Preview: Classical Guitar Weekend: a conversation with Cleveland guitarist Jason Vieaux

by Mike Telin

On Thursday, May 23^rd beginning at 8:00 pm in CIM’s Mixon Hall, Classical Guitar Weekend kicks off its 2013 edition with a recital by Jason Vieaux that features the music of Paganini, Piazzolla, Ponce, and Sor. Vieaux, who heads the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Guitar department and serves on the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, will be joined by hi CIM colleagues violinist Jinjoo Cho, violist Jeffrey Irvine, and cellist Melissa Kraut.

On Friday, May 24 beginning at 9:00 am, also in Mixon Hall, Vieaux will lead a master class via Distance Learning. Guitar students from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Royal Danish Academy of Music will perform on and off site via CIM’s innovative Distance Learning audio/video hook up and be coached by Jesper Sivebak, head of the RDAM guitar department.

Since winning the Guitar Foundation of America’s International Competition at the age of nineteen, Jason Vieaux has earned a reputation for putting his expressive gifts and virtuosity at the service of a remarkably wide range of music.

Preview: Classical Guitar Weekend: a conversation with Raphaella Smits

by Daniel Hathaway

Belgian guitarist Raphaella Smits will be making her fourth visit to Cleveland for this year’s Classical Guitar Weekend to play a solo recital in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Saturday, May 25 at 4:30 and to conduct a master class on Thursday, May 23 at 2:00 pm. A frequent visitor to our shores, Smits has made some 95 solo and educational appearances in the US during her distinguished career, which includes having been the first woman to win Spain’s prestigious Certamen Internacional de Guitarra Francisco Tarrega Competition.

We reached Raphaella Smits via Skype video conference at her home outside Antwerp. Of course I have to ask her first if she admires Rubens’s paintings.

Raphaella Smits: Yes of course. They are everywhere. We are living about ten minutes outside town and we’re lucky to have a really huge, beautiful garden. It’s spring and all the leaves and flowers are out.

Daniel Hathaway: I’ve been reading about how you got started on the guitar, but it would be fun for you to tell us that again in your own words! What first attracted you to the instrument?

RS: Why not! In the beginning I wasn’t attracted to it at all because I didn’t even know it existed. But I grew up with a lot of culture.

Preview: Classical Guitar Weekend: a conversation with American guitarist Colin Davin

by Mike Telin

Hailed as “the real thing, a player with a virtuoso’s technique, a deeply expressive musicianship, and a probing imagination” by the American Record Guide, guitarist Colin Davin is quickly emerging as one of today’s most dynamic young artists. His recent recital appearances include Alice Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (on historic instruments from the museum’s collection), New York Philharmonic Ensembles at Merkin Hall, and venues in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Austin, and Cleveland.

As an educator, Davin has taught at the Aspen Music Festival as the teaching assistant to Sharon Isbin, and in January 2013, he was a guest artist-faculty at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul, Afghanistan.

On Friday, May 24 beginning at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall, Colin Davin presents a recital featuring the music of J.S. Bach, Britten, Erin Rogers and Joan Tower. On Saturday, May 25 from 1:00 until 4:00, Mr. Davin will give a master class in CIM Studio 113.

We spoke to the Bay Village native by telephone from his home in New York and we began by asking him why he chose the two Bach sonatas for his Classical Guitar Weekend recital.

Preview: Classical Guitar Weekend: a conversation with British guitarist Jonathan Leathwood

by Mike Telin

“Jonathan Leathwood is a genius,”writes Therese Wassily Sabaof Classical Guitar [UK]. One of the few guitarists to perform on six-string and ten-string guitars, Leathwood’s innovative programs are a mix of modern and traditional works. His recent recital appearances have taken him to Italy, the UK, Germany, Turkey, France, Belgium, Holland, and the United States. On Saturday, May 25 beginning at 8:00 pm in Mixon Hall, Jonathan Leathwood presents a recital featuring the works of J.S. Bach, de Falla, Gerhard, Goss, José, and Lindberg. Additionally Mr. Leathwood will give a master class on Friday, May 24 from 1:30 until 4:30 in CIM studio 113.

Equally noted as a teacher and writer on music, Jonathan Leathwood writes and lectures on a range of topics from Bach to Elliott Carter. In 2001 he conceived and edited Guitar Forum, a new scholarly journal for the classical guitar published in the United Kingdom by the European Guitar Teachers’ Association (EGTA UK). Currently he is a lecturer at the University of Denver.

Preview: Quire Cleveland invites Jameson Marvin to conduct a Palestrina Fest on May 25

by Daniel Hathaway

Quire Cleveland will celebrate Memorial Day weekend with an all-Palestrina concert at Historic St. Peter’s Church in downtown Cleveland on Saturday evening, May 25. Quire’s founders, Ross W. Duffin and Beverly Simmons, have invited a distinguished choral specialist to guest conduct the professional ensemble for the occasion: Jameson Marvin, who retired last year after thirty-two years as director of choral activities at Harvard, including the Harvard Glee Club, the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and the Radcliffe Choral Society (Marvin’s last Cleveland appearance was with the Glee Club in March of 2010).

The Quire Cleveland invitation came about through personal connections, he told us in a phone call from his home in Lexington, MA. “Ross and Bev’s son David sang with the Collegium when he was at Harvard. They came to several concerts and really liked what we were doing, especially with Renaissance polyphony. Interestingly, I had met Bev at workshops I offered in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the summer of 1979 and 1980. The fact that Ross and Bev went to Stanford the same time I did means that we see things similarly, though they’ve gone much more in depth into musicological areas and I into performance areas. When they came to Cambridge, I would see Ross after concerts and he told me about Quire Cleveland and invited me to come and conduct the group at some convenient time.”

Preview: Manfred Honeck conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in its four-concert season finale this weekend

by Mike Telin

This weekend The Cleveland Orchestra concludes its 2012-13 Severance Hall season with four concerts beginning on Thursday, May 23 and running through Sunday afternoon, May 26. The performances, under the direction of Manfred Honeck in his Cleveland Orchestra debut, include Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 featuring the German-born, London-based pianist, Lars Vogt, and the Cleveland premiere of Swedish composer Rolf Martinsson’s Open Mind. This series also includes a popular KeyBank Friday@7 series concert with a pre-concert performance by saxophonist Bobby Selvaggio and a post-concert party featuring the Brooklyn, N.Y. based funk band MOKAAD.

Austrian-born conductor Manfred Honeck attended the Academy of Music in Vienna studying violin and viola, and spent more then ten years as a member of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. Following his decision to pursue a conducting path, Honeck has held positions at the Zurich Opera House, MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, Norwegian National Opera, Staatsoper Stuttgart and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Honeck also served as principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2011, a position he will resume from 2013 to 2016. In North America, Manfred Honeck is most well known as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, a post he was appointed to in 2007.

Review: Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra with cellist Hannah Moses (May 12)

by Guytano Parks

“Over 1,300 students have been members of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra during the past twenty-seven seasons, representing a remarkable group of talented young people. For some, their interest in music has carried them forward into careers as educators and performers. For others, music continues as an important part of their lives and careers in business, the arts, and community service.”

So read the printed program from the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra’s final concert of the season at Severance Hall. It describes in advance the thirty-nine graduating seniors who were congratulated with individual descriptions of the next step in their musical journeys. Among them is Hannah Moses, winner of the orchestra’s 2013 concerto competition and soloist in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor.

Miss Moses, a member of COYO since 2007, is a senior in CIM’s Young Artist Program studying with Richard Weiss of The Cleveland Orchestra. Winner of many scholarship and concerto competitions, she will continue her studies at CIM, majoring in cello performance.

Review: Akron Baroque “Goes Rococo” at First Congregational Church (May 16)

by Daniel Hathaway

Short symphonies by Michael Haydn, his older brother Joseph Haydn, and J.S. Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian Bach, were the Rococo entries on the final concert of Akron Baroque Chamber Orchestra’s season on Thursday, May 16 under the direction of Guy Victor Bordo, but the 17-member professional ensemble, founded by Amy Barlowe, also recalled its central mission with a Vivaldi concerto starring the violin-bass duo of Amber and Maximilian Dimoff. (Amber is a member of Akron Baroque; her husband is principal bass of The Cleveland Orchestra).

Presented in the fine acoustical ambiance of the sanctuary of First Congregational Church with its elegant, wrap-around balcony, the 90-minute concert followed solidly in the tradition the ensemble has established: attractive and accessible music masterfully played on modern instruments with a nod to historical performance practice but without any self-conscious fussiness.

Review: Michael Lynn and Friends in “Baroque Conversations” benefit at Cleveland Museum of Art (May 11)

by Daniel Hathaway

Only six months after receiving a liver transplant at Cleveland Clinic, Michael Lynn gathered a group of friends to present a benefit concert for the program that gave him a new life and restored his career as a performer on the recorder and baroque flute. “A Baroque Musical Conversation” drew a good-sized audience to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Saturday evening, May 11 for masterful performances of concerted music by Telemann and Handel as well as cameo solo performances of works by Louis Couperin, Handel and Marais.

Lynn, who is professor of baroque flute and recorder and curator of musical instruments at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, was forced to give up performing four years ago due to his illness. His near-miraculous recovery was immediately evident in the opening selection, the Vivace from Telemann’s Concerto in D for two flutes, violin and cello, where he was joined by flutist Kathie Stewart, violinist Julie Andrijeski and cellist René Schiffer, with Jeannette Sorrell at the harpsichord and a backup orchestra of Miho Hashizumi and Rachel Iba, violins, Cynthia Black, viola, and Sue Yelanjian, contrabass. All the performers, who donated their services, have been longtime colleagues in professional period instrument ensembles in the region.

Preview: Akron Baroque: ten minutes with Amber and Maximilian Dimoff

by Daniel Hathaway

On Thursday, May 16 at 7:30 pm, Akron Baroque plays its final concert of the season at First Congregational Church, extending its reach into the classical area with works by Joseph and Michael Haydn and Johann Christian Bach, but honoring its Prime Directive with a concerto for violin and double bass by Antonio Vivaldi with Amber and Maximilian Dimoff as soloists. Amber is in her third year with Akron Baroque and plays regularly in the first violin section of the Akron Symphony as well as with Cleveland Pops and Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Max is principal bass with The Cleveland Orchestra, but has appeared more than once as an electric bassist in contemporary works with his orchestra colleagues.

The Dimoffs are a musical family. Their daughter, Isabel, plays cello in the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Contemporary Youth Orchestra and just won the senior division in the Cleveland Cello Society’s Scholarship Auditions. Their son, Xavier, plays saxophone in CYO and is studying jazz. Though father and daughter premiered a new concerto together with CYO earlier this season, Max and Amber haven’t often had the opportunity to perform together as a duo.

Recording review: Ensemble HD — Live at The Happy Dog

by Mike Telin

Today, May 15, 2013 is here and so marks the official release of the highly anticipated recording Ensemble HD – Live at The Happy Dog. So much has happened since June 23, 2010 when Cleveland Orchestra principal flutist Joshua Smith and Happy Dog proprietor Sean Watterson decided to take the plunge by bringing live “classical” music to a venue more known for presenting local rock and polka bands. But what this album celebrates most is the shared vision and philosophy of creating something that would put a new face on classical music which Smith and Watterson brought to a reality.

In the album’s informative liner notes, Charles Michener insightfully writes

“Yet, perhaps what ails classical music has less to do with the audience, the nature of the music or the people who play it, then it does with the places and the manner in which it is usually played.” Michener suggests, “What if one could experience Beethoven and Bartok in a setting other then a shrine-like auditorium…? What if the players arrived not in formal evening dress but as people who look and act just like the rest of us? What if you could enjoy Beethoven and Bartok in a casual public watering hole on an ordinary urban street while chatting with your companion, ordering food and drink, and even glancing occasionally at a TV monitor where an NBA or NFL game is in progress.”

Preview: Ars Futura to perform at Survival Kit Gallery on Friday, May 17

by Mike Telin

The recently-formed new music ensemble Ars Futura describe themselves as a forward-thinking, mixed-chamber, new music ensemble dedicated to commissioning, performing and popularizing new works. The group’s mission is to insure the continuation of their art form by steadily adding to the repertoire and exposing audiences to the great artists who are composing today. “Our first season is dedicated to the Cleveland connection,” says pianist Shuai Wang who co-founded the group with flutist Madeline Lucas. “I have a great respect for musicians in Cleveland,” Wang adds, “and this season all of the compositions we performed were by Ohio composers.”

On Friday, May 17 beginning at 7:00 pm at Survival Kit Gallery, located on the 3rd floor of 78th Street Studios in the Gordon Square Arts District, Ars Futura — Shuai Wang and Hyunsoo Kim, piano, Madeline Lucas, flute, Jinjoo Cho, violin and Carlos Javier, cello — present the final performance of the group’s inaugural season. The concert features the music of Keith Fitch, Marshall Griffith, Eric Charnofsky, Tim Mauthe and Joseph Hallman. (Pictured above: Wang and Hallman).

Review: WCLV’s Jubilation! Elizabeth Stuart Church Choir Festival inspires friendly competition at St. John’s Cathedral (May 9 & 10)

by Daniel Hathaway

Though The Ensemble from Federated Church in Chagrin Falls was the ultimate winner of the 2013 Jubilation! Elizabeth Stuart Church Choir Festival jointly sponsored by WCLV, 104.9 FM and the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, all six choirs took home a cash prize and a plaque as well as the invaluable experience of appearing with each other in a warmly supportive festival. The well-attended finals were held at St. John’s Cathedral on May 9 and 10 and judged by Robert Page, Frank Bianchi and Peter Jarjisian.

On Thursday evening, the Festival Choir of Gesu Parish in University Heights (27 singers) drew the opening slot. Directed by Joseph Metzinger with instrumental assistance from pianist Julia Russ and violinist James Thompson, the ensemble sang a range of music from repurposed Handel choruses to African Chants, a famous Sistine Chapel motet and a Mozart mass movement.

Preview: Contemporary Youth Orchestra: Rock the Orchestra — a conversation with guest artist Bootsy Collins

by Mike Telin

Although the word “Funk” may not be used on a daily basis during orchestra rehearsals and concerts, this week is all about “Funk” as the Contemporary Youth Orchestra under the direction of Liza Grossman joins forces with legendary bassist Bootsy Collins.

On Friday, May 17 beginning at 7:30 pm in Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium, CYO under the direction of Liza Grossman and Bootsy Collins perform 14 songs from his own discography in Psychotic Bump School. The performance is the 2013 edition of CYO’s annual Rock the Orchestra concert.

Beginning tonight (Tuesday, May 14) at 6:00 pm, also in Waetjen Auditorium, CYO in co-operation with the Bootsy Collins Foundation presents WIND ME UP!(an exclusive, behind the scenes view of our collaboration), a benefit for the Bootsy Collins Foundation and Cleveland Metropolitan School District International School. (Check our concert listings for details).

“Tonight and Friday’s concert are all about supporting the kids” says Patti Collins, the Foundation’s president who, along with her husband, created the foundation.

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Ton Koopman and Paul Yancich at Severance Hall (May 4)

by Daniel Hathaway

The first weekend of the third year of Dutch conductor Ton Koopman’s productive residency with The Cleveland Orchestra gave Severance Hall audiences a new perspective on three Viennese classical works by Mozart and Haydn, introduced a French baroque descriptive piece by a composer the orchestra has never tackled before, and brought a true novelty to light: a late eighteenth century showpiece starring timpanist Paul Yancich.

To be precise, only half of The Cleveland Orchestra was playing on the East side of East Boulevard on Saturday evening, May 4 — the rest of the musicians had been involved all week with the two-concert series “California Masterworks” at the Cleveland Museum of Art. For Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, the Severance stage was set up for a period-sized ensemble of fifteen violins, six violas, four cellos and four basses, and pairs of oboes and horns.

Review: Cleveland Chamber Music Society Young Artists Showcase features the Omer Quartet at First Unitarian (May 5)

by Daniel Hathaway

For the second year in a row, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society has honored the Omer Quartet with a Young Artists Showcase concert at First Unitarian Church in Shaker Heights. Violinists Mason Yu and Erica Tursi, violist Joe LoCicero and cellist Alex Cox, all graduating seniors at the Cleveland Institute of Music (pictured here in Mixon Hall), where they have participated in CIM’s Intensive String Quartet Seminar, have spent the season playing outreach concerts in elementary schools with coaching from Annie Fullard of the Cavani Quartet and Peter Salaff of CIM. The Omer Quartet entertained a mid-sized and slightly older audience on Sunday evening, May 5, with two unconventional works by Leoš Janáček and Felix Mendelssohn.

A year ago, the Omer played Mendelssohn’s last-composed chamber work for the occasion; this time they went back to the beginning and offered the 18-year-old composer’s first work for string quartet, op. 13 in a minor.

Review: Church of the Covenant unveils splendid new organ in a day of celebration (May 12)

by Timothy Robson

In a day of music and celebration on Sunday, May 12, the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland’s University Circle formally unveiled and dedicated its brilliant new organ, the Newberry Organ, built by Richards, Fowkes & Company of Ooltewah, Tennessee. The new organ was tested to its limits in a festival service in the morning featuring multi-choir works with Baroque-style instruments, and three other organs (two small Dutch portative organs as well as the church’s large mid-20th-century American Classic organ), followed by a concert in the afternoon by Oberlin Conservatory organ faculty head James David Christie, with a repeat of the multi-choral works from the morning. In between the two major events, the church’s director of music, Jonathan Moyer, gave a lecture on the new organ.

The new two-manual and pedal organ, which sits in a renovated rear organ gallery, is modeled on organs of 17th-century Holland and northern Germany. Its pitch and tuning enable the organist to simulate the sounds that would have been heard by the composers of the time, the late Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Review: Cleveland Orchestra: Handel with Ton Koopman at Severance Hall (May 9)

by Nicholas Jones

Like most 18^th-century composers, Handel wrote much of his music for special occasions, rather than for its own sake. But in the hands of such a master, many of his occasional compositions have transcended the functions for which they were written.

Such is the case for three Handel works performed by the Cleveland Orchestra Thursday. All of them were written for British royal occasions, but you don’t need to be a Brit to appreciate them. Under the guidance of baroque specialist Ton Koopman, the orchestra brought out both the radiance and depth of Handel’s music.

Review: Cleveland Orchestra & CMA collaborate for “California Masterworks” (May 1 & 3) with a John Cage chaser afterwards

by Mike Telin & Daniel Hathaway

“Go West, young man, go West,” was the much quoted advice probably misattributed to Horace Greeley, and for many during the Westward Expansion, the ultimate destination was California.

Last week, in their second collaboration in Gartner Auditorium, The Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Museum of Art’s VIVA! & Gala Performing Arts Series presented “California Masterworks”, a two-concert series that drew on six seminal works by Henry Cowell, Dane Rudhyar, Lou Harrison, John Adams, James Tenney and Terry Riley to create a retrospective of music created by Californians — either born or raised there (Cowell, Harrison and Riley) or moved there to spend extended periods of time (Adams, Rudhyar and Tenney) but all of whom are linked by “common threads — different threads”, “bumping the classical tradition slightly off its axis” and offering “not so much a glimpse of the fringe as of the future,” as the Museum’s Tom Welch wrote in his extensive introduction in the program book.

Review: Rocky River Chamber Music Society — Trio Nord at West Shore UU Church (May 6)

by Mike Telin

It’s difficult to be the sibling of an over-achieving, award-winning brother or sister. No matter how hard one tries it is nearly impossible to garner the same amount of attention from adults that is bestowed on them. The same could be said about the string family: the trio, it seems, is always in the shadow of its more famous sibling the quartet. On Monday, May 6 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Trio Nord — Sonja Braaten Molloy, violin, Lembi Veskimets viola, and Martha Baldwin, cello — sent a clear message to the capacity audience: the string trio deserves more attention!

The concert, presented by the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, opened with the Prelude and Fugue No. 6 in F minor, K. 404a by Mozart. The brief yet immediately likeable piece combines an original prelude and a transcription of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s Fugue No. 8. Trio Nord conveyed the work’s charm beautifully, performing with nuanced elegance during the prelude and rhythmic precision during the fugue.

Review: Dana New Music Festival XIX: Concert 4 at St. Columba Cathedral, Youngstown (May 1)

by Daniel Hathaway

Youngstown State University’s Dana New Music Festival XIX held its ultimate concert at St. Columba Cathedral on Wednesday evening, May 1, featuring new works by faculty, student and community composers, a couple of not-so-new-music selections by French and American composers and several Polish pieces performed by four members of the Sobieski family (left) who had also been featured at a noontime concert at the Butler Institute of American Art. The Festival Orchestra was conducted by composition professor Robert Rollin and other performances featured members of the Dana Composers Ensemble (directed by Gwneth Rollin). The two-hour concert, played without intermission, offered an intriguing buffet of musical styles.

Youngstown composer Richard Zacharias’s All Right, Time to Go, ironically opened the evening with intriguing back-and-forth monologues between violin (Natalie Sahyoun) and piano (Alison Morris) who only later joined in dialogue. Both in the opening work and in Zacharias’s Duo Two (a first performance), the pairs of instrumentalists seemed to be trying to start up a conversation but communication proved difficult. Duo Two was distinguished by strong horn playing from Stephen Klein, with the fine assistance of pianist Maria Fesz.

Review: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet at Plymouth Church (April 30)

by Daniel Hathaway

After a season well-provisioned with string quartets — the bread and butter of chamber music presenters — it was refreshing to have the Cleveland Chamber Music Society re-invite the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet to end its subscription season at Plymouth Church on April 30. This concert marked their third appearance on the series.

String quartets are homogenous — three different-sized members of the same family. A woodwind quintet celebrates un-likeness: five different-hued instruments — a flute, an oboe, a clarinet, a bassoon and a horn (isn’t that a brass instrument?) — all of which are expected to blend together into an expressive ensemble and keep the ear engaged during a full-length concert. Only the best ensembles can achieve that end, and the Berliners are very good at it, harmoniously melding their sound while still preserving the individual personalities of their instruments, some of which in the case of this quintet feature distinct regional timbres.

Review: Cleveland Women’s Orchestra with Jinjoo Cho & Cicely Parnas at Severance Hall (April 28)

by Daniel Hathaway

Conductor Robert L. Cronquist and the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra celebrated the ensemble’s seventy-eighth anniversary at Severance Hall on Sunday, April 28, with a charming Prokofiev symphony and a big double concerto — Brahms’s challenging workout for violin, cello and orchestra — featuring guest artists Jinjoo Cho and Cicely Parnas.

Prokofiev’s seventh symphony was written for a radio program to be broadcast by the Children’s Division of the Russian National Radio network. Its landscape is as child-friendly as an outdoor playground, fitted out with magical textures, wistful waltzes, playful themes and carnival gestures. The orchestra’s strings produced a nice, rich sound at the beginning, accompanied by dark, mysterious horns and graced by splendid clarinet solos (Pamela Elliot). Though the second movement exposed some tentative playing in the brass and percussion, the fine English hornist (Elizabeth Bishop) sensitively delivered lyrical lines in the third and spirited piano and bassoon solos (Linda Allen and Charlotte Hines) helped create a burlesquish atmosphere in the finale. Both conductor and orchestra both seemed to lose some energy as the piece went on and dynamics hovered in mezzo forte range.

Review: BlueWater Chamber Orchestra with Neil Mueller and harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper (May 4)

by Mike Telin

While associate conductor Neil Mueller aptly chose to title last weekend’s BlueWater Chamber Orchestra concert Baroque Reverberations, Mueller could have also appropriately named it “the many sides of Kenneth Cooper.” On Saturday, May 4^th in Plymouth Church, the celebrated American harpsichordist and conductor returned to Cleveland for the first time since he was featured in multiple concerts with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra several years ago — and hopefully a return visit will not take nearly as long. Even better if that visit would reunite him with Mueller and the talented BlueWater players.

The concert featured music of the early 18th century, Handel’s Concerto No. 15 in d minor for harpsichord and strings, with Cooper in the role of soloist, and Bach’s Orchestra Suite No. 3 in D, where he displayed his astute continuo playing skills. Music from the 20^th century also made an appearance with de Falla’s Concerto for harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello. Here Cooper became a virtuoso chamber musician.

Review: Arts Renaissance Tremont — Eliesha Nelson with James Howsmon at Pilgrim (April 28)

by Mike Telin

Violist Eliesha Nelson has a penchant for discovering interesting music written for her instrument. Her 2009 release Quincy Porter Viola Works, received four Grammy nominations and won in the Best Engineered Album Classical category. The tag line of her website homepage states: Showcasing the viola repertoire’s lost gems. And stating why her 2011 release Russian Viola Sonatas did not include the sonata of Shostakovich, Nelson writes, “I love the Shostakovich Sonata, but did not include it because I love to explore music off the beaten path.”

On Sunday, April 28 in Pilgrim Church, Eliesha Nelson and pianist James Howsmon presented a captivating recital that featured works by two lesser known composers as well as a household name on the final concert of Arts Renaissance Tremont’s season.

Nelson referred to the programming of the first half as “a homage to 20^th Century American Music.” Composer Ross Lee Finney (1906 – 1997) was a student of Nadia Boulanger, Edward Burlingame Hill and Alban Berg as well as Roger Sessions and served on the faculties at Smith and the University of Michigan.