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by Mike Telin
If you have been thinking that you wish you could find a concert featuring the hurdy-gurdy, this is your lucky weekend. And leave it to the always creative Les Délices to provide you with that weekend. On Saturday, April 20, beginning at 8 pm in William Busta Gallery and Sunday, April 21, beginning at 4 pm in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church, Les Délices presents Four Seasons. The concerts feature master hurdy-gurdy player Tobie Miller in performances of Vivaldi’s famous violin concertos Printemps/Spring and l’Automne/Fall in eighteenth century arrangements for hurdy-gurdy and chamber ensemble by Nicholas Chedeville. The concerts also include music of Charles Buterne and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier.
Tobie Miller grew up in a family of classical musicians. After studies in Early Music Performance at McGill University, she moved to Basel to pursue postgraduate studies at the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Miller was the recipient of a further grant from the Canada Council in 2011-2012 for her work on the baroque hurdy-gurdy and transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s solo cello and violin repertoire for that instrument. Currently dividing her time between Basel and Montreal, Miller continues to perform and record with many ensembles on both continents. We reached Tobie Miller by telephone and began by asking her how she first came to the hurdy-gurdy. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
The Takács String Quartet, originally formed in Budapest in 1975 and since 1986 in residence at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will return to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series on Tuesday, March 19 at 7:30 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights.
Pianist Garrick Ohlssohn will be the special guest for Brahms’s Piano Quintet in f, op. 34. Also on the program are Brahms’s Quartet in a, op. 51, no. 2 and Haydn’s Quartet in B-flat, op. 76, no. 4.
Compared to other long-standing groups, the membership of the Takács Quartet has been remarkably stable over its 38-year history. British violinist Edward Dusinberre took over the driver’s seat in 1993 and another British musician, Roger Tapping, replaced the original violist in 1994. Tapping was succeeded in 2005 by Geraldine Walther, who left her post as principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony to join the quartet. We spoke with Walther by phone in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
During the past fifty years, The Cleveland Composers Guild, (CCG) one of the nation’s oldest new music organizations, has established an impressive record of supporting contemporary music. On Sunday, March 17 at 3:00 pm in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, CCG joins forces with the renowned Solaris Wind Quintet in a concert featuring works by CCG members.
In recent years the Guild has collaborated with the Cleveland Ballet, the Poets’ and Writers’ League of Greater Cleveland (now called The Lit), the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, and the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society. “One of several groups that was under consideration to approach about showcasing compositions by guild members’ music was Solaris,” says Cleveland Composers Guild president David Gooding. “In fact they were very high on our list so we contacted them, and they were interested.”
by Mike Telin
“How do we pick our programs? We just find pieces we really like, and we figure if we like them the audience will like them,” says flutist Karen Johnson about her program with pianist Carlos Rodriguez on the Signature Series at Lorain County Community College on Monday, March 18 beginning at 7:30 pm. “I’ve been playing with Carlos for fifteen years. And during that time we’ve played many different programs, but in the past couple of years we’ve been playing a lot of American music. And a lot of music by composers that we haven’t played in a while that we really like.”
Johnson says that she and Rodriguez have found that even contemporary pieces can be accessible to the audience if the artist likes the piece. “We like to talk to the audience and get them engaged in the music.” Monday’s concert includes Lukas Foss’s Three American Pieces, Joseph Schwantner’s Black Anemones, Robert Muczynski’s Sonata, Jeffrey Mumford’s an evolving romance, Manuel Ponce’s Intermezzo, Alberto Ginastera’s Malambo and Astor Piazzolla’s Café 1930 and Bordel 1900 from L’Histoire du Tango. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
On Sunday, March 17 at 3:00 pm, classical guitarist Gideon Whitehead returns to Northeast Ohio for a performance at the Happy Days Lodge in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Mr. Whitehead’s performance is part of The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Local Artists and Rising Stars Series and is presented in conjunction with Music by Nature. The program features works by Weiss, Rudnev, Korchmar, Lansky, Koshkin and Barrios Mangoré.
Gideon Whitehead began playing the guitar at age 14 in his native Michigan. Mr. Whitehead has had much success at competitions including top prizes at the 2011 James Stroud Guitar Competition and at the 2010 and 2011 University of Louisville International Guitar Competition. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in guitar performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and is currently pursuing and Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute of Music.
We reached Gideon Whitehead by telephone in Philadelphia. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
The Contemporary Youth Orchestra (CYO) under the direction of Liza Grossman, presents My Gift is My Song on Saturday, March 16, beginning at 7:00 pm in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University. The concert features the winners of CYO’s first-ever singer/songwriter contest and is presented as part of CYO’s annual “Music and its Industry” concert.
The concept for the concert was inspired by the annual CYO Hidden Talent Show Scholarship Award Night, CYO founder and music director Liza Grossman told us by phone. “Two members’ hidden talent was that they were singer/songwriters. I was so moved by the music they had written and the lyrics were so personal and happy. The songs reflected so much about who they were. So everything spawned from that.” Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
Reality TV step aside! Beginning on Thursday, March 13 and continuing through Sunday, Oberlin Opera Theater presents four performances of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (The Bat) in Oberlin College’s Hall Auditorium. Raphael Jiménez conducts the Oberlin Orchestra in his Oberlin Opera Theater debut.
Strauss’s classical comedy with libretto by Carl Haffner and Richard Genee is filled with infidelity, mixed romantic messages, bored-to-tears tears royalty, and manipulation. And who doesn’t like a Strauss waltz? “I’ve done Fledermaus so many times and it’s kind of nice to have an opera that is rooted in music that people absolutely love,” says Oberlin Opera Theater director Jonathon Field. “The interesting thing is, the waltz used to be considered decadent, so a challenge has been to try to figure out how to put the sexy back into the waltz and still keep it kind of period.” Read the rest of this entry »
by Robert Rollin
Last
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 the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
The
Cleveland Orchestra never fails to play at a high level, producing results that can make even an indifferent guest conductor look good. When the orchestra collaborates with someone as inspiring as Herbert Blomstedt, the outcome can be sheer magic. The second weekend of Blomstedt’s sojourn at Severance Hall treated audiences to luminous and revealing performances of symphonies by Mozart and Dvorak so well-known and so often played that they can seem as ordinary as the furniture in your living room.
For Mozart’s second g-minor symphony (No. 40), the 84-year old Swedish-American maestro scaled down the string section by one-half to two-thirds, discarded both baton and podium and led the ensemble from memory at stage level. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
In
the words of the late Marvin Hamlisch, “I have had the great pleasure of performing with the Capitol Quartet. Their fabulous sound, professionalism and innovative program all combine for a wonderfully entertaining musical experience.” If you are not familiar with the quartet, they’re not a string quartet, they are a quartet of saxophones. On Monday, March 4 beginning at 7:30 pm in West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society presents The Capitol Quartet, Christopher Creviston, soprano, Joseph Lulloff, alto, David Stambler, tenor and arranger & Andrew Dahlke, baritone.
Since its formation in 1991, the Capitol Quartet has performed regularly at major concert venues throughout the United States, earning acclaim for their musical versatility and innovative style. “The Rocky River performance is what I would call a cross-over recital; a little bit of classical, a little bit of jazz, but leaning toward to classical chamber music side of things,” David Stambler told us by telephone from Erie, PA where the group was starting their current tour. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
L-R: Xiaoyu Liu, Leonardo Colafelice, and Micah McLaurin. Photo: Roger Mastroianni.
The prize money for the three top winners in the Oberlin Cooper Competition is impressive, but the opportunity for teenaged pianists to play full concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra has to be, as the credit card commercial put it, priceless. They had that opportunity during the Final Round of the competition on Friday evening, July 27, in Severance Hall, in front of a live audience, radio and Internet listeners over WCLV and a panel of distinguished judges.
During a grueling week’s worth of semifinal, concerto and recital rounds at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the original draw of competitors had been gradually winnowed down from thirty-three to sixteen, then to ten, to six and to three. Earlier in the week, it seemed statistically possible that the final round might include three performances of Rachmaninov’s second concerto, but that didn’t happen. The final three, 17-year-old Micah McLaurin (right) from Charleston, S.C., 15-year-old Xiaoyu Liu (left) from Montréal, and 16-year-old Leonardo Colafelice (center) from Bari, Italy, would play one Chopin and two different Rachmaninov’s for the panel of judges to determine the ranking of their prizes.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cleveland, OH — Friday, July 27
Leonardo Colafelice with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra (photo: Roger Mastroianni)
Following the Final Round with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra tonight in Severance Hall, competition sponsors Thomas and Evon Cooper awarded the top prizes in the Oberlin Cooper International Piano Competition.
FIRST PRIZE: Leonardo Colafelice, 16, Altamura, Bari, Italy — Rachmaninov: Concerto No. 3
SECOND PRIZE: Xiaoyu Liu, 15, Montréal, Québec, Canada — Rachmaninov: Concerto No. 2
THIRD PRIZE: Micah McLaurin, 17, Charleston, SC — Chopin: Concerto No. 2
The performances were broadcast live over WCLV, 104.9 FM.
Oberlin, OH — Thursday, July 26
L-R: Xiaoyu Liu, Leonardo Colafelice, and Micah McLaurin. Photo: Roger Mastroianni
Following the Recital Round on Wednesday evening in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the judges for the Cooper International Piano Competition announced the names of the three contestants who will compete on Friday evening in Severance Hall with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra. They are, in performance order:
Xiaoyu Liu, 15, Montréal, Québec, Canada — Rachmaninov: Concerto No. 2
Micah McLaurin, 17, Charleston, SC — Chopin: Concerto No. 2
Leonardo Colafelice, 16, Altamura, Bari, Italy — Rachmaninov: Concerto No. 3
The 8 pm performance will be broadcast live over WCLV, 104.9 FM. Tickets are available from the Severance Hall box office, 216.231.11111 or can be ordered online. A free performance at 4pm in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall will feature outstanding performances from the Semifinals Round.
Wednesday evening’s emcee, WCLV president Robert Conrad, also announced winners of four prizes:
The audience favorite award went to Leonardo Colafelice.
The sixth-place winner was Sarina Zhang, 16, from San Diego, CA
Tieing for the fourth-place prize were Sahun Hong, 18, of Fort Worth, TX, and Annie Zhou, 14, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Oberlin, OH — Tuesday, July 24
Following the Concerto Round on Tuesday evening, the judges for the Cooper International Piano Competition announced the names of the six contestants who will compete on Wednesday evening in the Recital Round. Each will play a 20-minute recital. The 7 pm performance will be broadcast live over WCLV, 104.9 FM. The concert is free and open to the public.
The six contestants are listed in performing order:
Sarina Zhang, 16, San Diego, CA
Sahun Hong, 18, Fort Worth, TX
Xiaoyu Liu, 15, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Micah McLaurin, 17, Charleston, SC
Annie Zhou, 14, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Leonardo Colafelice, 16, Altamura, Bari, Italy
Click here to download the program book with biographies. (pdf file, 5mb).
Oberlin, OH — Tuesday, July 24
by Daniel Hathaway
The evening session of the Concerto Round brought the final five performers to the Warner Concert Hall stage along with the opportunity of hearing three more performances of Rachmaninov #2 and two versions of Chopin #2. Remember those “compare and contrast” exam questions? We’ll try to treat each repeat performance as if we were hearing it for the first time.
Micah McLaurin, 17, from Charleston, NC went first with Chopin’s second concerto. Sitting ramrod straight and barely changing his expression, Mr. McLaurin established a ruminative, poetic mood matched by an agreeably elastic tempo. His feathery touch produced beautiful, well-organized runs with shape and a sense of destination. But as the piece flowed on, Mr. McLaurin seemed largely to be playing on the surface of the music rather than digging into its underlying layers. Alicja Basinska was the attentive and supportive second pianist.
Read the rest of this entry »
Oberlin, OH — Tuesday, July 24
by Daniel Hathaway
There was a lot of impressive teen-aged piano prowess on display this afternoon in Warner Concert Hall as the Oberlin Cooper International Piano Competition went into the first of two concerto rounds and five of the ten competitors left in the draw played whole concertos by Beethoven, Rachmaninov and Schumann with a second piano filling in for the orchestra. (The three who are left at the end will get to play concertos for real with The Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall on Friday evening).
15-year old Rachel Breen from Oakland, CA set the bar high with an assured performance of Beethoven’s fourth concerto that adroitly pointed up both its exquisite seriousness and its sudden bursts of playfulness. She knew the piece thoroughly and communicated with her “orchestra” (pianist Yu Sakamoto) as though they were playing chamber music together (at the beginning of the second movement, hands in lap, she mimed playing along with the orchestra). Ms. Breen dispatched sequences of runs with sensitivity and clarity and made lovely transitions between sections. Read the rest of this entry »
Oberlin, OH — Monday, July 23
The following ten pianists will compete in this order in Tuesday’s Concerto Round. ClevelandClassical will report from Warner Concert Hall at Oberlin after each of the two sessions, which will begin at 1:30 pm and 7:30 pm.
Rachel Breen, 15, Oakland, CA – Beethoven 4
Sae Yoon Chon, 16, Seoul, South Korea – Beethoven 5
Leonardo Colafelice, 16, Altamura, Bari, Italy – Rachmaninov 3
Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner, 15, New York, NY – Rachmaninov 2
Phoebe Pan, 14, Ivine, CA – Schumann
Micah McLaurin, 17, Charleston, SC – Chopin 2
Xiaoyu Liu, 15, Montréal, Québec, Canda – Rachmaninov 2
Annie Zhou, 14, Toronto, Ontario, Canada – Chopin 2
Sarina Zhang, 16, San Diego, CA – Rachmaninov 2
Sahun Hong, 18, Ft. Worth, TX – Rachmaninov 2
Click here to download the program book with biographies. (pdf file, 5mb).
Oberlin, OH — Monday, July 23
The following sixteen pianists will compete today in this order for ten positions in Tuesday’s Concerto Round. ClevelandClassical will report from Oberlin after each of the two Tuesday sessions, which will begin at 1:30 pm and 7:30 pm.
Rachel Breen, 15, Oakland, CA
Amiran Zenaishvili, 16, Moscow, Russian Federation
Sae Yoon Chon, 16, Seoul, South Korea
Jun Hwi Cho, 16, Seoul, South Korea
Leonardo Colafelice, 16, Altamura, Bari, Italy
Dong Won Lee, 18, Redmond, WA
Yishan Hong, 17, Beijing, China
Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner, 15, New York, NY
Phoebe Pan, 14, Ivine, CA
Micah McLaurin, 17, Charleston, SC
Xiaoyu Liu, 15, Montréal, Québec, Canda
Hyung-Do Kim, 16, Palisades Park, NJ
Annie Zhou, 14, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Christopher Son Richardson, 14, Danville, CA
Sarina Zhang, 16, San Diego, CA
Sahun Hong, 18, Ft. Worth, TX
Click here to download the program book with biographies. (pdf file, 5mb).
By Daniel Hathaway and Mike Telin
Recitals, lectures and exhibitions by international artists and craftsmen will mark the twelfth annual Classical Guitar Weekend to be held at the Cleveland Institute of Music from Friday, June 1 through Sunday, June 3 under the auspices of Classical Guitars International.
Featured recitalists will include CIM’s own Jason Vieaux with soprano Jung Eun Oh; SoloDuo with Matteo Mela and Lorenzo Micheli (Italy); Gaëlle Solal (France); and Pavel Steidl (Czech Republic), and lectures will be given by Jonathan Fitzgerald (USA, “Listening and Re-listening: opening your ears to new sounds”); Alan Bise (Azica Records, Cleveland, “The Recording Process: from artistic vision to retail sale”); and Bernhard Kresse (Germany, “The Viennese 19th century Guitar Making Tradition”).
Although all the events center around the classical guitar, two are linked by a certain style of instrument. Pavel Steidl will play his Friday evening recital on a copy of a nineteenth-century Viennese instrument built by Bernhard Kresse. We spoke with Steidl via Skype in Mexico, where he was on tour, and with Kresse by phone in Köln, to learn more about the recital and this special instrument.
Pavel Steidl
“You can compare the period guitar from the nineteenth century and the modern guitar with the Hammerklavier and the modern Steinway”, Steidl told us. “The modern instrument is more resonant and seems to produce more sound, but the romantic instrument separates the voices more clearly and produces huge, rich colors. Maybe the sound seems smaller, but in my experience, the projection of the sound is very good”. Read the rest of this entry »
This came up at lunch today. There were five musicians who played on the sinking ship until the waters came up to their knees. We think one of the songs was the hymn “Nearer my God to thee” (English tune) but does anybody know any of the other titles? And did that provide any comfort to the passengers? Please comment!
By Gabe Kanengiser
Over the past hundred years, popular music has crossed over into nearly all genres. In the nineteen twenties, pop music was marked by jazz and blues styles, while nearly forty years later it was defined by artists such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Marvin Gaye. Despite Michael Jackson’s reign as “The King of Pop” during the eighties and nineties, the emergence of far too many boy bands, meaningless and crass hip-hop artists (this by no means discredits the meaningful and tasteful), and the unfortunate number of “plastic-platinum” pop-singers, it seems that the quality of popular music has declined.
What is popular music? Music is often divided into three categories: popular music, art music, and traditional or folk music. Popular music can be in any genre but must appeal and be distributed to large quantities of people; Art music “requires significantly more work by the listener” in order for it to be fully appreciated. Traditional or folk music is often disseminated through oral traditions, and is centered in cultural of historical events.
However, who is to say that a song cannot be all three of these? Read the rest of this entry »
By Mandy Hogan
Composers continually forge new roads into artistic wildernesses. How does a composer forge an online identity in the 21st century? YouTube, Facebook, PureVolume, InstantEncore, and MySpace are large commercial sites that provide platforms for emerging and established artists to shine. They allow users to access and discover new music and musicians instantly. So perhaps the more important question is, how can musicians form a unique identity in the midst of millions of artists without being conflated with someone else or swept into an unwanted genre?
The medium that people use to enjoy music has changed from vinyl records to CDs to iPods and YouTube videos, but the music remains. What will remain in our psyche? What types of composers will we become? But ultimately, the question is: how will what we make become who we are? And that is the question for all of us.
Composers in the 21st century range from Jay-Z to Jennifer Higdon to Philip Glass to Esperanza Spalding. Some write Pulitzer-Prize winning violin concertos, others perform, produce, create, and design hip-hop albums, and still others jam in the garage with their friends. Read the rest of this entry »
By Meghan Farnsworth
Composers of centuries past and present have sought various avenues to maintain the particular brew of their craft. Whether these roads have guided their careers towards writing music befitting of the demands of a patron with two-thousand francs to spare, or for a pharmaceutical company, like Pfizer — the producers of that jagged little pill, Advil — composers have always needed to meet the bidding of a greater power in order to survive in the music industry.
For twenty-first century composers, however, does this mean sacrificing the aestheticism of beauty in art for the demands of the almighty dollar? Nowadays, it’s inevitable to avoid commercial venues — i.e. film, TV, radio, etc. — as a way towards meeting a financially stable career in composition. In some respects, many classical music elitists would find this route clichéd and unworthy of high art. So, one ultimate question comes to mind: is music composed in the style of the commercial route considered to be “sold out”?
How classical music is viewed today is much different than it was in centuries past. Music never reached the possibility of being categorized as “sold-out”. Read the rest of this entry »
By Sam Rosenberg
On the Internet, history gets written backwards. Network consciousness starts on the periphery, as independent dots connect around the edges filling in the unknown piece-by-piece, reaching back to create a history and molding a collective impression. The cliché is that information travels on the web at near instantaneous speeds, but collectively piecing together the history of a scene from afar takes much longer than you would think, and leaves an uneven and distorted perception in the collective consciousness. The rise of interest in, and popularity of Chicago Footwork and Juke music outside of Chicago, particularly in England over the last two years, is a case study for the messy, complicated tangle of network historiography.
By comparison, the actual history of Juke and Footwork in Chicago is fairly simple. It’s easy to connect it to the long lineage of African-American music traditions and to see points of connection with popular dance music. Disco leads to House leads to Ghetto House leads to Juke and to Footwork. This chain is a timeline but also a pyramid with each step up growing smaller in terms of resources available to it and the size of the communities involved. By the end of the 90’s, Dance Mania, the premier label for Ghetto House, shut its doors and a corporate takeover sanitized Chicago radio, implementing national programming formats with little room for local music. Pivotal figures like DJ Deeon dropped out of the scene and younger producers and DJs waiting in the wings to join them now lacked the infrastructure and platforms to release their music and gain exposure outside of their communities. Read the rest of this entry »
By Charlotte Dutton
There are those who welcome change and those who resist it. Classical music patrons who fall into the latter category would have everyone believe that their choice of music is dying. When asked to elaborate, those dejected, averse-to-change listeners will cite the same signs of its imminent death that have been listed ever since the birth of rock and roll: aging patrons and half-empty concert halls. For them, classical music is engaged in a losing battle. However, forward thinking classical music lovers, who welcome and even embrace change, see opportunity rather than wreckage. It is not the music that is dying but rather, the tradition in which audiences receive it.
Although classical music tends to draw an older, “graying” crowd, not all of its enthusiasts are dropping like flies. Therein lays a flaw in cynical patrons’ point of view: their information is faulty due to its subjectivity. Perhaps older audiences appreciate and understand classical music better than other genres; maybe they were exposed to it or found interest in it later in life. Could it be that their current life experiences draw them to classical music just like the current life experiences of energetic college students draws them to pop or techno? That is not to say, however, that classical music does not have a footing in younger generations. Simply look at the myriad conservatories and music schools dotting the international landscape – it seems that almost every urban center has at least one decent to excellent music school. Read the rest of this entry »
