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By Daniel Hautzinger
Learning and putting together Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is a scramble against time. The piece features complicated rhythms (sometimes notated without time signatures), infinitely long phrases, and complicated layering of parts. György Ligeti’s Horn Trio and Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony are similarly difficult works. But students at Kent/Blossom Music Festival (KBMF) are assigned to learn them in two weeks for performance.
“Two weeks is just enough time,” said Keith Robinson, artistic coordinator of Kent/Blossom, professor of cello at Kent State and KBMF, and cellist in the Miami String Quartet, who gave a recital as part of the festival. “You want something that will challenge them for two whole weeks.” Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
Note: this concert was cancelled due to weather conditions and has been rescheduled with revised repertory for Tuesday, July 23 (see the concert listings for details).
We continue our coverage of the Kent/Blossom Music Festival with an enlightening conversation with violinist and faculty member Jung-Min Amy Lee. Lee joined The Cleveland Orchestra as associate concertmaster in March 2008 and has served on the Kent/Blossom Faculty since that same summer.
On Wednesday, July 10 beginning at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall, Amy Lee (left in photo) will join her Cleveland Orchestra colleagues and Omni Quartet members violinist Alicia Koelz, violist Joanna Patterson, and cellist Tanya Ell for a performance of Bartok’s 3rd String Quartet and Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello. The program also includes Ligeti’s Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano featuring Cleveland Orchestra principal horn Richard King and pianist Randall Fusco.
For Amy Lee, teaching is all about the passing down of traditions. “I think the real beauty of [teaching] is that you take the traditions from the past, preserve them and hopefully better them, and hand them down to the younger generation.” Beginning in the fall, Lee will have the opportunity to pass down musical traditions more when she becomes part of a new faculty ensemble at the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music at Kent State University. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
“It’s bigger than ever, and we’re really excited about it,” exclaimed Danna Sundet, who along with cellist Keith Robinson, is one of the co-artistic directors of the Kent/Blossom Festival. This year’s festival officially begins on June 26 with a concert featuring the Miami String Quartet and pianist Spencer Myer in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State University Campus. “We’re releasing our first-ever Kent/Blossom CD at a gala party afterward,” Sundet said during a conference call. Robinson jumped in with more news. “We’re also having our first Kulas Guest Artist, clarinetist David Shifrin, who used to play in The Cleveland Orchestra before he went on to fame and fortune with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.”
Those concerts are only two of the seventeen events Kent/Blossom will offer between now and July 27. There will be six performances by Cleveland Orchestra members and friends (who make up the faculty for the chamber music-oriented summer festival which began when the Blossom Music Center opened in 1968), and six concerts by students — three at the end of each of the two-week chamber music sessions. At the end of the festival following an orchestral week, the Kent/Blossom Chamber Orchestra will play Ravel’s La Valse in a side-by-side concert with The Cleveland Orchestra on July 27 preceded by its own set under the baton of James Feddeck, who will lead the student ensemble in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and Debussy’s Clair de lune. Read the rest of this entry »
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