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Oberlin plans a weekend of events celebrating 50th anniversary of Warner Concert Hall organ

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by Daniel Hathaway

Fifty years ago, in November 1974, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music inaugurated a monumental new organ in Warner Concert Hall. Built by Flentrop Orgelbouw in Zaandam, the Netherlands, the instrument returned to principles of Dutch and North German organ building during the golden age of the organ in the early and mid-18th century.

Oberin has planned a weekend of festivities that include a faculty recital by Jonathan Moyer and Christa Rakich on Friday at 7:30 (J.S. Bach’s German Organ Mass), a current student recital on Saturday at 11 am, and an alumni recital on Saturday at 4:30 pm. All events are free to attend and will also be live streamed. [Read more…]

ENCORE: “Director’s Carte Blanche” at Oberlin (June 14)

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by Max Newman

This year’s ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival, themed around “Planet Earth,” graced the Cleveland area with some brilliant performances over the course of this month. One of those came on the evening of June 14, when Oberlin Conservatory played host to the series. 

Violinist and founder Jinjoo Cho, violinist Mathieu Herzog, and pianist Hyunsoo Kim starred in a terrific performance at Warner Concert Hall. The event also featured a conversation with Chris Stanton, the Senior Naturalist at Lorain County Metro Parks, which perfectly served ENCORE’s season theme as an ode to the natural world.

[Read more…]

Cooper International Violin Competition:
the final three (Aug. 19)

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by Mike Telin

After impressive performances by six young violinists during the second round of the Cooper International Violin Competition, the jury selected three to advance to the final round. On August 19 at Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, the talented violinists presented concertos by Tchaikovsky and Brahms with the Canton Symphony under the direction of Gerhardt Zimmermann.

Here are our thoughts on the three outstanding performances.

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Music, Sports, and Ancient Greece festival: Oberlin faculty recital (Oct. 10)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

To open the academic calendar in recent years, Oberlin Conservatory violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson has organized interdisciplinary festivals centered around intriguing themes. That continued earlier this month with “Music, Sports, and the Enduring Influence of Ancient Greece,” a topic that was examined through a variety of events, musical and otherwise, over the course of two days. I caught the tail-end of the festival via live stream: the fourth and final faculty recital in Warner Concert Hall on the evening of October 10.

The program was fresh and eclectic, featuring several works by lesser-known composers, and spanning from traditional classical to contemporary music and jazz — not to mention poetry.

[Read more…]

Kirsten Docter to premiere new viola concerto by Jesse Jones

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by Mike Telin 

For many years, Jesse Jones has led a double musical life. In one, he serves on the composition faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory and has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His works have been performed by ensembles including the American Composers Orchestra, the Spokane Symphony, the Juilliard String Quartet, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, and Sō Percussion.

In the other life, he is a mandolinist/composer who has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion and performed at the Oregon Bach Festival, Wintergrass, and the Sister’s Folk Festival, and toured with the genre-bending ensemble String Helix. In March of this year, he and his duo partner, bassist Craig Butterfield, released their third album, Eclipse, on Summit Records.  

In spite of his success in both lives, Jones has always been reluctant to combine the two. That changed when he was presented with the opportunity to write a new viola concerto.

[Read more…]

Musicians from soundSCAPE to perform at Oberlin Conservatory: a conversation with composer Jesse Jones

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by Mike Telin

JesseJonesEach summer since 2005, the composition and performance exchange soundSCAPE has attracted composers and performers from around the world for two weeks of concerts, lectures, master classes, and workshops. “The Festival is in a beautiful location near the Alps in Northern Italy,” Oberlin faculty composer Jesse Jones said during a recent conversation. “They’ve commissioned many pieces over the years, so it’s a great place for composers to go. It was an honor for me to be the Festival’s composer-in-residence in 2015.”

On Sunday, February 18 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, musicians from soundSCAPE — soprano Tony Arnold, percussionist Aiyun Huang, violinist Mark Fewer, flutist Lisa Cella, and pianist Thomas Rosenkranz — will present a free concert of music by composers who have long supported the work of the Festival. The program will include Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon’s Flores del Viento III, Christopher Adler’s 010 machine states, Chris Paul Harman’s Partita for Solo Violin, and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez’ Kikai no Mori and Chance Forest Interludes.

[Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble (December 7)

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by Mike Telin

The Italian experimentalistBOWLIN-David Luciano Berio is arguably one of the most influential composers of the mid- to late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His group of Sequenzes is a series of thirteen compositions for unaccompanied instruments, including voice, each of which explore and expand on each instruments technical possibilities. On occasion the composer expanded some of the Sequenzes through the addition of instrumental layers. Berio’s Corale (su “Sequenza VIII”) featuring the outstanding violinist and Oberlin faculty member, David Bowlin, served as the centerpiece for the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble concert on Friday, December 7 in Warner Concert Hall.

Although Berio never composed a violin concerto, Corale (1981), is a more than suitable contribution to the canon by the composer. Scored for string orchestra and horns, Berio leaves his haunting Sequenza VIII intact and creates dialogues from within the orchestra that inventively support the solo line melodically, harmonically and rhythmically. Throughout the performance it was clear that David Bowlin has lived with this work for some time. Performing from memory, he made the many complicated technical passages, numerous double stops, and extended soft staccato lines sound effortless. [Read more…]

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