Cincinnati May Festival in Music Hall

The Cincinnati May Festival is the aristocrat of Cincinnati arts events, having helped define its culture since the 19th century.  The May Festival, oldest continuing choral festival in the Western Hemisphere, is May 14-22 at Music Hall, the Cincinnati landmark built for it in 1878.  Music director James Conlon will conduct three of the four Music Hall concerts.  Robert Porco, who is beginning his 21st season as director of choruses for the May Festival, conducts a program May 21 that will include the world premiere of "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking" by Ian Krouse, commissioned for Porco by members and alumnae(i) of the May Festival Chorus.  Highlights of this year's festival include Bach's "St. Matthew Passion," Mozart's Mass in C Minor, Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" and an all-Russian program including the Prologue and Coronation Scene from Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" and Rachmaninoff's one-act opera "Aleko."  The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performs for all May Festival concerts.
  - [Read more]

Lennie and George in "Of Mice and Men" at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music May, 2010

With a nearly all-male cast, Carlisle Floyd's opera "Of Mice and Men," based on the John Steinbeck novel, is performed less often than those more evenly divided between male and female voices.  This is particularly so in university productions where there is a need to cast as many singers as possible.  The opera department of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, which had to meet the additional demand of casting the difficult role of Lennie, a tenor with a giant frame, presents "Of Mice and Men" May 13-16 in Corbett Auditorium.  
  - [Read more]

Estonians are among the most IT-savvy in the world, so it was entirely fitting that Cincinnati Symphony music director Paavo Järvi addressed the CSO's annual subscriber recognition luncheon April 21 via Skype.  Skype was developed in Estonia, Järvi's native country.  Järvi, like thousands of other travelers, has been unable to leave Europe because of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull.
  - [Read more]

Paavo Järvi and Philip Traugott

Recording producer Philip Traugott hesitated a long time before agreeing to work with his long-time friend Paavo Järvi.  When BMG Classics assigned its senior producer to record for Paavo's father Neeme Järvi and the London Symphony Orchestra, the wheels were set in motion for what has become a highly successful collaboration by the two friends.  Among their projects is a cycle of the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen that has earned praise worldwide.
  - [Read more]

Philip Traugott

Recording producer Philip Traugott possesses a set of skills that make him uniquely qualified for what he does. As he was following his muse as a violinist and conductor, she was preparing him for a role he hardly knew existed, much less what it consisted of.  By upbringing, education, temperament and being in the right place at the right time, Traugott's niche, he found, was in the recording studio.
  - [Read more]

Amy Warner as Alma Mahler (Ted Nelson, cello, Owen Lee, bass, and Yael Nathalie Senamaud on left)

Concert:nova, Cincinnati's ground-breaking chamber ensemble, presents the second of its series of program featuring actors as famous composers Feb. 24 in the Gap retail store in Tower Mall in downtown Cincinnati.  The empty space filled a gap for c:n when their performance home, the garden level of the Metaphor Building on Reading Road in Cincinnati, became unavailable because of fire regulations.  Performing Alma Mahler in "The Heart of Mahler" will be actress Amy Warner.  C:n musicians will perform three movements from Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" as arranged for chamber ensemble by Schoenberg (completed by Rainer Riehn in 1994) and the Fourth Symphony in the chamber version by Erwin Stein.  Vocal soloists are tenor Jason Slayden and soprano Audrey Luna.
  - [Read more]

The Cincinnti Symphony Orchestra led by music director Paavo Järvi, performs

Gerhard Samuel

Hans Rott's 1880 Symphony in E Major Feb. 19 and 20 at Music Hall.  It will be the CSO premiere.  The actual world premiere of Rott's Symphony took place in Cincinnati on March 4, 1989 at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  Legendary CCM maestro Gerhard Samuel conducted the CCM Philharmonia Orchestra on that occasion and took them to the International Mahler Festival in Paris for the work's European premiere on March 10.  He and the Philharmonia made the world premiere recording on March 13 and 14 at St. Barnabas Church in London (for Hyperion).
   This article, "Farewell to a Maestro" was published in The Cincinnati Post on May 30, 1997 on the occasion of Samuel's retirement from CCM.
  - [Read more]

Tom Consolo at his desk at the Cincinnati Post, where he worked as copy editor, page designer and assistant business editor from 2000-2007.

Tom Consolo, associate conductor, publications director and principal second violinist of the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, was a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1989, when the orchestra, led by Gerhard Samuel, performed the world premiere of Austrian composer Hans Rott's 1880 Symphony in E Major on March 4, 1989 in Corbett Auditorium at CCM.  After the premiere, Samuel and the Philharmonia performed Rott's ground-breaking work at the International Mahler Festival in Paris and made the world premiere recording for Hyperion Records in London.  Tom's account of the experience, "Playing Their Hearts Out: Philharmonia Triumphs in Paris and London," appeared in the May, 1989 issue of "Horizons," published by the U.C. Alumni Association.
  - [Read more]

Music Hall, 1878, organ in the background

Cincinnati's Music Hall was in the news recently when the "Mighty Wurlitzer" theater organ from Cincinnati's once-upon-a-time Albee movie palace, now re-installed in the Music Hall ballroom, made its formal debut at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's New Year's Eve ball.
Unknown or long forgotten to most of the revelers was another mighty organ, the original Music Hall pipe organ, which stood sovereign in Springer Auditorium for nearly a century until ignominiously dismantled and discarded in 1974.
(first published in "Music Hall Marks," newsletter of the Society for the Preservation of Music Hall, Winter, 2010)
  - [Read more]

Eric Bates

Eric Bates grew up mastering the violin, from his hometown Ringgold, Louisiana and nearby Shreveport to Cincinnati, where he is now an assistant concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.  He first ventured into rock with his CSO colleagues Ted Nelson and Owen Lee in a band called TOE, then moved into the singer/songwriter spot.  He has released two albums so far.  The latest, "Eric R. Bates," was released in October and previewed at a CD release show at York Street Cafe in Newport, Kentucky in October, 2009.  Bates will encore that event February 5 at York Street Cafe with drummer Josh Owings, guitarist Rick Fields, bassist Greg Hansen and keyboardist Julie Spangler.
  - [Read more]

Paavo Järvi

Paavo Järvi's 10th anniversary as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will also be his last.  The Estonian-born conductor announced January 7 that he will step down at the end of the 2010-2011 season.  As of September 2010, when he becomes music director of the Orchestre de Paris,  he will head four orchestras, Paris, the CSO, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.  These multiple commitments show in the configuration of the new CSO season, which includes eight concerts in Cincinnati plus a farewell. all-Dvorak gala featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
  - [Read more]

Feeling the grip of the recession, 2009 was a challenging year for Cincinnati's musical organizations.  It was a year for trimming, cutting and dealing with the strained economy.  Cincinnati Opera canceled its projected 2010 "Die Meistersinger" set in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine and replaced it with a traditional production.  The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra implemented layoffs and salary cuts and ceased its recording activities.  Plans to reconfigure over-sized Music Hall and/or build a smaller hall adjacent to it went nowhere.  Casting a pall over the entire year, Cincinnati Pops conductor Erich Kunzel succumbed to cancer September 1 after a heart-breaking, four-month battle.
   At years end, long-time Cincinnati arts patroness Louise Nippert  redeemed the financial situation, largely to benefit the CSO, with a gift of $85 million, shedding a ray of light into the New Year.     - [Read more]

'Tis the season for lists and here is MusicinCincinnati.com's.  (Behold Janus doing a little bit of typing over the ruins of another year.)  To make it a little different, this one is organized by categories, i.e. new music, early music, more traditional repertoire and multi-media events.  From the cornetto to brass players blowing air through their mouthpieces (Erkki-Sven Tüür's 2009 "Pietas") here's what stood out looking back on music in Cincinnati 2009.
  - [Read more]

Bruce Dickey

The cornetto is not a cornet, but a "lost" member of the brass family.  The once glorious instrument suffered neglect and abuse for nearly two centuries before being "re-discovered" in the middle of the last century as part of the early music movement.  One of the pioneers of the newly revived cornetto is Bruce Dickey of Bologna, Italy, who will perform with Cincinnati's Catacoustic Consort December 19 at North Presbyterian Church in Northside.  Joining Dickey in a program of Christmas music from early 17th-century Italy are cornettist Kiri Tollaksen of Ann Arbor, Catacoustic artistic director Annalisa Pappano on bass viol and Daniel Swenberg of Highland Park, New Jersey on theorbo. 
  - [Read more]

left to right: Greg Noland, Vince Scacchetti, Smiliana Lozanova. Photo by Tiffany Lusht

Visitors to the Northside Tavern on Hamilton Avenue in Cincinnati's Northside neighborhood can now imbibe Bach and Mozart along with refreshments from the bar.  Classical Revolution, which began in 2006 in San Francisco, has spread to "an extremely vibrant scene for classical music," says Vince Scacchetti, director of the local affiliate in Cincinnati, founded in May, 2009.
  - [Read more]