by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon’s screening of Harold Lloyd’s silent film comedy Speedy delighted the Stambaugh Auditorium audience in Youngstown and offered improvised organ accompaniment by Todd Wilson. This type of improvisation was common in the 1920’s and even helped the late, noted musicologist Donald Grout pay for his higher education. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Well-known concert organist Todd Wilson will explore another side of his art this month when he improvises musical scores to two silent film classics at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown and Severance Hall in Cleveland. Speedy, Harold Lloyd’s 1928 Paramount film, which chronicles the attempts of Harold “Speedy” Swift to save the last horse-drawn streetcar in New York (with a cameo appearance by Babe Ruth) will be screened at Stambaugh on Sunday, October 19 at 4:00 pm. Then the 1925 silent version of Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney, will be shown at Severance Hall on Tuesday, October 28 at 7:30 pm. Phantom is part of this season’s Cleveland Orchestra’s Celebrity Series, but Wilson will be the only musician on stage for the occasion. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Inspired by imagery of the Virgin and Child in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s medieval collection, Mother and Child, a progressive choral event, invites audiences to experience a stunning intersection of the aural and the visual in three different museum spaces on Saturday, December 14. Performers will include Quire Cleveland, led by Ross Duffin, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth and Children’s Choruses, directed by Lisa Wong, and the sopranos and altos of Trinity Cathedral Choir with brass and organ conducted by Todd Wilson.
At 2:00 pm in the Reid Gallery, Quire Cleveland will begin with a work from the 15th century, There is no rose, followed by Josquin des Prez’s Ave Maria, which Duffin describes as one of the composer’s iconic works. The performance continues with an extended piece in carol form from the Court of Henry VIII, Quid petis, o fili? byRichard Pygott. “It’s about Mary speaking to her child,” says Duffin. “It’s an intimate, imagined conversation and very appropriate to the Mother and Child theme.” A Spanish Christmas piece from the 16th Century, E la don don, was printed in Venice in 1556 in the Cancionero de Upsala and survives in only one copy. Duffin says it’s a lively piece that will feature solos by Quire’s male singers. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On November 22, a far happier occasion to remember than the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK was the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten — and far more appropriate to St. Cecilia’s Day, the patron saint of musicians. A smattering of area tributes to the greatest British composer since Henry Purcell have been planned during 2013, but Trinity Cathedral under Todd Wilson has clearly taken the lead with celebrations of Britten’s music fueling two Brownbag concerts and a gala concert last Friday evening featuring three of his most celebrated vocal and choral works.
Wilson’s choral forces — Trinity Chamber Singers and the Trinity Cathedral Choir — sang the Hymn to St. Cecilia and the festival cantata, Rejoice in the Lamb, respectively, and countertenor John McElliott and tenor JR Fralick teamed with Wilson in the second of Britten’s Five Canticles, Abraham and Isaac.
The key to Britten’s renown as a vocal composer is his choice of excellent texts to set and his dead-on intuition about how to fit music to words. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Though the modern brass quintet — two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba — only dates from the years following World War II, that combination of instruments has now become a popular standard. And what could be more thrilling than partnering a brass quintet with pipe organ?
The ProMusica Brass Quintet, based in Columbus, made their way up Interstate 71 last Wednesday to perform with cathedral organist and music director Todd Wilson on the noontime Brownbag Concert Series at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Cleveland.
The ensemble — Thomas Battenberg and Timothy Leasure, trumpets, Charles Waddell, horn, Andrew Millat, trombone and James Akins, tuba — comprises musicians who play either in the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra or Columbus Symphony. Some play in both. Together with Wilson, they served up a varied, masterfully performed program of Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic music for a large lunchtime audience. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
On Good Friday evening, March 29, led by music director Todd Wilson, the Trinity Cathedral Choir, pianists Elizabeth DeMio and Elizabeth Lenti, soprano Judith Overcash, baritone Zachary Rusk and baritone Ray Liddle joined forces to perform Johannes Brahms’s German Requiem.
In the nineteenth century it was not unusual for orchestral compositions to be arranged for piano, thus making in-home performances more readily available. Brahms completed his German Requiem in 1868, and immediately prepared a scaled down version of the work for piano four hands and chorus. It was actually premiered in a home in 1872.
This scaled-down piano version is not without interest, but those who are used to hearing the orchestral version may find it softened and somewhat bland. Though Brahms did not intend listeners to this non-liturgical requiem to shudder in fear for their souls, it is impossible not to feel a sense of guilt and veneration when lambasted by a massive chorus with full orchestra. Heard as it was this evening, this requiem became a gentler work but the intensity and emotional involvement of the singers made for a deeply religious experience. [Read more…]
by J.D. Goddard
The Brownbag
Concert Series at Trinity Cathedral has been a weekly tradition in the city of Cleveland for 35 years. Trinity’s director of music and worship Todd Wilson has continued this tradition every Wednesday during the season at 12:10 pm when an always appreciative audience comes to enjoy a one-hour program of musical offerings ranging from the classical to the contemporary — and to grab a quick lunch. This past Wednesday, October 24, members of the Trinity Cathedral Choir and Chamber Singers joined Wilson and guest pianist Elizabeth DeMio in the third and final weekly installment of Brahms-Fest 2012 featuring Brahms’s Hungarian Dances Nos. 1, 3, 5, 11, and 21 for piano four-hands along with the Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 52 for piano four-hands and singers.
Brahms Hungarian Dances are a set of 21 spirited dance melodies based primarily on Hungarian themes and completed in 1869. Each dance varies in length from one minute to four minutes. Brahms originally wrote his Hungarian Dances for piano four-hands and later arranged the first ten dances for solo piano. Only numbers 11, 14 and 16 are entirely original compositions and he later orchestrated numbers 1, 3, and 10. Dvořák, along with other composers, orchestrated the remaining dances. [Read more…]