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Two Oberlin Conservatory students won top prizes in the 59th Tuesday Musical Association Scholarship Competition Winners Recital on May 18 at Fairlawn United Church of Christ in Akron. In first place was junior violin performance major William Overcash, a student of David Bowlin, who will receive $2,000. Second place winner Silei Gie, a sophomore who studies piano with Peter Takács, will receive $1,000.
One hundred thirty-five students from twenty-one Ohio colleges and universities participated in the Association’s 59th scholarship Competition on March 22 in seven categories: brass, music education, organ, piano, strings, vocal and woodwinds. All first and second place scholarship winners participated in the Winners Recital last Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »
by Daniel Hathaway
Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and the plucky young string quartet called Brooklyn Rider (Johnny Gandelsman & Colin Jacobsen, violins, Nicholas Cords, viola, and Eric Jacobsen, cello) launched their current, multi-city tour on Tuesday evening, November 12 at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron under the auspices of the Tuesday Musical Association, who had earlier sponsored Brooklyn Rider on its Fuze! series at the Akron Art Museum.
Béla Fleck has long been known for his experiments in bringing the voice of the banjo into jazz, rock and other genres of music. The impetus for connecting these five outstanding musicians came directly from Fleck’s initial foray into classical composition (it was in the stars apparently, since his parents named him Béla Anton Leoš— after Bartók, Webern and Janáček, respectively). After premiering his banjo concerto, The Imposter, with the Nashville Symphony in September of 2011 (he also played it last season with The Cleveland Orchestra), Fleck had the opportunity to record the work for Deutsche Grammophon, but needed something else to fill out the album. Read the rest of this entry »
by Nicholas Jones
The Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China and the western world, was active for two millennia from before Alexander to the late Middle Ages. Across that highway traveled not only silks and spices but also inventions from gunpowder to printing and ideas from mathematics to Buddhism.
The Silk Road Ensemble, founded by American cellist Yo-Yo Ma over a decade ago, takes that East-West route as a metaphor for cultural exchange today, bringing western and non-western musicians into a vibrant, innovative, and deeply collaborative musical experience. The result is an evening of strange and wonderful sounds that might have delighted Marco Polo or Genghis Khan. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
When cellist
Yo-Yo Ma decided in 1998 to launch a collaborative enterprise to promote artistic exchanges between cultures, he named it The Silk Road Project after the 4,000-some miles of ancient trade routes that for two millennia linked parts of Asia with Europe and encouraged the trading of art, knowledge, philosophy and religion — as well as silk and other commercial goods.
Two years later, The Silk Road Project spawned The Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of some sixty performers and composers from more than twenty countries. Fifteen musicians from eight of those countries, including Yo-Yo Ma, are currently on tour to six cities in the United States, and will perform on the Tuesday Musical Association Series at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on Thursday, March 14 at 7:30 pm. We spoke with three of them, pipa (Chinese lute) player Yang Wei, violinist Johnny Gandelsman and gaita (Galician bagpipes) player Christina Pato (who will also play piano) to ask how they first became involved in the Silk Road Ensemble and to glean some of their insights into what makes it tick. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
Clarinetist David Krakauer closes out this season’s Fuze! Series at the Akron Art Museum on Thursday, April 22 at 6:30, a series co-sponsored by Tuesday Musical Association. We reached him by telephone in Brooklyn, NY to talk about the forthcoming concert.
Mike Telin: What can the Akron audience expect to hear next Thursday? Will this be your Klezmer Madness project?
David Krakauer: For this concert, I will be bringing what I call my Klezmer Madness Acoustic Quartet. It’s the same Klezmer Madness repertoire, only performed acoustically. Klezmer Madness normally includes an electric guitar, and a sample player so that we can bring in the sounds of folk, rock, and jazz, those kinds of influences that need electronics. Because this is an acoustic project, we have a drummer, although he is treating everything more like percussion. He has this rule of one drum at a time. This way he is not overwhelming in an acoustic setting. There will also be bass and accordion players.
We will be playing a mixture of my compositions along with traditional Klezmer songs. It does have the new Klezmer approach, but it is acoustic. It’s kind of on the chamber music side. I’ve been offering this group to smaller venues or venues that are acoustically suited for a string quartet. When you start bringing in things like a full drum set, electric guitar, samples and everybody amplified, it’s just too much. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mike Telin
On Tuesday evening February 2, the Tuesday Musical Association of Akron will present violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jeremy Denk at the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. This performance marks the beginning of a five-week, 20-concert tour of the US. A second performance at Oberlin on Wednesday, February 3 is sold out.
We were curious to know how two musicians handle the rigors of being on the road for extended periods of time, as well as the musical decisions that go into programming and performing an intense series of recitals, which is different from being the guest soloist with an orchestra. We reached each artist separately by phone.
Joshua Bell
Mike Telin: We are looking forward to your two performances in Northeast Ohio next week
Joshua Bell: Yes, I’m really looking forward to starting my tour there. That will be the beginning of a five-week recital tour around the country so. We’ll be starting out in Akron and then in Oberlin the next night.
MT: Yes, I was looking at your schedule, and although this tour in the States is only five weeks, you seem to be very busy until the end of May.
JB: That’s right, but for me, basically it doesn’t stop because the beginning of June I go to Asia, and then the summer tour starts. So basically it never stops. Read the rest of this entry »
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