Tom Bowling Archives - Cleveland Classical

Road rage as inspiration: chatting with No Exit’s Nicholas Underhill

September 3, 2019 by Jarrett Hoffman

by Jarrett Hoffman

How most of us react to overly aggressive drivers: clench our teeth, sweat, maybe give a honk, and fume. How pianist-composer Nicholas Underhill reacted: write a piece of music.

Passing Lane is a duo for piano and viola, but it’s also “a cinematic Road Rage Toccata,” as Underhill writes in his notes. He and his No Exit colleague James Rhodes will premiere the work when the ensemble opens its eleventh season with free concerts on September 6 at 8:00 pm at SPACES, September 7 at 7:00 pm at Heights Arts, and September 13 at 8:00 pm at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall.

The programs will also include premieres by Cleveland State composition students Adonai Henderson and Sean Parks, works by Kati Agócs and Philip Blackburn, and a performance by cimbalom virtuoso Chester Englander, the start of a two-season partnership with No Exit that will include a commissioning and recording project. [Read more…]

Review: No Exit at Spaces Gallery (March 23)

March 26, 2013 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Jarrett Hoffman

A wide spectrum of new music, by turns casual and intense, pre-determined and spontaneous, was on display in a performance by the new music ensemble No Exit on March 23 at SPACES Gallery. It was the final concert of the group’s March series, which included performances of the same program the previous two nights at MOCA Cleveland and Cleveland State University’s Drinko Auditorium.

SPACES provided a small, intimate setting, with three rows of chairs for the audience located only feet from the performers in the first room of the gallery. This, along with the art visible in the next room such as the “Twinkling Tricycle”— an antique tricycle wrapped in an absurd length of lights — lent a casual atmosphere to the concert.

The first piece, however, was anything but casual. Guest artist and virtuoso flutist Carlton Vickers performed Brian Ferneyhough’s first essay for solo flute, Cassandra’s Dream Song. Ferneyhough is known for his stunningly deliberate, complex pieces, and this one was no different. [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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