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Season 14 of Close Encounters, Year 20 of Heights Arts

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Close Encounters Chamber Music and artistic director Isabel Trautwein have two reasons to celebrate: the series’ 14th season, and the 20th year of its parent organization, Heights Arts.

The minds behind the scheduling have kept things simple for concertgoers to store away in their brains (and for writers to explain): the four concerts take place on Sundays at 3:00 pm, which does seem like a particularly nice time for “up close and personal” chamber music, just as the series likes it. Single and season tickets are available online.

Up first is the Omni Quartet on October 13 at a Carriage House on Herrick Mews Lane in Cleveland Heights. Cleveland Orchestra musicians Amy Lee and Alicia Koelz, violins, Wesley Collins, viola, and Tanya Ell, cello, will bring along Haydn’s Trio in C, Hob V:G1, Mozart’s Quartet No. 22 in B-flat, and Robert Schumann’s Quartet No. 3 in A — written during his exuberant, love-filled first year of marriage to Clara Wieck.

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Three ENCORE concerts (June 28 & 30, July 5)

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by David Kulma

The theme of ENCORE Chamber Music’s fourth season is “La Bohème: Art and Freedom,” mixing meanings of Bohemianism. It has brought together the 19th-century artistic movement that sought to break down conventions (think the characters from Puccini’s opera) with composers from Bohemia, of which Dvořák is the most famous. I attended three concerts where the overarching theme was successfully bent to include music from Mozart to living American composers.

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ENCORE Sunday Unplugged: “Imagine No Country” (July 8)

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by David Kulma

ENCORE Chamber Music’s final Sunday Unplugged concert of the summer on July 8 focused on composers of “diverse cultural backgrounds.” Its title, “Imagine No Country,” paraphrased a line from John Lennon’s peace anthem Imagine. The international music featured was by four composers: two living — American Richard Danielpour and Argentine Osvaldo Golijov, both of Jewish descent — and two deceased — Japanese Tōru Takemitsu and Romanian George Enescu. [Read more…]

ENCORE Chamber Music at CIM’s Mixon Hall (July 9)

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by Robert Rollin

Encore-ProgramsOn Sunday afternoon, July 9, Encore Chamber Music opened its Mixon Hall program with an exceptional performance of Kevin Puts’ one-movement Dark Vigil for string quartet. Violinist Jinjoo Cho led the group with flair in its powerful dissonant counterpoint, relieved periodically by unisons. [Read more…]

Heights Arts Close Encounters: Mozart & Schubert on the roof (Nov. 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

glass-boxNot so very long ago, downtown Cleveland used to be deserted on weekend evenings. Not any more. On Friday, November 18, a political protest march mingled with a Cavs crowd and a sea of other downtown-bound folk to bring traffic (vehicular, foot, and equestrian) on Euclid Avenue to a complete standstill. One of the smaller audiences to assemble downtown that evening came to hear an excellent performance by Cleveland Orchestra musicians and friends sponsored by Heights Arts, nearly filling a private glass box party room rising sixteen floors above the hubbub below. [Read more…]

Music for Food concert to benefit Cleveland Kosher Food Bank Nov. 13

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by Mike Telin

music-for-foodIn a recent study published by the United States Department Agriculture Economic Research Service, an estimated 12.7% of American households were food insecure at least sometime during 2015, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. “The statistics are shocking, and it is a problem in all communities,” said violist Kim Kashkashian, who founded Music for Food, a Boston-based, musician-led non-profit for local hunger relief.

On Sunday, November 13 at 3:00 pm at a private residence in Cleveland Heights, Kashkashian will be part of a benefit concert for the Cleveland Kosher Food Bank. The event, titled “Sharing the Bounty,” is sponsored by the Cleveland Chapter of Music for Food, which was founded in 2015 by noted cellist Sharon Robinson. The concert will feature Kashkashian, Robinson, violinist Jaime Laredo, violist Yu Jin, and the Cavani Quartet in performances of works by Bartók, Schulhoff, and Brahms. Seating is limited and the deadline for reservations is Sunday, October 30. Click here for further information. [Read more…]

Kent/Blossom Faculty Recital: all Shostakovich in Ludwig Hall (July 20)

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by Neil McCalmont

Shostakovich-at-PianoThe Kent/Blossom Music Festival continued its summer series with an all-Shostakovich program at Kent’s Ludwig Recital Hall on Wednesday evening, July 20. The concert of chamber works showcased the prowess of Kent State professors, as well as members of The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland 2015: opening concert at SPACES (June 17)

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by Timothy Robson

CFC-Artist-MontageIn its first three seasons, ChamberFest Cleveland made itself an indispensable set of summer events that helped satisfy the seemingly insatiable appetite for chamber music in Cleveland. Organized by Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet Franklin Cohen and Diana Cohen, concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic, this year’s fourth festival has expanded to ten concerts over a two-week period in late June, in six venues, some of them traditional concert halls, others, more unusual sites. [Read more…]

Preview: Chagrin Valley Chamber Music Series ends season with Mozart, Dvořák and Shostakovich on April 6

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by Daniel Hathaway

April-6,-'14-poster“It’s a piece of epic proportions with so many emotions from deep sorrow to sarcasm,” violinist Hristo Popov told us in a telephone conversation. “The Shostakovich Piano Quintet has a lot in common with the current political environment in Eastern Europe, and should be very appealing to people on both sides.”

Popov, who is artistic director of the Chagrin Valley Chamber Music Series, has chosen the Shostakovich, along with chamber works by Mozart and Dvořák, for the season finale of the series on Sunday, April 6 at 3:00 pm in Valley Lutheran Church in Chagrin Falls. The concert is free.

Shostakovich, who had a complicated relationship with the Stalinist government of the USSR, falling in and out of official favor on a regular basis, wrote his only chamber work for piano and string quartet in 1940, a piece that has been described as both rigorous and accessible. It was enthusiastically received at its first performance by Shostakovich and the Beethoven Quartet, who encored both the scherzo and finale.

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Review: ChamberFest Cleveland final concert — Mirrors at Dunham Tavern Barn (June 30)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CFC-June-30-AdamsFor the last of the eight concerts in its expanded second season, ChamberFest Cleveland moved from traditional concert halls (and a new art gallery) to our local urban version of a rustic summer New England venue, the Dunham Tavern’s barn on Euclid Avenue in midtown. The structure, built in 2000, replaced an 1840 horse and crop storage barn that was leveled by a fire in 1963. Though it looks rather modern and utilitarian from the outside, its wooden beams frame an interior space with warm acoustical properties.

There’s barely room to swing a viola there, much less accommodate a grand piano, so Mirrors was devoted to music by Purcell, Britten and Mendelssohn for three, four and five string players who stood (except for the cellists) to save room, optimize sight lines and broadcast the music over the heads of the capacity audience, who were packed into the space on folding chairs. The seating was uncomfortable and the temperature a bit on the warm side, but the afternoon was otherwise completely delightful, with the bonus of free ice cream outside afterward. [Read more…]

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