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The Cleveland Orchestra MLK Celebration Concert: a conversation with violinist Amaryn Olmeda

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by Mike Telin

It’s always fun to ask someone how it feels to be making their debut performance with The Cleveland Orchestra. And while all the responses come with excitement, there was a bit of extra enthusiasm in the voice of Amaryn Olmeda.

“I can’t wait,” the 15-year-old violinist said during a recent interview. “It’s just so crazy to me because I grew up listening to all their recordings — putting them on my playlist and playing along with them. Then all of a sudden I’m performing with them. So I’m very excited for this opportunity and I’m very honored that they chose me to play with them at their Martin Luther King concert.”

On Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Daniel Reith and William Henry Caldwell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus in a program that commemorates 60 years since the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. The concert will feature works by J. Rosamond Johnson, Adolphus Hailstork, Jame P. Johnson, and the Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, Allison Loggins-Hull. Click here for free tickets.

The program will also include Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane with soloist Amaryn Olmeda, winner of first prize and the audience choice award at the 24th Annual Sphinx Competition. I reached the violinist by phone and began by asking her how she came to choose the piece.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra
MLK Celebration: a chat 
with emcee Peter Lawson Jones

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by Mike Telin 

“When I was ten or eleven, my father was going to an MLK march. He asked me if I wanted to go and I didn’t. And that has been a regret of mine for a very long time,” Peter Lawson Jones recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “But this night will celebrate all that Dr. King did and I look forward to being part of it.”

On Sunday, January 15 at 7:00 pm at Severance Music Center, Jones will act as narrator and emcee when The Cleveland Orchestra presents its free, annual concert in honor of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. under the direction of Daniel Reith. Jones will be joined by bass and narrator Soloman Howard and the all-volunteer Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, directed by William Henry Caldwell. Although the concert is sold out, it will be broadcast live on WCLV 90.3 and WKSU 89.7, with simultaneous streaming available at ideastream.org.

A Cleveland native, Jones is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. From 2002 through 2010, he was a member of the Board of Cuyahoga County Commissioners, and its president for three of those years. He previously served two and a half terms in the Ohio House of Representatives, where he was the ranking member of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee and second vice president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus. He has also been the Vice Mayor and a Councilman in the City of Shaker Heights.

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The Cleveland Orchestra: an MLK Celebration in June

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by Jarrett Hoffman

A surge of coronavirus in January forced The Cleveland Orchestra to postpone its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert. Traditionally held around the time of MLK Day, this year the concert will take place not long from Juneteenth.

The Orchestra will honor Dr. King on Saturday, June 4 at 7:00 pm at Mandel Concert Hall with a program of music by several Black composers — Dolores White, Mary D. Watkins, Carlos Simon, Brian Raphael Nabors, William Grant Still, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and John Rosamond Johnson — as well as music in the African American spiritual tradition. [Read more…]

Vinay Parameswaren to conduct 40th MLK Celebration at Severance Hall

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Orchestra will celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the 40th consecutive year on Sunday, January 12 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall. Assistant conductor Vinay Parameswaran will lead the Orchestra and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, William Henry Caldwell, director, in a program whose repertory departs slightly from past concerts.

“There won’t be a featured soloist this year,” Parameswaren said in a telephone conversation late last month. Instead, the majority of the program will feature African American composers.

“We’ll open with Adolphus Hailstork’s Fanfare on Amazing Grace, then move to a couple of pieces from Duke Ellington’s suite, The River, and on to the first movement of Florence Price’s First Symphony. Jahja Ling is going to conduct her Fourth Symphony in April, and I’m doing a movement from that piece with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra during the Open House on January 20. It’s nice to get to celebrate a composer like Price, who wrote a ton of music and had premieres performed by the Chicago Symphony and other big orchestras, but who doesn’t make it onto concert programs very often these days.”

Duke Ellington’s music is a similar case. “I’ve conducted his Harlem and I’ve studied his Three Black Kings,” Parameswaran said. “Ellington doesn’t get as much recognition for his orchestral writing as he does for his jazz, but he certainly knew what he was doing. Again, it’s a rarity to find his music appearing on a classical program, but I’m glad it’s on this one.” [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra to host Martin Luther King Celebration Concert

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by Mike Telin

TCO MLKThe Cleveland Orchestra will present its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst on Sunday, January 14 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall. All of the free tickets to the event have been distributed, but the program will be broadcast live on WCLV, 104.9 FM and WCPN, 90.3 FM. The concert will also be broadcast on Cleveland Public Television WVIZ on January 26.

Sunday’s concert will feature bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, actor James Pickens Jr., and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus under the direction of William Henry Caldwell. The program includes Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont, Mendelssohn’s “Lord God of Abraham” from Elijah, George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, Verdi’s “Va pensiero” from Nabucco, Respighi’s “Pines of the Appian Way,” the fourth movement of Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony, Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic, and James Weldon Johnson’s and John Rosamond Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing.

“There are a lot of new things happening at the concert this year,” Chorus Director William Henry Caldwell said during a recent telephone conversation. “I’m especially excited about commissioned arrangements by Charles Floyd of Down by the Riverside and Precious Lord. To have the opportunity to present those to the Cleveland community for this celebration speaks volumes about how much The Cleveland Orchestra thinks of this choir.” [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Orchestra’s MLK Celebration to feature Sphinx competition winner Adé Williams

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Williams-Adeby Mike Telin

On Sunday, January 20, 2013, at 7:00 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Tito Muñoz, will perform its 33rd annual concert in celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., a tradition that began even before Dr. King’s birthday became a national holiday.

The concert will include the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus (a 125-member volunteer chorus from the greater Cleveland community) and the Central State University Chorus, both prepared by William Henry Caldwell, and will feature Sphinx Competition prizewinner Adé Williams as violin soloist. All available tickets have already been distributed, but listeners can tune into a live broadcast on WCLV (104.9 FM) and WCPN (90.3 FM) or on the stations’ live Internet streams. [Read more…]

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