Tag: Cincinnati May Festival

Cincinnati May Festival, Vocal Arts Ensemble to share vision, board

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The Vocal Arts Ensemble will join with the May Festival in a unified vision and board of directors. Photo by Phil Armstrong

Two of Cincinnati’s most distinguished choral organizations are expanding a longstanding partnership to establish a shared governance structure with a single unified board of directors.

The Cincinnati May Festival, which was founded in 1873, and Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble (VAE), a professional choral group founded in 1979, announced on May 5 that they will be partnering in a new model that will deepen their ties. Although they will share a single board of directors, each organization will preserve its own, independent nonprofit status.

The Cincinnati May Festival centers around its community-based May Festival Chorus, and has presented a vast catalog of important choral works, including world and American premieres, over the past 150 years. VAE has performed with the May Festival since its founding, a tradition that continues today. Its leadership has included some of the nation’s top choral conductors. Joe Miller serves as its fifth music director.

Former director of choruses Robert Porco leading the Hallelujah Chorus. Photo by JP Leong.

“This is an intentional, measured step toward greater alignment building on a legacy of artistic and operational collaboration,” Julianne Akins Smith, Executive Director of the May Festival and VAE, said in a statement. “By connecting more closely with the May Festival’s vision and infrastructure, we are expanding what’s possible for professional choral singing in Cincinnati — allowing the vision of VAE to come to life.”

The shared model will enable both organizations to leverage their strengths more effectively. VAE, which regularly performs in intimate and varied settings, will play a vital role in advancing the May Festival’s year-round presence in the community. This month, concertgoers will see its members in pop-up performances during the festival.

In addition, audiences can hear VAE, 7:30 p.m. May 19, performing in the concert “May Festival Presents | Vocal Arts Ensemble: Rossini’s Pettie Messe Solennelle” as part of the 2026 May Festival curated by Festival Director Julia Bullock and Director of Choruses Matthew Swanson. (For tickets visit mayfestival.com.)

It is the second ensemble to come under the May Festival umbrella. In 2024, the May Festival announced a strategic alliance with Cincinnati Boychoir, while honoring the unique roles of each partner organization.

Together these efforts reinforce a shared goal: to make world-class choral music more visible and more accessible, transforming Cincinnati into a destination for aspiring singers while encouraging life-long relationships with singing at every age, the announcement said.

“On behalf of the May Festival Board of Directors, we look forward to this strengthened partnership,” said Dr. Michael Curran, Board Chair of the May Festival. “It honors VAE’s legacy, creates innovative new pathways for artists to connect with audiences, and ensures that choral music will continue to thrive in Cincinnati.”

 

 

 

Canadian violinist steps in with James Conlon and the Cincinnati Symphony this weekend

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James Conlon. Photo provided

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.

Watch for my concert review, FREE to read on the Cincinnati Business Courier arts page.

Concerts are at 7:30 p.m. Friday March 20 and Saturday March 21 in Music Hall. Tickets and information: 513-381-3300, cincinnatisymphony.org

Cristian Măcelaru to debut in Cincinnati May Festival

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Opening night of a new era // photo by JP Leong

I hope you were able to attend the opening concerts of the CSO last weekend, which welcomed Cristian Măcelaru as the orchestra’s 14th music director. Here’s my review of his program, with thanks to the Cincinnati Business Courier. And before opening night, he offered a few of his thoughts as he embarks on his new chapter with the CSO.

Christian Reif and soprano Julia Bullock in CSO Proof concert, 2023/ photos provided by CSO

Today, the May Festival announced that Măcelaru will also conduct the opening weekend of the Cincinnati May Festival. In its third year of a new artistic model, the festival welcomes Julia Bullock as Festival Director. I think you’ll find her programs fascinating. Director of Choruses Matthew Swanson is co-curator and will also be conducting one evening. Here are the details.

Don’t forget, you can read reviews, articles and arts news free on the Business Courier’s Arts Front. (You may need to provide your info for a FREE subscription.)

My top performances in Cincinnati in 2024

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Cristian Macelaru conducting Shostakovich/Photo provided by CSO

Besides great performances in Cincinnati, 2024 was a year of anniversaries, historic firsts, farewells and new beginnings. In some instances, there was news-making connected with these performances. In chronological order:

1) Last February, when he led a thrilling and revelatory performance of Shostakovich’s monumental Symphony No. 11 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, we didn’t yet know that Cristian Macelaru would be announced as the 14th CSO music director. The conductor riveted listeners in Music Hall when he led Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, “The Year 1905.” He moved little as he led Shostakovich’s vast symphonic canvas, but the sheer visceral impact of this performance lingered long afterward. The orchestra’s musicians were impressed. For Macelaru, the feeling was mutual, he said in April, when his appointment was announced. Macelaru returns for his only performances with the CSO this season in February. And in other CSO leadership news, the CSO announced that President and CEO Jonathan Martin will retire Feb. 16.  Robert McGrath, the CSO’s chief operating officer, will then step in as acting president and CEO.Read More »

Paul Stanbery, conductor and composer, contributed to the arts and culture of SW Ohio

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A few years ago, Paul John Stanbery, conductor of the Butler Philharmonic, endured chemotherapy, radiation and finally, proton therapy to tackle what began as a sore in his mouth that wouldn’t heal. The cancer was eradicated. An elated Stanbery was going to Carnegie Hall.

“Conducting your own music in Carnegie Hall after having beaten cancer – it just doesn’t get any better than that,” Stanbery told the Cincinnati Business Courier in 2018.

Unfortunately, cancer doesn’t always cooperate, and it returned. Mr. Stanbery died at his home on Feb. 6. He was 66.

He did get to Carnegie Hall to conduct his own “Music for Mass” in June, 2018. The performing forces included the Butler Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus in the choir of 200 singers from around the country and the New England Symphonic Ensemble. It was, for him, a personal and artistic triumph.

Christopher Scott Wyatt, who performed as tenor soloist in the Mass and is now director of the Butler Philharmonic Chorus, recalled, “We got a standing ovation and people were yelling. It was a wonderful climax and the audience loved it.”

As a result, the presenters, MidAmerica Productions, commissioned Mr. Stanbery to compose a new work to be premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2022, Wyatt said. “They wanted a patriotic work, in the powerful sense of people coming to America trying to fulfill the American dream.”Read More »

Cincinnati arts in top 20 of U.S. communities

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CCO musicians performing at Pyramid Hill sculpture park, Hamilton
May Festival Chorus

A new report from the National Center for Arts Research names Cincinnati in the top 20 of large communities for arts vibrancy. The report takes “a data-driven approach to assessing characteristics that make up a community’s vibrancy rather than base the ranking on our own opinion about locations or on a popular vote.” Four measures were analyzed: supply, demand, and public support for arts and culture on a per capita basis.

It’s interesting that such a report would come out during a pandemic, when most arts organizations closed their doors in March, and have been struggling to survive ever since. The reason, the report says, it offers the report “as a celebration and reminder of the arts’ enduring importance, resiliency, and vibrancy.

“We should not forget the essential role that the arts play in fueling community development, emotional health, cultural literacy, social cohesion and integration, and creative expression. Ultimately, the communal nature of arts participation will be a strength to communities hungry to come together again and affirm existential meaning after prolonged isolation, trauma, and polarization.”

Indeed.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 »

Cancellations, digital programs, relief funds: How Cincinnati’s arts organizations are coping with COVID-19

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A previous production of The Magic Flute/ provided by Cincinnati Opera

Cincinnati Opera’s news yesterday that it must cancel its 2020 Summer Festival — the company’s 100th anniversary — was just the latest in an ongoing wave of arts cancellations due to COVID-19. Because of extended stay-at-home orders and closures, it was literally impossible to begin set-building and rehearsing, let alone fly in the international stars who were coming from Italy and the Czech Republic.

I doubt that entire seasons have ever been canceled for such a plague, although world wars have interrupted some. Of the many arts organizations that I have interviewed this month, a few leaders have predicted to me, that, until people feel comfortable being with other people in a theater, museum or a concert hall (and you can add to that, restaurants and stadiums), they will not return. And that won’t happen until there is a vaccine.

As Ensemble Theatre’s D. Lynn Meyers tells me in Friday’s Business Courier, we all thought things would be closed for a weekend, and then it would be back to normal. Now we talk about the “new normal.”

The Blue Wisp Big Band at Caffe Vivace last month.

I began observing how the coronavirus was impacting our city’s freelance musicians about a month ago, when restaurants closed, and musicians began streaming their music live from empty bars, for tips. That article, “Virtual Reality,” on April 3, included some jazz musicians, as well. Trumpeter Matt Anklan, an adjunct at Miami University, said that 60 percent of his income is from freelance jobs — now completely gone.

A spot check of Cincinnati’s major arts organizations, “Critical Stage” on April 10, told stories of how groups are struggling to hang onto their staffs even as they tally their losses. Losses will be big. ArtsWave — which was just midway through its annual, $12.4 million campaign when the virus hit — predicts that losses in Cincinnati’s arts community could top $30 million if there is no arts activity all summer.

Van Gogh’s Undergrowth with Two Figures at Cincinnati Art Museum

Still, there was a note of optimism, despite the expected red ink. Cincinnati Art Museum’s Cameron Kitchin told me, “The arts are about connecting and inspiring. What greater time of need do we have for inspiration and connection than right now, in this time of social distancing and flickering hope? If we look at what the arts to able to provide for humanity, this is a moment where we are called to action.”

Friday’s article (April 17) is about how small and mid-sized arts groups in our region are coping. There will be more stories to come, including some with good news of how people are stepping up in a time of crisis.

As I wrote in a column at the very beginning of the trickle of online arts offerings — now a tsunami — the arts offer escape, joy and comfort. Don’t forget, these organizations can’t wait to welcome you back, live and in person, when we all reach the other side.

CSO, Pops, May Festival cancel all concerts for the rest of the season

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The May Festival has canceled its entire season due to Covid-19.

It’s not surprising, but the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops Orchestra announced this morning that they are canceling all concerts and events through the remainder of the season due to the coronavirus.

In addition, the entire Cincinnati May Festival season is canceled, as well as performances by the professional chorus, the Vocal Arts Ensemble.

This year is the orchestra’s 125th anniversary season.

Of course, financially the effects of Covid-19 will be disastrous for all of Cincinnati’s major arts organizations. We await to learn whether Cincinnati Opera will be able to mount its much-anticipated 100th anniversary season, to open in June.

Here’s the CSO’s announcement with a listing of cancellations:

In compliance with Governor Mike DeWine’s standing mass-gathering prohibitions and the recent directive to stay at home, and given ongoing travel bans, international quarantines and the continued disruption of normal business activity caused by the Coronavirus, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra announced today the cancellation of all CSO, Cincinnati Pops and May Festival concerts and events through May 31, 2020.

The CSO had previously cancelled concerts and events through April 5. President Jonathan Martin said that in light of the deepening national health crisis, the organization had no choice.Read More »

CSO, Pops cancel shows through April 5 after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine bans gatherings of more than 100

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The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Pops have canceled all concerts through “at least April 5 due to coronavirus concerns. The orchestra released this statement on its website:

“Governor DeWine’s decision prioritizes public health by restricting all large gatherings, and we are committed to the health and well-being of our audience members, musicians, volunteers and staff.

“This cancellation will have a significant financial impact for the Orchestra. We are especially appreciative of our generous supporters who will consider their donating tickets for these performances. Throughout our 125-year history, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has navigated challenges and continues to thrive because of the strength of our community. Now, as always, we are grateful for our community’s extraordinary support.”

Click here for information about ticket exchanges or how to donate.

Here are others that we know about:

♦Memorial Hall has closed due to concerns around the spread of COVID-19.

♦Chamber Music Cincinnati has canceled the Pavel Haas Quartet concert scheduled for tonight. Ticket fees will be refunded automatically. Info: 513-977-8838.

♦Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (ETC) is temporarily suspending all performances, events, and community programs, effective immediately.

The theatre is working to identify dates to reschedule its shows and ticket holders for upcoming performances will be contacted. Additionally, ETC will be relaxing its exchange policies and waive all fees to find suitable solutions for its patrons.

♦YPCC has canceled Saturday’s Radio Revelry Gala Concert at Cincinnati Museum Center. It will be rescheduled for May 19. Details here.

♦The Metropolitan Opera has canceled its Live in HD performances in movie theaters around the country.

♦At the Aronoff Center: Friday’s performance of Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood: The Scared Scriptless Tour has been rescheduled for Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at 7:30 PM at the Aronoff Center’s Procter & Gamble Hall.

♦Tomorrow evening’s performance of Sex n’ the City: A (Super Unauthorized) Musical Parody has been rescheduled for Saturday, June 13, 2020 at 7:30 PM at the Aronoff Center’s Jarson-Kaplan Theater.  The show was originally scheduled for Friday, March 13, 2020.

♦Due to Johnny Mathis’ specific travel and health advisements, this Saturday’s concert with Johnny Mathis has been rescheduled for Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 8:00 PM at the Aronoff Center’s Procter & Gamble Hall.  The concert was originally scheduled for Saturday, March 14, 2020.

Current Aronoff Center ticketholders will be sent new tickets with the rescheduled date and time the week of April 6, 2020.  Refund info prior to Friday, April 3, 2020 at (513) 621-2787 or ticketing@cincinnatiarts.org.

♦Cincinnati Art Museum: The Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance, 1850–1970 opening reception and lecture have been cancelled. However, self-tours will be permitted in the new exhibition until 7 p.m., and the museum will remain open until 8 p.m.

Across the country, the arts are taking a hit. At 5 p.m. today, Broadway theaters will go dark by order of Governor Andrew Cuomo. Here’s Playbill.

See the list in the previous post for more cancellations.