I’m finding that our audiences are enjoying meeting each other over a glass of wine and cultural activity.”

And for those whose creative juices get flowing after a little bit of vino — as some of us may have experienced, or at least witnessed, during a round of post-Thanksgiving Charades — this next Urban Troubadour concert on Saturday, December 1 at WhiteSpace Creative in Akron might be one to circle on the calendar.

Things start off at 5:00 pm with wine, small bites, and doodling. 6:00 brings the main event: a concert by Berkner (flute and piccolo), George Pope (flute and alto flute), and Eric Charnofsky (piano), who together will take on a wide-ranging program of works by eight composers of five nationalities. Then at 7:30, jazz pianist Theron Brown will play while audience members make something creative to take home. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Oberlin Opera: Candide
(March 12)

by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin Opera’s wonderful mid-March production of Candide combined several layers of brilliance.

First, the source: the anonymous 1759 novella Candide, or the Optimist. Later owned up to by the French Enlightenment philosopher François-Marie Arouet — better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire — it was a deliciously wicked send-up of the absurd teachings of optimist philosophers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who taught that everything was for the best “in this best of all possible worlds.”

Then in 1956 came the first staged version of Candide as a comic opera with a witty libretto by Lillian Hellman and a high-spirited score by Leonard Bernstein — originally conceived by Hellman as a play, but Bernstein’s intentions of making it an operetta won out. [Read on…]

CD Review — Weiss’ Arc II,
an exploration of loss & grief

by Nicolette Cheauré

There may be nothing more unifying than humanity’s response to loss. Where words fail to describe feelings as complex as those associated with death and grief, music takes over — and it’s hard to imagine anything ringing more true in that regard than pianist Orion Weiss’ latest album, Arc II, released in November of 2022.

The recording opens with Ravel’s atmospheric Le Tombeau de Couperin, and the six movements provide Weiss the opportunity to express the many facets of his musical personality. The Prelude was dreamlike and flowing, saturated with traditional Ravel color changes, while the Fugue was full of constant motion before a quiet conclusion.

[Read on…]

Klezmer and Kreutzer
with CityMusic (Mar. 16)

by Stephanie Manning

Most clarinetists are no strangers to playing on all the different varieties of their instrument. But using three of them over the course of just one piece? That’s a little more unusual.

On March 16, Daniel Gilbert sat facing a packed crowd at the Temple Tifereth-Israel with a B-flat, A, and bass clarinet all laid out in front of him. The work he was about to embark on with conductor Joel Smirnoff and the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra was also a little unusual — but in a very intriguing way.

[Read on…]

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