by Mike Telin
When countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo was thinking about what to include on his debut recording for Decca Gold, he wanted more than just an anthology of arias from one composer. “As a countertenor my repertoire is split between the contemporary and the Baroque, so I started thinking about how to bridge that gap,” Costanzo said during a telephone conversation. “I have sung Handel all my life. My technique has been defined by that and my soul lies there. And when I sang the music of Philip Glass for the first time it changed me. It influenced my thinking about making art and about being a dramatic singer.”
On Tuesday, October 16 at 7:30 pm in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical will present Anthony Roth Costanzo and the Montreal-based Baroque orchestra, Les Violons du Roy, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen. The program will feature works from that debut album: ARC Glass/Handel. Tickets are available online.
Costanzo said that the music of Handel and Glass have similar qualities when it comes to harmonic language and emotional impact, as well as repetition. “Handel has the da capo aria — A and B sections then the A section repeated. He’ll also take lines of text and he’ll chunk them up by repeating a couple of words in that line several times, then he’ll go onto the next set of words and he’ll repeat them a few times. That’s almost exactly what Glass does, except he repeats the music itself.”
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the New York-based conductorless ensemble, joined violinist Augustin Hadelich in an impressive program of string music by Irving Fine, Haydn, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall on Wednesday evening, March 28. Their assured playing on the Tuesday Musical series proved that you don’t always need a baton-wielding leader out in front to inspire an excellent sense of ensemble — though sometimes it can be a good idea from an interpretational point of view.
As snow came down outside on Thursday, March 8, an absorbing evening of piano cornerstones warmed the inside of E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron. This performance by Andreas Haefliger was the 12th of Tuesday Musical Association’s annual concerts that honor the late pianist Margaret Baxtresser, a musical giant of Northeast Ohio.
With Medieval roots and impressive singers age ten to fourteen, the 
