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Vijay Iyer Trio at Youngstown State [CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS]

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by Mike Telin

Pianist and composer Vijay Iyer enjoys a multifaceted musical career. The list of people with whom he has collaborated reads like a who’s who in the world of jazz and classical music. His list of awards includes a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and a United States Artist Fellowship.

Iyer has released twenty-four albums of his music, most recently UnEasy (ECM Records, 2021), a trio session with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh, and was named the 2022 Jazz Pianist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist Association.

On Friday November 4 at 7:30 pm the Vijay Iyer Trio will perform in the Chestnut Room of Youngstown State University’s  Kilcawley Center as part of YSU’s Pipino Performing Art Series. Click here for tickets.

I caught up with Iyer by telephone and began by asking him about his latest Trio recording, the first since 2015. [Read more…]

Dana Ensemble to revisit Schoenberg’s Private Performance Society and premiere James Wilding work on May 2

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by Daniel Hathaway

Having made its debut earlier this season with a program of jazz arrangements by Dave Morgan featuring vocalist Helen Welch, Youngstown State University’s modular Dana Ensemble will turn to a different type of arrangements for its second outing at the Ford Family Theater at the DeYor Center on Sunday, May 2 at 3:00 pm.

Organized by faculty cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman, the program will feature special reductions for chamber ensemble of large orchestral works presented by Arnold Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performance, a series of weekly salon concerts the composer launched 100 years ago in Vienna. His objective was to cultivate an informed audience for new music and provide adequate rehearsal time for presenting new works without breaking the bank — hence the need for reduced orchestrations.

“I’ve known about these arrangements since I was a student at Oberlin,” Cahn-Lipman said in a telephone conversation. “We did the reduction of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde one semester. It blew me away that Schoenberg reduced a huge orchestra down to 15 or 16 players, and the arrangements we’re playing on Sunday are for even smaller ensembles.”

Sunday’s program includes Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Johann Strauss Jr.’s Emperor Waltz, and Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with faculty soprano Misook Yun. “I was struck by the variety of pieces Schoenberg had arranged,” Cahn-Lipman said, pointing specially to the Strauss work. “The society wasn’t limiting itself to the most modern music, but committed itself both to depth and breadth of repertoire.”

[Read more…]

Du Yun to be featured on YSU’s virtual Pipino Series February 24

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by Daniel Hathaway

What should viewers expect when they tune in to composer/performer/curator Du Yun’s master class and presentation on the Donald Pipino Performing Arts Series from Cliffe College at Youngstown State University on February 24?

Publicist Maggie Stapelton described this fascinating artist last October in a press release for one of New York’s Bang on a Can Marathons:

Du Yun has a secret life. Several secret lives, actually — she is not only a composer of socially activated opera but she is also a pop diva, an extreme improviser, a high energy new music storyteller. When she performs her own music on the Marathon, at least one of these personalities will be on display.

A native of Shanghai, China who took up the piano at the age of four, Du Yun studied composition with Randoph Coleman at the Oberlin Conservatory, going on after graduation to study at Harvard, where she earned a master’s and a doctorate in composition with Bernard Rands and Mario Davidovsky.

Northeast Ohio had its most recent look at Du Yun’s work when Oberlin Winter Term Opera gave five sold-out performances of her Pulitzer Prize-winning work Angel’s Bone in late January and early February of 2018. The opera, directed by Christopher Mirto, explores a dark topic with alluring words and music. [Read more…]

Violinist Wendy Case joins faculty of YSU’s Dana School of Music

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by Daniel Hathaway

Although this is not an optimal moment to start a new job, violinist Wendy Case is enjoying her new position on the faculty of the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University.

“So far it’s been fantastic. We’re doing all the classes online, and private lessons and chamber groups in person, both indoors and outside, where we have some spaces we can use.”

Case, who studied at the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and SUNY Stony Brook, has recently held teaching positions in Chattanooga, Tennessee at Berry College, Covenant College, and Chattanooga State. Founding violinist of the Brahms’ Ghost Piano Trio, she has served as artistic director of the Scenic City Chamber Society and performed with the Tetris Duo, the Pitch Pipe Foundation, the Nashville Opera, and the Atlanta Symphony. Her current projects include recordings and a series of presentations on the interplay of advanced string technique and acoustical physics.

Originally a Michigander, Case says she’s excited to move back North. “I’m glad to be here. I’ve loved Northeast Ohio for a really long time.” [Read more…]

Dana Piano Trio to celebrate school’s 150th with Carnegie Hall recital

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by Daniel Hathaway

It’s not every day that a recently-formed ensemble gets to put a Carnegie Hall debut on its schedule, but Youngstown State University’s Dana Piano Trio — violinist Joseph Kromholz, cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman, and pianist Cicilia Yudha — is doing just that on Friday, March 22.

As the old saw goes, the way you usually get to Carnegie Hall is to practice, practice, and practice, but this gig essentially fell into the Trio’s lap. As Yudha told us in a telephone conversation, “Our Dean just said that as part of the Dana School of Music’s 150th anniversary celebrations and the Pippino Concert Series, ‘I’d like to send you to New York.’ How about that!”

Although Yudha and Kromholz had joined the Dana faculty earlier, Cahn-Lipman only arrived in 2017, and the Trio was formed soon afterward. “Since the three of us are in residence, we’re able to do a bunch of outreach and recruitment activities with high school students, so that’s worked out very nicely.”

By way of preparation for their New York debut, the Trio will be trying out its Weill Recital Hall program in three upcoming concerts. [Read more…]

ACRONYM to play Baroque battle music on inaugural Pipino Series at YSU

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by Daniel Hathaway
and Kivie Cahn-Lipman

Youngstown State University is inaugurating a new cycle of concerts this season: the Donald P. Pipino Performing Arts Series, which continues through April 2019, includes seven events in diverse genres. Commenting on the new offerings in a press release, Phyllis M. Paul, Dean of the Cliffe College of Creative Arts & Communication, said, “The Series brings to Youngstown the types of cultural opportunities usually found only in large metropolitan areas.”

The second event on Friday, October 5 at 7:30 pm in Ford Family Recital Hall at the DeYor Center on Youngstown’s Federal Plaza will feature the celebrated Baroque string band ACRONYM in a program commemorating the 1683 Battle of Vienna. That standoff was a turning point in the long conflict between the Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires and inspired a programmatic work by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber.

“Dedicated to giving modern premieres of the wild instrumental music of the seventeenth century,” ACRONYM is itself an acronym for its fanciful moniker, “Altmusik Collective Resurrecting Obscure Nuanced Yesteryear’s Masterpieces.” The ensemble is largely made up of musicians who have passed through the Oberlin Conservatory’s Historical Performance Program. Its members can also be heard performing in such period and modern instrument groups as Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire, Toronto’s Tafelmusik, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Early Music Festival, the English Concert, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and Chicago Lyric Opera. [Read more…]

YSU and UA to Co-Host 2015 Piano Festival from October 4-7

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YSUUAKeyboard-Festival-2015Youngstown University’s Dana School of Music will collaborate with the University of Akron’s Kulas Concert Series to present a piano festival comprising seven events both in Youngstown and Akron between October 4 and 7.

Faculty and guest artists Zahari Metchkov, Joachim Reinhuber, Caroline Oltmanns, James Wilding and Sean Baran will play a variety of piano and harpsichord music during recitals throughout the week, and lectures and master classes will fill out the range of activities. The complete schedule follows. [Read more…]

Faculty concerts mark “Back to School” early in the month of September

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by Daniel Hathaway

ZENATY-IvanRecitals and chamber music concerts by faculty members at Northeast Ohio conservatories, colleges and universities add to the rich menu of classical music in the region. Usually free, these events begin coming onto the calendar in September. Here’s a quick look at the first performances of the fall.

Oberlin Conservatory faculty members David Bowlin, Gregory Fulkerson and Marilyn McDonald, violins, Peter Slowik and Michael Strauss, violas, Darrett Adkins and Catharina Meints, cellos, and Monique Duphil, piano, will play Mozart’s String Quintet in c minor, K. 406, and Brahms’s Piano Quintet in f minor, op. 34 in Kulas Recital Hall at the Conservatory on Thursday, September 4 at 8:00. The free concert will be streamed via Oberlin’s “Listen Live” service. [Read more…]

Review: Youngstown State University Wind & Percussion Invitational at Stambaugh Auditorium (February 22)

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by Robert Rollin

LastYSU-Wind-Ensemble Friday evening Stambaugh Auditorium’s austerely-attractive hall witnessed an intriguing event: The 7th Annual Youngstown State University Wind and Percussion Invitational. Serving as both an entertaining evening and an undergraduate recruitment event, this year’s invitational, guided by YSU’s band director, Dr. Stephen Gage, featured the YSU Wind Ensemble and two specially-selected high school wind ensembles: the Cleveland area Lakeview High School Concert Band and the suburban Pittsburgh North Hills High School Wind Ensemble.

Though each of the two guest ensembles performed with surprising maturity and panache, it will be no surprise that the YSU Wind Ensemble contributed the evening’s two high points: Dana Faculty soprano, Misook Yun’s expressively astute portrayal of Musetta’s Waltz from Puccini’s La Bohème’s second act, and Dana Faculty clarinetist, Alice Wang’s performance of Frank Tichelli’s Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble, movements II and III.  [Read more…]

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