Category: classical music

Cincinnati Song Initiative to go virtual this season

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Cincinnati Song Initiative participants around the piano from a previous season (L-R): Alex Hurd, Ahyoung Jung, Samuel Martin, Ivy Walz, Kenneth Griffiths, Marie Marquis

I’ve enjoyed some of the most engaging programs in memory by Cincinnati Song Initiative, a series of programs devoted to art song. Founded five years ago by Sam Martin, it features rising stars — many of them CCM alumni — and CCM faculty in impeccable performances of music we don’t often hear.

This year, it’s all digital, thanks to Covid-19. That doesn’t mean that it’s programs aren’t just as compelling. Concerts can be streamed through CSI’s new online platform, CSI Digital. You can
access the concerts as they stream live and re-watch them as many times as you wish. You’ll also have access to extras, such as Composers & Cocktails happy hour chats, Beyond the Song webinars, Coffee Convos roundtable discussions, and CSI’s complete video concert archives.

Elena Villalón appears in January

The season includes its largest commissioning project to date. Cincinnati Song Initiative will commission a single song from ten composers for its grand finale in May.

Here’s the schedule:Read More »

New York radio WQXR to air CSO’s Beethoven Akademie 1808 concert this month

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Maesstro Louis Langrée, with soloist Inon Barnatan, the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Akademie 1808 concert in Music Hall/AJ Waltz, photos

“Mostly Mozart Festival on WQXR,” a week-long radio festival on New York’s classical radio station, will be capped on Aug. 16 by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven Akademie 1808 concert performed last season in Music Hall and conducted by music director Louis Langrée.

On Monday, WQXR and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts announced a partnership to broadcast archival performances from the annual Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as interviews, discussions and “pop-up” performances daily from Aug. 10 to Aug. 16.  New Yorkers can listen at 105.9-FM, or anyone may stream it online at wqxr.org. On opening day, a series of pop-up outdoor performances across all five New York City boroughs will stream live on WQXR’s Facebook page.

Due to Covid-19, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, which is led by Langrée, was canceled for the first time since its founding in 1966.

The festival will close on Aug. 16 with the CSO’s recreation of Beethoven’s legendary Akademie 1808, the most important concert of the composer’s lifetime (Aug 16, 5 pm ET). Langrée had intended to lead the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in this extravagant program — four hours of some of the greatest music Beethoven ever wrote. Instead, the festival will feature the performance recorded in Music Hall on March 1, 2020 with Langrée conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and featuring the May Festival Chorus prepared by Director of Choruses Robert Porco.
Read More »

Chamber Orchestra announces lineup for Summermusik e-festival

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CCO musicians performing at Pyramid Hill

In lieu of its usual month-long Summermusik festival, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra has 13 virtual events on tap to enjoy at home, Aug. 8 through Aug. 29.

The Silver-Garburg Piano Duo

Three will be three “live” events — online performances in real time, with stars including the Silver-Garburg Piano Duo, who wowed us in person at the festival in 2019 (Aug. 9); the superb young cellist Coleman Itzkoff, a Cincinnati native and CCO principal violist Heidi Yenney’s son (Aug. 16); and pianist Alon Goldstein, one of the stars of the 2017 festival (Aug. 23).

Those “eConcerts” will be hosted by music director Eckart Preu, and you’ll have a chance to ask questions.

Other events include “virtual watch parties” with local collaborators, a special WGUC Music Cincinnati Broadcast (Aug. 16), and “CCO2GO Rewind” events that were taped around the region earlier this summer.

Best of all, it’s all FREE. Access begins on Aug. 8th on the CCO’s website, ccocincinnati.org. Here’s the full lineup.Read More »

CSO, Pops cancel fall season; live-streamed shows planned

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An image I captured during the CSO’s livestream from Music Hall in May.

It’s no surprise. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra announced today that its fall season concerts for the CSO and Pops are canceled through Jan. 3 2021 due to Covid-19. Click here to read the story.

Louis Langrée

The orchestra joins a growing number of major North American orchestras that are canceling all or part of their 2020-21 seasons amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus.

The Indianapolis Symphony was the latest to cancel its entire season on July 24. Here’s a link to the news.

The Nashville Symphony also has announced it will not play in 2020-21. It will furlough its musicians, staff and even its music director, Giancarlo Guerrero. Press release here.

Toronto announced that it will not have its usual season, but will present scaled-down ensembles, even in its home in Roy Thomson Hall..

Those who have announced they will cancel their fall seasons only (for now) include The New Jersey Symphony, which is led by music director Xian Zhang, who earned her doctorate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

The San Francisco Symphony, with its season canceled through Dec. 31, was to have welcomed its new music director Esa-Pekka Salonen this fall.

Other major orchestras canceling fall seasons include the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony, Chicago Symphony (through Dec. 23) and the Baltimore Symphony, optimistically to the end of November.

In memoriam Atarah Jablonsky

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Atarah Jablonsky was a legendary music educator
Atarah Jablonsky is remembered as a dedicated piano teacher who was beloved by several generations of students, and an accomplished musician.

“She was not only a music educator but a life educator. She was wonderfully open minded, an optimist, and accepting of others,” said Roxanne Engle, who taught with her at the Peaslee Neighborhood Center and Evendale Cultural Arts Center.  “Atarah was inspirational in developing her own unique way to bring musicality and expression into playing the piano.  Teaching and performing were in her thoughts up to the end. She was looking at the score of the Beethoven Pastorale Sonata in her last few weeks and asked me, ‘When will we teach piano again?'”

Mrs. Jablonsky, a longtime resident of Wyoming, OH, died on July 14 at Wellspring Health Care Center. She was 92.

A noteworthy teacher, she was adjunct assistant professor of music at the College of Mount St. Joseph from 1970 to 2001.  She taught piano from 1958-70 at the University Cincinnati, where she was also an adjudicator from 1970 to 2001. She also was a lecturer at Edgecliff College (1972-74).Read More »

Cincinnati Opera, CET to air documentary on opera’s first 100 years

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In recent years, Cincinnati Opera has kicked off its season with a free concert in Washington Park, OTR

Cincinnati Opera and CET have announced plans for “Cincinnati Opera at 100,” an hour-long televised program commemorating Cincinnati Opera’s centennial. Featuring
insights from local and national opera experts and performances by artists from across the country, “Cincinnati Opera at 100” will premiere on CET 48.1 on Friday, July 3 at 9 p.m. EST.

Additional airings will follow on CET Arts 48.3 through Tuesday, July 7.

The nation’s second-oldest opera company, Cincinnati Opera presented its first performance on June 27, 1920, at Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, and its annual Summer Festival has become a Cincinnati arts-going tradition.

Lisa Daltirus in “Aida” at Cincinnati Opera in Music Hall.

Though the company’s 100th Anniversary Season was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, “Cincinnati Opera at 100” transports the opera-going experience into viewers’ homes, including performances by much-loved singers from recent Cincinnati Opera productions and historical highlights from opera experts.Read More »

CSO announces 5 new diversity fellows

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Amy Nickler

The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) have selected five accomplished musicians for their next class of CSO/CCM Diversity Fellows.

The performance fellowship program was launched in 2015 out of a desire to help American orchestras be more inclusive and to better represent the communities they serve. The mission is to eliminate obstacles that can prevent musicians of color from achieving their full potential. It is funded with a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Through the collaborative program, CCM and the CSO provide graduate level academic study
and professional development and performance opportunities for the Diversity Fellows.

“The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra exists to serve our community. Our entire community,”
said CSO President Jonathan Martin. “But how can we authentically serve our entire community
if a significant part of that community doesn’t see themselves reflected in our organization? The
CSO/CCM Diversity Fellowship is one of many steps we are taking to address this disparity. By
providing professional opportunities to a more diverse group of outstanding musicians, we hope
to cultivate—and begin changing —the next generation of American orchestral musicians.”

The new Fellows are:Read More »

Art of the Piano to be virtual this year

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Awadagin Pratt established Art of the Piano 10 years ago at CCM

It comes as no surprise that Art of the Piano, the festival of pianists and piano music founded by Awadagin Pratt, will be virtual — or “Onlive!” — this year-of-the-covid.

The festival will begin at 6 p.m. June 23 with  a live-streamed concert by a superstar pianist to be named “once the ink is dry on the corona-revised contract,” Pratt says. The festival runs through July 27 with weekly concerts and lectures by both distinguished and emerging artists.

The website is under construction in preparation, so check back for news at artofthepiano.org.

Here is Awadagin’s statement regarding diversity with his announcement:Read More »

Library of Congress commissions 10 musical works in response to Covid pandemic

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Illustration from a medieval manuscript
Public Domain. Bibliotheek, K. (2020, April 01). Giovanni Boccaccio & Florentines Who Have Fled from the Plague. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/image/12052/

The Black Plague of the 14th century had Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, a literary masterpiece about 10 Florentine authors, holed up in quarantine, who entertained themselves by telling stories. The result was 100 tales.

Now, the Library of Congress announced today it will premiere a series of 10 commissions of new music from composers across America in The Boccaccio Project, a musical response to our current plague.

That early moment in history parallels the quarantine and social distancing phenomena we have been experiencing worldwide in recent months, the Library of Congress news release stated.

Curators in the Library’s Music Division asked 10 pairs of composers and performers to write brief solo works to be premiered over the course of 10 days — June 15 to June 26. The composers and performers are working remotely, and once the new commissions have been recorded, they will be released on the Library’s digital platforms and by the artists.

The release of the commissions over 10 days is a nod to the “Decameron’s” structure, the release said.

Since the Library’s concert series was founded in 1925, more than 600 works have been commissioned under the auspices of the Library’s gift funds.Read More »

What will make you feel safe going to a concert or museum?

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As the country begins to open up after the pandemic lockdown, I’m seeing many surveys coming across my email, asking “What will make you feel safe going back to your old activities?”

Those activities, for me, include returning to concerts, plays, museums, ballet, the intimate venues and the larger ones, events that take place indoors and outdoors. I miss it all.

Of course, it’s a complex question. It’s clear that arts organization around the world have been pondering how they would reopen — safely — ever since everything closed in mid-March.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra took a first step with a chamber music concert live-streamed from an empty Music Hall last Saturday. Click here to read my impressions, free on Bizjournals.com.

I’d like to hear from you. What might make you feel safe attending an arts or cultural entity again? Social distancing, face masks and hand sanitizer? Reliable Covid-19 treatments and tests? A vaccine?

Comment here, on Facebook or send me a note a Janellesnotes@yahoo.com