Here are my reviews from two of the shows I saw this week, which you can read free on the Business Courier:
CSO demonstrates musical camaraderie in smaller works
And at CCM: From tragedy to comedy, CCM double bill is a treasure
The Winners of the CCM Opera Scholarship Competition on Saturday in Corbett Auditorium have been announced. (See more about the competition in the post below.)
The singers were vying for full scholarships and $62,500 in cash awards. The winners:
The Corbett Award – $15,000
Teresa Perrotta of Orlando, Florida
The Italo Tajo Memorial Award – $15,000
Murella Parton of Knoxville, Tennessee
Andrew White Memorial Award –$12,500
Salvatore Atti of Buffalo, New York
Seybold-Russell Award –$10,000
Victor S. Cardamone
John Alexander Memorial Award– $10,000
Eric Shane of Tulsa, Oklahoma
Corbett Chair Recruitment Award — $3,000
Daren Small of Billings, Montana
This year’s judges were Michael Eberhart from Opera Philadelphia, Cory Lippiello from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Steven Osgood from the Chautauqua Opera Company.
On Saturday at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music, singers will be vying for five prestigious full-tuition scholarships and $62,500 in cash awards. The Opera Scholarship Competition will be held on Saturday, March 17, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in CCM’s Corbett Auditorium.
It’s a high-stakes, daylong event featuring 27 current and incoming singers who are students in CCM’s storied opera department. They’ll be performing arias, songs and scenes before influential judges who have been flown in for the event.Read More »
Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble (VAE), the city’s premier professional choral ensemble, has announced a conducting change for Tuesday’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers at Memorial Hall. VAE Music Director, Craig Hella Johnson, who was scheduled to conduct, has had to cancel due to illness.
Johnson has tapped choral conductor Elena Sharkova to take his place as conductor for the performance. The Russian-American conductor is in her 17th year as Music Director of Symphony Silicon Valley Chorale. She is a passionate advocate for Russian choral music.
Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sharkova holds graduate degrees in conducting from the St. Petersburg Rimski-Korsakov State Conservatory and Western Michigan University.
Tickets: vaecinci.org
By now you’ve read, or you’ve heard about, Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine’s fall from grace. Yesterday, the Metropolitan Opera fired the maestro, a Cincinnati native, citing “credible evidence” for sexual abuse allegations that go back decades.
Levine was one of the most powerful people in the opera world. He was revered as a conductor who rivaled legends such as Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. In Cincinnati, Levine’s talent is a part of local lore. He made his Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra debut as piano soloist at age 10 under Thor Johnson. As a pre-teen, he would sit for hours at Cincinnati Opera rehearsals at the zoo, inhaling opera scores and imitating Italian conductor Fausto Cleva.
He was music director of the Cincinnati May Festival in 1974, before he turned 30, and served for five seasons. (The May Festival has canceled his planned appearance this season.)
In Cincinnati, he conducted his first performances of Wagner operas Lohengrin, Tannhauser and Parsifal, in concert version for the May Festival. Levine hand-picked his successor, James Conlon.
He was a personal champion of opera soprano Kathleen Battle, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
And his mentor from an early age into adulthood was Walter Levin, the late first violinist of the LaSalle Quartet, the distinguished former quartet-in-residence at CCM.
One of Levine’s honorary doctorates was from the University of Cincinnati.
I’m reposting the Met’s entire statement here:Read More »
The Taft Museum of Art is seeking volunteers to work outdoors at the museum this April on a monumental art installation by Patrick Dougherty. Dougherty, who was born in Oklahoma and raised in North Carolina, specializes in creating large interactive sculptures out of tree saplings.
The sculpture will take three weeks to create — with your help — and it will last for two years. Visitors will be able to touch and walk through the sculpture.Read More »
In case you missed it on bizjournals.com, here’s the CSO review from the weekend: Janowski’s Bruckner, Wagner provide fitting tribute to López-Cobos.
Read an appreciation for CSO music director emeritus Jesús López-Cobos, who died of cancer on March 2 at age 78 by clicking here. During his 15-year tenure with the CSO, he made many contributions.
The CSO’s March 23-24 concerts will be performed in his memory.
You can read some comments in appreciation of the maestro, his CSO recordings and more on Norman Lebrecht’s blog, Slipped Disc.
The University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music is reporting that two alumni — Nick Lipari and Dan Schroer — from the school’s Electronic Media Division worked behind-the-scenes on films nominated for Oscars in the 2018 Academy Awards, airing live from Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre at 8 p.m. Sunday on ABC. The 90th Academy Awards is hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.Read More »
CSO Music Director Emeritus Jesús López-Cobos passed away this morning in Berlin at age 78. The CSO released this statement today:
His extraordinary tenure as Music Director here in Cincinnati from 1986 to 2001 had a lasting impact and he forged so many wonderful friendships. We grieve with his family and honor and celebrate his tremendous legacy.
There will be a moment of silence before each of this weekend’s concerts and we will dedicate the performances on March 23 and 24 in Jesús López-Cobos’ memory.
Please keep his family, many friends and former colleagues in your thoughts and prayers in this time of loss.
Here is his obituary, with some local information, on bizjournals.com. Maestro López-Cobos had the second longest tenure (15 years) of any CSO music director in its history, surpassed only by that of Eugene Goossens. He was the orchestra’s 11th music director, succeeding Michael Gielen.
He led the CSO on European and Far East tours, and conducted the orchestra’s first nationally televised concerts in the United States and Japan. He conducted the CSO 14 times at Carnegie Hall and made 26 recordings, more than any other music director at the time.
Gramophone has a nice tribute to his many fine Telarc recordings with the CSO and other orchestras.
Do you have memories of the maestro that you’d like to share? Please post them here, or send me an e-mail to janellesnotes@yahoo.com and I will post them for you.
This year’s “Classical Roots” concert will explore Music Hall’s history as a gathering place for a wide spectrum of Cincinnati’s society.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s “Under One Roof,” led by Pops conductor John Morris Russell, will take place at 7:30 p.m. on April 20 in Music Hall. The program will illuminate Music Hall’s history — both as a great concert venue for the orchestra in the main hall and as a community gathering place that hosted many of the greatest jazz, soul, rock and R&B artists of the 20th century in the Greystone Club. Today that space in the South Hall is known as the Music Hall Ballroom.Read More »
