Tag: Woodward Theater

Vocal pyrotechnics by Roomful of Teeth at May Festival

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Roomful of Teeth played the Woodward Theater for the May Festival. Photo provided/Lee Snow

It’s hard to categorize Roomful of Teeth, a vocal octet that calls itself a “vocal project.” On Wednesday, the singers — Abigail Lennox and Martha Cluver, sopranos; Alexandra Colaizzi and Virginia Kelsey, altos; Eric Dudley, tenor (former assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra); Avery Griffin, baritone; Thann Scoggin, bass-baritone, and Cameron Beauchamp, bass — amazed a sold-out house with their vocal pyrotechnics at the Woodward Theater in Over-the-Rhine.

There were about 150 music lovers, with a space for standing room, for this sold-out “extra” concert, a first at the 146-year-old Cincinnati May Festival.

It’s safe to say that their style of singing is unusual, if not revolutionary. Their musical palette — some of which was showcased in their first number, Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices — included whispering, throat singing, bending of tones, yodeling and possibly some Bulgarian belting, one of their specialties. It was performed with amplification, but nothing, I’m told, was electronically manipulated — which made the feats they achieved even more stunning.Read More »

Constella impressions: French inspirations

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It’s hard to believe that the Constella Festival is winding up its season. I was able to attend French inspirations last week at the newly opened Woodward Theater on Main Street. Here are some thoughts.

The program: Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski was the soloist in a piano recital that included Three Intermezzi, Op. 117, by Brahms, Ravel’s Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, Soirées de Vienne, Nos. 5 and 6 by Liszt, based on Schubert, and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

The scene: A beautiful Steinway sat center stage in the hall. Upstairs was a very small art exhibit; downstairs, a few people mingled at the bar. It’s too bad that once the concert started, the beer refrigerator couldn’t be turned off, because the noise interfered with the pianist’s sensitive playing. At least six cameras were trained on the pianist, as this was all being filmed for a future documentary.

Seen in the crowd: Jazz pianist Steve Schmidt, Constella founder Tatiana Berman (who picked up her violin and joined Trpceski in two lovely miniatures — Debussy’s Clair de Lune and the Girl with the Flaxen Hair) and David Donnelly,, director of the new film, “Maestro,” which had its local premiere on Friday.

Musical highlight: For me, it was Ravel. Trpceski, who appeared with the CSO two years ago, balanced the work’s brilliant flashes with intimate moods, and was a master of color, nuance and sonority. The seventh waltz reminded me of “La Valse,” Ravel’s orchestral piece that has a desperate, end-of-an-era mood.

His brilliant and jazzy encore, composed for him by a Macedonian composer, was “Struga,” named for a city in Macedonia.