ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Akropolis Reed Quintet 
visits Tuesday Musical series

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

If the reed quintet were a person, it would be a millennial.

A variation on the wind quintet, with flute and horn jettisoned in favor of saxophone and bass clarinet — reed-brethren of oboe, clarinet, and bassoon — the instrumentation was born as recently as 1985, when five high schoolers in Amsterdam came together to form Calefax. The group gradually amassed a body of repertoire where there was none, and began to spread their musical seed.

One of the groups they inspired to spring up is the Detroit-based Akropolis Reed Quintet — oboist Tim Gocklin, clarinetist Kari Landry, saxophonist Matt Landry, bassoonist Ryan Reynolds, and bass clarinetist Andrew Koeppe — winners of the Gold Medal at the 2014 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, among several national prizes.

Now celebrating their 15th-anniversary season, Akropolis will visit Northeast Ohio next week for a recital on the Tuesday Musical series on November 7 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall.

Their program includes Marc Mellits’s Splinter, Willem Jeths’s Maktub, George Gershwin’s An American in Paris (arranged by none other than Calefax saxophonist Raaf Hekkema), and a recent commission of theirs: Omar Thomas’s Moods and Attitudes, a classical work fueled by the composer’s background in jazz, its movements visiting the genres of blues, ballad, and bebop. Tickets are available here.

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical presents the genre-bending Nu Deco Ensemble

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

The program that Miami-based Nu Deco Ensemble will bring to E.J. Thomas Hall on Wednesday, May 4 at 7:30 pm — part of the Tuesday Musical series — can be divided into a few categories.

There’s pop music by Queen, Bill Withers, the Beach Boys, and Daft Punk that’s been adapted for orchestra. There’s traditional classical music by J.S. Bach and Bizet that’s been infused with Latin jazz and minimalism. And there’s contemporary music by Gabriella Smith and Valerie Coleman, two living composers with a clear interest in combining different styles.

In a recent conversation on Zoom, conductor, co-founder, and co-artistic director Jacomo Bairos said that Nu Deco’s interest in stylistic variety started simply “as a hook.”

[Read more…]

Naughton Piano Duo to visit Tuesday Musical

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Identical twins Christina and Michelle Naughton — the first piano duo to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant — are known for their uncanny level of mind-melding in performance. Christina once told The Wall Street Journal, “There are times I forget we are two people playing together.”

As I learned during a recent telephone call, that sense of unity extends to their interviews. Our central topic of conversation was their upcoming appearance on Tuesday Musical’s Margaret Baxtresser Annual Piano Concert on Tuesday, November 16 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, where they’ll play an all-American program of music by Copland, Bernstein, Schoenfield, and Adams. (Tickets are available here.)

Throughout the call, they were thoughtful, humorous, down-to-earth — and very similar in voice. Occasionally I asked who had just been speaking, only to find out they had been switching off. According to Michelle (I think), they’ve been misquoted for each other “ten million times” — they’re not only used to it, but used to laughing about it. 

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical: Edgar Meyer in person at E.J. Thomas

by

by Mike Telin

Located on the campus of the University of Akron, the concrete structure that is E.J. Thomas Hall is a formidable space. With a seating capacity of 2,955, it is not the first venue that comes to mind when you think of enjoying an intimate musical experience. But in a concert presented by Tuesday Musical on April 20, Edgar Meyer proved that a great musician is capable of making a large hall feel small.

Alone onstage with his bass, looking out into a socially distanced crowd of around 300, Meyer presented a mesmerizing 70-minute recital that featured music from the Baroque to bluegrass. Playing with the precision of a champion figure skater, Meyer’s fingers glided from one end of the instrument’s fingerboard to the other, flawlessly negotiating the tightest of turns — the guy has technique to spare — and sticking the landing of each musical leap, his intonation pitch-perfect. Above all, his artistry was beyond reproach.

[Read more…]

Emanuel Ax to open in-person Tuesday Musical Series March 25

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Thanks to COVID-19, the earth has cycled through four seasons since pianist Emanuel Ax has played a solo recital. He’s looking forward to making up for that with an all-Chopin program on the Tuesday Musical Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on Thursday, March 25 at 7:30 pm.

This time around, the annual Margaret Baxtresser Concert will mark the Association’s first in-person event since the pandemic began, and the management has made sure that all performers have had their vaccinations, and that distancing protocols are respected in the seating plan.

Ax has chosen works from Chopin’s later years: the Two Nocturnes, Op. 55, the Polonaise Fantasie, Op. 61, the Three Mazurkas of Op. 56, the Barcarolle, Op. 60, the Nocturne in E, Op. 62, No. 2, and Scherzo No. 4, Op. 54.

I reached “Manny” Ax by telephone at his getaway in the Berkshires to chat about his program, which I found a bit unusual. Lots of pianists program Chopin, but you don’t often see a complete recital dedicated to his works.

“I’ve never done it, but it’s been done,” he said. “This program is meant to feature incredible masterpieces from Chopin’s later years. I learned some of it that I’d never played before during quarantine and I’m excited about trying out the program. Of course, I’m going to be very nervous because I haven’t done a recital for a year. I hope people will forgive me for things, because it’s going to be difficult in that sense.” [Read more…]

Al Fresco events take off
in Northeast Ohio

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire sold out all seven of its outdoor “Tuscan Sun” concerts last week, and now patrons of Akron’s Tuesday Musical “Music al fresco: Passport 2020” have snapped up all the available seats — socially distanced, of course — for its three Sunday afternoon performances in September and October at historic Barder House in West Akron.

That’s a nice problem to have, and TMA has solved it by adding an extra 1:00 pm performance to the existing 3:00 pm performances on September 6 (Russian Duo), September 20 (Black Squirrel Winds), and October 11 (Found Sounds: Ghana, Trinidad, Brazil).

Executive Director Cynthia Snider wrote in a press release, “We have carefully designed Music al fresco: Passport 2020 to provide a safe entertainment option for audiences in Northeast Ohio where most live arts events have been canceled for months because of COVID-19.”

Snider added that strict safety protocols will be in force in coordination with Summit County Public Health. [Read more…]

Tuesday Musical Scholarship Competition: investing in the future 

by

by Mike Telin

If you are looking for a good return on your investment, give scholarships to budding musicians to help them over the financial humps during their early careers. Since 1955, Akron’s Tuesday Musical has been providing financial assistance through its Annual Scholarship Competition to College and University music performance and education majors who are Ohio residents or studying with a music teacher at an Ohio institution.

Earlier this year Tuesday Musical announced that brothers Richard Zook and Douglas Zook Jr. had endowed a new prize for the Scholarship Competition with the creation of the Howard E. Leisinger Viola Prize in honor of their maternal grandfather. 

Leisinger, who grew up on a farm near the Maryland-Pennsylvania line, began studying music privately with a neighbor when he was young. “I have only the haziest memory of my grandfather — he died when I was very young,” Douglas Zook said by telephone from his home in Doylestown, Ohio. “The story I heard is that my grandfather’s family, being practical farmers, weren’t particularly supportive, but he continued.”

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical:
marriage and an octopus

by

by Mike Telin 

What do marriage and an octopus have in common? They both served as inspirations for Gregg Kallor’s new work for string octet. On Wednesday, October 30 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical will present “October Octets” featuring the Dover and Escher String Quartets. The program will include the premiere of Kallor’s String Octet as well as Shostakovich’s Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11, and Enescu’s Octet for Strings in C, Op. 7. A conversation with the musicians will be held in the Flying Balcony Club beginning at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

First, the marriages. Kallor’s new work will bring together two brilliant string quartets. That’s a marriage of a sort. But there’s more — Dover violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt and Escher cellist Brook Speltz are in fact married. And when composing his String Octet, marriage was at the forefront of Kallor’s thoughts. “I started writing it in the late winter of last year,” the composer said during a recent interview. “But I had proposed to my wife in November, so marriage was very much on my mind.” That marriage took place in September. 

Second, the octopus. “My wife has this thing for octopuses, and we’re dealing with eight musicians. It wasn’t a conscious decision but this was all floating around in my head when I was writing the piece.” 

[Read more…]

Jason Vieaux and Adam Barnett-Hart open Tuesday Musical season 

by

by Mike Telin 

When guitarist Jason Vieaux and the Escher String Quartet first performed together at Music@Menlo in 2007, the musicians knew they needed to keep the collaboration going. “Since then the Quartet has played with him many times,” Escher first violinist Adam Barnett-Hart said during a telephone interview. “We’ve performed some duos as part of the Quartet programs,” Vieaux said during a separate conversation, “but next week will be the first full concert as a duo.”

On Tuesday, September 24 at 7:30 pm at E.J. Thomas Hall, Jason Vieaux and Adam Barnett-Hart will open Tuesday Musical’s 2019-20 MainStage season. Audience members can get to know the performers during the Concert Conversation at 6:30 p.m. in E.J.’s Flying Balcony Club. Accessible by elevator, the Club features lounge seating and libations. Tickets are available online.

Putting together an evening-length program for guitar and violin is not without challenges. “There isn’t a huge amount of music that’s written for that combination,” Barnett-Hart noted. “You need to be creative about finding pieces, and come up with enough variety in the music.”

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical: Escher String Quartet (Mar. 28)

by

by Nicholas Stevens

Rare, even precious, are the occasions when classical-concert organizers and the ensembles they welcome give substantial new pieces the space to thrive alongside beloved classics. Tuesday Musical, however, presents Northeast Ohioans with just this sort of experience on a semi-regular basis. When the Escher Quartet came to Akron on Thursday, March 28, a bold new thirty-minute composition more than held its own alongside works by Mozart and Beethoven. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us