If your Fall calendar looks like mine, it’s filling up quickly. Here’s a fun idea: The a cappella group, the Yale Whiffenpoofs, will be performing at Knox Presbyterian Church on October 20th, 7:30-9 p.m.
The Whiffenpoofs, the world’s oldest and best known collegiate a cappella group, performs 200 concerts each year and tours internationally. Founded in 1909, the ”Whiffs” began as a senior quartet that met for weekly concerts at Mory’s Temple Bar, a famous Yale tavern.
They’ve appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House, the Rose Bowl, and Lincoln Center. Their television appearances includes NBC’s The Sing Off, The West Wing, The Today Show, 60 Minutes, Gilmore Girls, Jeopardy!, Saturday Night Live, the Season 4 finale of Glee and Hell’s Kitchen. They’ve also sung for multiple sitting presidents. They close each night with the historic Whiffenpoof Song, covered by artists such as Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby.
Tickets will be $15 for students/children and $25 for general admission. Priority seating tickets are also available, and the ticket link is here.
Molly Norcross is the new principal horn of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Just when you thought you knew most of the new musicians in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra under the direction of Music Director Cristian Măcelaru has announced nine more new hires. They’ve also announced the appointment of Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra’s (CSYO) new Concert Orchestra Conductor, and two conducting contract extensions for the 2026–27 season.
The musicians won positions following extensive auditions from a national applicant pool.
The new players are: Molly Norcross, Principal Horn; Mark Debski, Associate Principal Oboe; Drew Morgan, Associate Principal Horn; Ania Lewis, Assistant Principal Cello; Jessica Kovach, Section Bass; and Alex Pride, Section Trumpet. One-year appointments include Celia Daggy, Acting Associate Principal Viola and Micah Reinharz, Acting Associate Principal Trumpet.
Also joining the Orchestra this year is cellist Osheen Manukyan as the CSO’s inaugural CSO Resident Fellow. Leading the Cincinnati Symphony
Youth Orchestra Concert Orchestra is Lina Jeong, who is currently orchestra director at Xavier University.
In addition, the CSO announced a one-year contract extension with CSO Assistant Conductor Duo Shen, and Assistant Conductor Alex Amsel has been promoted to Associate Conductor with a one-year contract extension.
I shouldn’t have been astonished when I saw thousands of people Friday night streaming to events in the Washington Park area of Over-the-Rhine. However, this wasn’t about Flying Pig, the great Cincinnati marathon that was happening that weekend, or FC Cincinnati. All those people were going to see Damon Gupton conduct the music of Star Wars with the Cincinnati Pops at Music Hall, as well as to theaters, Memorial Hall, events at the School for Creative and Performing Arts, to Washington Park and to an art opening in a tiny gem of a gallery a few steps from Music Hall.
I was heading to Wash Park Art for the opening of a remarkable installation, Anna VanMatre’s “Primary Fundamentals.” This is the U.S. premiere of the exhibition, which had its world premiere in Guiyang, China, a joint commission of the SKYSEA Museum of Art and the Xiyun Academy Gallery in 2025.
In this series, Anna explores the fundamentals that sustain our life on Earth — water, sun and fire — in stunning, nature-inspired creations that are almost hyper-realistic. (Read about her process in this article I wrote about another exhibition she had at the Auschwitz death camp in her native Poland a few years ago.) Anna’s husband, Rick VanMatre, saxophonist and professor emeritus of Jazz Studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, created new music to accompany the exhibition’s opening.
The author with the artist
Coming up: Anna will be giving an Artist Talk, 6 p.m. May 21 at the gallery, 1215 Elm Street. It runs through June 13. info: washparkart.com.
And on Sunday (May 3), I attended the final program of the Linton Chamber Series in Avondale’s First Unitarian Church. Besides the sun streaming in through its Tiffany windows, I’m partial to piano trios, and there were two of them: Beethoven’s Trio in D Major, “Ghost,” and Mendelssohn’s Trio No. 2 in C Minor, with pianist Benjamin Hochman, CSO concertmaster Stefani Matsuo and CSO principal cellist Ilya Finkelshteyn.
Haydn’s Flute Trio in G Major opened the program, featuring the CSO’s retiring principal flute Randolph Bowman, with Finkelshteyn and Hochman.
Each trio was distinctive and inspiring in its own way. The Haydn made a delightful opener, and I especially enjoyed the fleet, light articulation of each player. What is there to say about Beethoven? It was utterly profound, absorbing and played with breathtaking artistry. And what a treat it was to hear Mendelssohn’s “other” piano trio, written after the more familiar D Minor, and the last chamber piece he wrote. It is difficult for the pianist, and yet it was so brilliantly performed by Hochman, who balanced “fairy” lightness with moments of massive sonority at the Steinway. I could see Matsuo and Finkelshteyn smiling through these movements. For an encore, they played the unforgettable second movement of Mendelssohn’s D Minor Piano Trio.
Hochman told us he was last here 20 years ago, to appear with the CSO and the Linton. I hope he returns.
This program repeats tonight at Congregation Beth Adam in Loveland. Linton also announced next year’s season under its artistic directors Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson. More information here: lintonmusic.org.
Just a week earlier, more than 4,500 people attended the CSO’s two sold-out performances of “The Firebird” with giant puppets. Here’s my review, free to read, with thanks to the Cincinnati Business Courier.
The Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s 12th Summermusik festival will hail America at 250 whil it carries on the orchestra’s tradition of imaginative programs across the city and region. This summer’s festival, Aug. 4-29, will included the artist debuts of renowned cellist Zuill Bailey and Fabiola Méndez, a virtuoso of the cuatro, a Latin American string instrument.
Eckart Preu is music director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra
Eckart Preu, music director of the CCO, will open the mainstage season with the world premiere of “Visions of Humanity and Unity,” featuring Bailey as soloist. The cello concerto is a tribute to America’s 250th birthday this year, and each of its five movements is composed by a different composer: Mark O’Connor, Avner Dorman, Enrico Chapela, Zhou Tian and Chanda Dancy.
Cincinnati-based opera soprano Victoria Okafor joins the CCO for a semi-staged performance of Kurt Weill’s 20th century masterpiece “The Seven Deadly Sins.” And audience favorite Roger Klug returns to The Redmoor for a Chamber Crawl highlighting the legacy of American rock legends such as Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.
The festival will continue the successful mix of four mainstage concerts at the School for Creative and Performing Arts, as well as weeknight “Chamber Crawls” and Sunday matinees dubbed “A Little Afternoon Musik.” Read More »
The Israeli Chamber Project with violinist Antje Weithaas played Chamber Music Cincinnati this week.
Imagine being a touring musician while your country is at war. Clarinetist Tibi Cziger and his wife cellist Michal Korman were in a safe room with their three children in Tel Aviv when their home was hit and damaged by a bomb from Iran. The couple, members of the Israeli Chamber Project, were on the brink of their North American tour. They quickly decided that Korman would stay home with their traumatized children, while Cziger would travel to the U.S.
So began an odyssey just to get here. Cziger, who is founder and artistic director of the Israeli Chamber Project, and flutist Guy Eshed, principal flutist of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, flew from Tel Aviv to Athens to Zurich to Chicago. (The others were coming from New York, Georgia and Germany.) From Chicago, the musicians were unable to get a flight to Cincinnati. The group, based in Israel and New York, had already been forced to make changes with some substitute players for their first two tour performances due to their travel woes. They decided to drive.
The fact that they arrived on time for their Chamber Music Cincinnati performance on March 24 in Memorial Hall was nothing short of a miracle. Their performance was not only a feat of superb artistry and virtuosity, but also of grit, determination and even courage. The audience stood for lengthy ovations at its conclusion.
For the tour, the ensemble joined with the distinguished violinist Antje Weithaas, now a professor at Berlin’s Hochschule fur Musik, and named “Instrumentalist of the Year” at Germany’s 2025 Opus Klassic. Besides Cziger and Eshed, the ensemble was rounded out by violinist Itamar Zorman (winner of the 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition); violist Guy Ben-Ziony (currently visiting professor at the Robert Schumann University of Music and Media in Düsseldorf); and pianist Assaff Weisman, a graduate of The Juilliard School where he now teaches. Cellist James Kim admirably stepped in at the last minute to play for Michal Korman for the whole tour. He is on the faculty of University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music and cellist of the Lysander Piano Trio.
They opened with Bernard Hermann’s “Souvenir de Voyage” for clarinet and string quartet. The first movement’s theme, a haunting tune set against lush strings, was ideal for the rich timbre of Cziger’s clarinet. Clarinet and violin traded themes much of the time, and their phrases were were tinged with nostalgia in the slow movement, Berceuse. The evocative finale was inspired by J.M. W. Turner’s Venetian watercolors, and began in the two violins, almost like a Kreisler miniature. Hermann, of course, is revered for his film scores, and these souvenirs were like small cinematic gems, and a wonderful discovery.Read More »
Conductor James Conlon is back in town to lead a program of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra this weekend at Music Hall.
Violinist Blake Pouliot
However, his soloist has changed. Yesterday the orchestra announced that the planned soloist, violinist Renaud Capuçon, is unable to be here due to an ear infection. He has been advised by a medical professional not to fly at this time. Violinist Blake Pouliot (pool-YACHT) has agreed to step in for Capuçon to play the scheduled Mozart Violin Concerto No. 3.
Pouliot studied violin in Canada with Marie Bérard and Erika Raum, and he completed his training as an associate of The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He graduated from the Colburn School Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Robert Lipsett, the Jascha Heifetz Distinguished Violin Chair.
Pouliot performs on the 1729 Guarneri del Gesù on generous loan from an anonymous donor.
Conlon is Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival, which he served for an unprecedented 37 years. He is in his 20th and final season as Music Director of LA Opera. His career of more than 50 years has taken him to the world’s most significant stages, and he is one of our country’s greatest advocates for classical music. For more, visit jamesconlon.com.
CCM’s Opera Department mounted a double bill, including Poulenc’s “Les Mamelles de Tirésias,” shown above. Photos by Mark Lyons
In Poulenc’s surreal opera “Les Mamelles de Tirésias,” (The Breasts of Tirésias), Thérèse opened her blouse and two balloons popped out. As her “breasts” floated away, Thérèse, who decided to become a feminist, promptly popped them, grew a beard, changed her name to Tirésias and sang a ravishing waltz.
It was giggly, outrageous and in many ways, timeless.
Jose Maria Condemi, the new Associate Director of Opera at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, made his directorial debut over the weekend with an impressive double bill of Kurt Weill’s “Mahagonny Songspiel” and Francis Poulenc’s “Les Mamelles de Tirésias.”
Smartly staged and featuring a cast of fresh rising-stars and imaginative sets by students Luke Dufilho (Mahagonny) and EJ Goodman (Les Mamelles), it was an enchanting evening of theater. From the steamy, dissolute world of Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny to Poulenc’s surreal fantasy of Zanzibar — where a man could produce 40,049 babies in one day — the audience was alternately riveted and howling with laughter.
Condemi, who is an alumnus of CCM and has an extensive portfolio, joined the faculty in August of 2025. He’s familiar to Cincinnati Opera fans, who saw him stage “Ainadamar,” “Don Giovanni,” “La Traviata,” “Tosca” and “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
In the small orchestra pit, these two jazzy and bubbly scores received spirited readings by CCM musicians, conducted by William Langley, currently resident conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, among other titles. He’s a gifted and very busy maestro, and has returned several times to lead productions at his alma mater, CCM, where he earned a Master’s Degree with Mark Gibson.
The cast of Kurt Weill’s “Mahagonny Songspiel”
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Mahagonny Songspiel” of 1927 is a 30-minute precursor to the full-blown opera, “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.” It offers a grim, cynical picture of Germany between the wars. I saw the Friday (Feb. 27) performance in CCM’s intimate Cohen Family Studio Theater (CCM has alternate casts).Read More »
Johannes Skoog, Royal Court Organist of Stockholm/ photo Janelle Gelfand
It took Swedish organist Johannes Skoog 24 hours to get to Cincinnati. Despite a canceled flight — originally out of Helsinki– and almost no sleep or time to rehearse, he performed his program magnificently on the historic 1929 E.M. Skinner Concert Organ in Cincinnati Museum Center on Feb. 25.
Under the circumstances, it was an Olympian feat for him even to play at all. Best of all, Skoog seemed to be enjoying the performance, playing his mostly French repertoire with flair and offering big smiles to the audience. Most of us don’t consider the trials a touring artist must endure, especially in these days of “bomb cyclone” snowstorms and frequent “mechanical” issues. The sold-out audience assembled in the Rotunda of Union Terminal was riveted throughout his two-hour program, thronging him at intermission and awarding a standing ovation at the conclusion.
Skoog is a rising star, who won First Prize and the Bach Prize at the prestigious Canadian International Organ Competition in 2024. Now the Stockholm native is the newly appointed Royal Court Organist and is becoming accustomed to his official duties, mostly at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, he told me, but also at the royals’ charming summer home, Drottningholm.
Skoog’s program included four anthems performed with the combined choirs of Christ Church Cathedral, Stephan Casurella, director, and St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Carlton Monroe, director.Read More »
An image from the live show of this program last March in Music Hall. Photo by Mark Lyons, provided by the CSO/Pops
The Cincinnati Pops announced the release of its newest recording led by Cincinnati Pops Conductor John Morris Russell, Harlem Renaissance, an homage to one of America’s most important artistic movements and the breadth of jazz styles it has nurtured.
The album features piano virtuoso Marcus Roberts in his own arrangement of James P. Johnson’s 1927 piano rhapsody, Yamekraw, based on the music and vibrant culture of Savannah, Georgia’s historically Black neighborhood in the roaring 1920s. In the hands of Marcus Roberts, Yamekraw exists as a living dialogue between Johnson’s original composition and the musical styles that have evolved since.
Harlem Renaissance features the jazz tone poem, Harlem, by Duke Ellington, an evocative soundscape of Manhattan’s legendary neighborhood. The album also includes the first commercial recording of Carlos Simon’s 2024 composition, Hellfighters’ Blues, inspired by World War I bandleader James Reese Europe’s 1919 recording of W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues.
The album was recorded at Cincinnati Music Hall on March 21–23, 2025. Recording Producer is the Grammy Award winning Elaine Martone, Sonarc Music.
“Harlem Renaissance honors extraordinary Black composers and their kindred spirits — painters, poets, authors, sculptors and dancers — who together defined the ethos of 20th century American culture. We present these works not as museum-pieces but part of a continuum of style that continues to evolve a century later,” Russell said in a release.
“The album captures the nuance, power and virtuosity of the Cincinnati Pops, the thrilling and breathtaking improvisations of the Modern Jazz Generation and the sheer brilliance of Marcus Roberts and his trio. It was an absolute joy to perform these concerts live, and a delight to now share it with the world.”
Songs by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes, Moisés Simons and Cab Calloway round out the album.
Seven-time Grammy award-winning recording producer and recent inductee into the Resonator Hall of Fame Elaine Martone continues her longstanding relationship with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops as producer for Harlem Renaissance.
Martone has collaborated with the Orchestra on more than 70 albums (Telarc and Fanfare Cincinnati labels), more than any other orchestra in her oeuvre.
Harlem Renaissance extends the Pops’ prolific recording legacy, which includes more than 100 commercial recordings that have sold millions of copies worldwide. Harlem Renaissance is the eighth Pops album led by Russell.
The album credits include Marcus Roberts piano; Marcus Roberts Trio with Marcus Roberts, piano; Jason Marsalis, drums; Marty Jaffe, upright bass; and the Modern Jazz Generation, led by Marcus Roberts Marty Jaffe, upright bass; Jason Marsalis, drums; Joe Goldberg, tenor saxophone & clarinet (Yamekraw); Tissa Khosla, baritone saxophone; Boyce Griffith, alto saxophone; Tim Blackmon, trumpet; Jianni Lazaga, trumpet; Etienne Charles, trumpet; Rashaan Salaam, trombone; and Mykal Kilgore and Tatiana Mayfield, vocalists.
Listeners can hear select tracks on the album beginning streaming on February 13 with Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady, February 20 with Ellington’s The Mooche and February 27 with W.C. Handy St. Louis Blues. The entire Harlem
Renaissance album will be available on all streaming platforms beginning March 13.
Harlem Renaissance is generously supported by gifts from Kelly Dehan & Rick Staudigel, Kathy Grote, Joan Wilson, Joe & Patricia Baker and an anonymous donor.
It’s always amazing to look back at the wealth of Cincinnati’s arts that we enjoy every year. There were important new arts leaders and new and improved venues. In comings and goings, the new dean of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Peter Jutras, was busy hiring what seems like a record number of new faculty members. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, too, has hired many new musicians that we are all still getting to know. And early this month, the Contemporary Arts Center’s Christina Vassallo announced she will soon be departing from her role as director. She will become executive director of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in Philadelphia.
Assistant principal cellist Norman Johns performed with the CSO for 50 years.
Among those who left us in 2025 was cellist Norman Johns, an inspiring musician, a trailblazer and a role model. He shared his gifts as a teacher, chamber music coach and mentor to legions of students in Cincinnati for most of the 50 years that he performed in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Here is a small tribute to this musical giant.
Sadly, the Cincinnati Symphony also lost its much-admired principal trombonist Cristian Ganicenco. He was 58, and passed away on the eve of Cristian Măcelaru’s first concert as CSO music director. The two shared their homeland of Romania. Here is one of many tributes.
Below are some of my favorite performances, art exhibitions, newsmakers and more!
New leadership at Cincinnati Ballet — For his first season since being named artistic director, Cincinnati Ballet’s Cervilio Miguel Amador curated selections that include four world premieres, the regional premiere of “The Great Gatsby,” the return of “Swan Lake” (coming up in February) and “Director’s Vision: Liberty in Motion,” celebrating the evolution of American choreography in honor of America’s 250th birthday. We can’t wait to see his vision moving forward.
Alyssa Wang. Robert Torres Photography
A woman on the podium — This year, Cincinnati Ballet welcomed Alyssa Wang as its new music director, succeeding Carmon DeLeone, a local legend who retired after more than 50 years. I enjoyed watching her conduct “The Nutcracker” last week, and look forward to seeing more of her work.
If your Fall calendar looks like mine, it’s filling up quickly. Here’s a fun idea: The a cappella group, the Yale Whiffenpoofs, will be performing at Knox Presbyterian Church on October 20th, 7:30-9 p.m.
