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A Trio of Messiah Sings
will take place this week

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by Daniel Hathaway

Although Handel wrote his most famous oratorio for performance in Dublin at Eastertime of 1742, Messiah has become irrevocably associated with Christmas in the United States. And what would that season be without the opportunity to participate in do-it-yourself Messiah Sings? Here are three occasions when you can lift up your voices in the next week without auditions or rehearsals.

On Sunday, December 15 at 3:00 pm, the Master Singers Chorale will hold their first annual Sing at First Congregational Church in Akron. Edward Arthur Shure conducts, and Kent State student vocalists  Heather Morrison, soprano, Natalie Butchko, mezzo-soprano, Benjamin Hayes, tenor, and Charles Austin Piper, baritone, will take the solos. James Mismas will be at the organ, supplemented by a brass quartet. [Read more…]

Trinity Cathedral: Howells & Rutter on Good Friday (Apr. 19)

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by Nicholas Stevens

How can a faith mourn its greatest loss while still gesturing toward the resurrection that follows — and set it all to music? Last year, Trinity Cathedral’s choristers and instrumentalists presented Arvo Pärt’s Passio on their annual Good Friday concert. A vast, austere retelling of Christ’s Passion, the work exerts an almost grueling gravity. This year, however, Trinity artistic director and organist Todd Wilson presented not a monument, but a colorful mosaic of grief, farewell, and hope in the form of two English Requiem settings. [Read more…]

Big Read Cleveland delves into race, Trinity’s BrownBag Series responds

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by Jarrett Hoffman

“We’ve heard this story before,” tenor Matt Jones said during a recent telephone conversation. We had been talking about the cartoon caricature of tennis star Serena Williams that was published in the Herald Sun of Australia last fall, and was widely seen as racist. “I’m glad that we’re still talking about these things and why they happen.”

Jones will join soprano Kristine Caswelch and pianist Nicole Keller at Trinity Cathedral next Wednesday, February 27 at 12:00 pm for a BrownBag Concert conceived in response to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. That 2014 finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry has been described as “an anatomy of American racism in the new millennium” (Parul Sehgal, Bookforum). A second performance takes place on Sunday, March 24 at 2:00 pm at the Main Branch of Lakewood Public Library.

Some quick background on the program: it’s the result of a web of partnerships among two local organizations, Music and Art at Trinity and the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning (CAL), one regional, Arts Midwest, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). CAL was selected to host one of this year’s NEA Big Read programs, in which a series of events are planned around a book, with the purpose of broadening people’s understanding of the world, their community, and themselves.

[Read more…]

Trinity Cathedral to present Arvo Pärt’s Passio on Good Friday

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by Daniel Hathaway

Trinity PassionFor four decades, Trinity Cathedral has presented an evening concert on Good Friday, often dedicated to a setting of the Passion of Jesus drawn from one of the four Gospels.

On Friday, March 30 at 7:30 pm, music director Todd Wilson will lead the Cathedral Choir, soloists, and members of Trinity Chamber Orchestra in a particularly striking setting of the Passion according to John by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Completed in Austria in 1982, Passio was the culmination of Pärt’s tintinnabuli style, and in many ways harks back to the liturgical passion settings of the middle ages.

In one of several near-mystical statements explaining that style of composition, Pärt wrote on his website,

Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers — in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it?

[Read more…]

In “Carols IX: Carols of Yore,” Quire Cleveland pulls from past favorites and adds Hanukkah

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by Jarrett Hoffman

DuffinQuireTrinityQuire Cleveland’s latest holiday program spans from the 13th century up to this very decade. But that’s not the only way “Old & New” describes the ensemble’s ninth annual “Carols for Quire” concert, to be performed from December 15-17 in Cleveland and Rocky River. In honor of its tenth anniversary season, the choir will reach into its bag for some favorite carols from seasons past, and will close by celebrating the addition this year of Hanukkah music.

“A lot of what Quire does is Christian music, there’s no question about it,” Ross Duffin, founder and artistic director, said in a recent conversation. “That’s a large part of choral singing generally, just because the church has been such an important and ubiquitous patron for composers and singers throughout history.”

Duffin credited Executive Director Beverly Simmons — who also sings alto in the ensemble and is married to Duffin — for the idea to expand this year’s program to Hanukkah. “Her background is Jewish, and she sings every year for the High Holy Days,” he said.

[Read more…]

Michel Bouvard: recital for the 40th Anniversary of Trinity’s Flentrop (Oct. 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Bouvard-MichelFrench organist Michel Bouvard visited Trinity Cathedral on Tuesday, October 24 to play a wide-ranging recital in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the cathedral’s Flentrop organ. With the assistance of two registrants who drew and retired stops — the organ was built in 1750s Dutch style, all-mechanical and with no gadgets for pre-setting combinations — Bouvard masterfully put the 1977 instrument through its paces in stylish performances of music ranging from Renaissance dances to transcriptions of works by Vivaldi and Mendelssohn. [Read more…]

Q&A with French organist
Michel Bouvard before his
Trinity Cathedral Recital October 24

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by Daniel Hathaway

Bouvard-MichelTrinity Cathedral will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its Dutch pipe organ with a recital by French organist Michel Bouvard on Tuesday, October 24 at 7:30 pm. The mechanical action instrument, made by Flentrop Orgelbouw in Zaandam, the Netherlands, was dedicated in December of 1977 and inspired Trinity’s lunchtime series, the Brownbag Concerts, launched in January of 1978.

Bouvard is currently on a U.S. tour that began at Meyerson Symphony Hall in Dallas, continued with recitals and masterclasses at the University of Kansas, and after Cleveland, will end with a recital at the Maison Symphonique in Montréal. Due to language issues, in lieu of an interview, we sent M. Bouvard some questions by email to which he has graciously responded. [Read more…]

Choir of New College, Oxford at Trinity Cathedral (Mar. 31)

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by Timothy Robson

New-College-Choir-at-Trinity-Cathedral-033117The adjective “new” is a relative term at the University of Oxford. New College was founded by William of Wykeham in 1379, and a choir has been a part of the college from its beginning. The current ensemble of sixteen boy choristers and fourteen adult clerks — a mixture of professional singers and undergraduate students — visited Trinity Cathedral on Friday, March 31, as part of their North American tour. [Read more…]

Oxford’s New College Choir at Trinity Cathedral: a conversation with director Robert Quinney

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by Daniel Hathaway

New-College-ChoirOn Friday, March 31 at 7:30 pm, Oxford’s New College Choir will make a stop at Trinity Cathedral for a concert including both Anglican Church Music favorites and new works as part of the Choir’s six-city American tour.

The choir of boys and men dates from 1379, when William of Wykeham, the founder of Winchester College, established an educational outpost named The Warden and Scholars of St. Mary’s College of Winchester in Oxford. That title being both unwieldy and confusing (there was already a college of St. Mary in Oxford), the institution soon came to be known as New College.

New College Choir now has a relatively new director in Robert Quinney, who in 2014 replaced Edward Higginbottom after the latter’s four decades serving New College. Quinney assumed the directorship of the 30-voice ensemble after an organ scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge; an assistantship at Westminster Abbey (where he played for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton); and a brief tour of duty as organist of Peterborough Cathedral. [Read more…]

Organist Jonathan Ryan plays Bach’s Clavier-Übung III at Trinity Cathedral (Mar. 21)

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by Timothy Robson

RYAN-JonathanJohann Sebastian Bach’s monumental Clavier-Übung III is arguably the greatest collection of organ works of all time. Comprised of twenty-one chorale preludes and four duets, and bookended with a prelude and fugue in E-flat major, the Clavier-Übung III is the final distillation of Baroque organ counterpoint. American organist Jonathan Ryan played Bach’s longest, most complex, and most difficult organ work Tuesday evening, March 21 on Trinity Cathedral’s 1977 Flentrop organ. [Read more…]

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