Winning Freedom Through Song: Estonia's "Singing Revolution"

Posted: Jun 19, 2008 - 12:34:37 AM in: news_2008

Song is powerful. It can even help topple an empire. "The Singing Revolution," a 2007 film about Estonia's bloodless struggle for re-independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has been made into a compelling documentary by James and Maureen Castle Tusty. The 2007, 97-minute film comes to the Cincinnati Art Museum June 24-26.
- [Read more]

June in Cincinnati: Music Bustin' Out All Over

Posted: Jun 18, 2008 - 1:43:58 PM in: news_2008

Indra Thomas

Popping up with the daisies in Cincinnati this June is a whole lot of music. The Cincinnati Symphony and Pops open their 2008 Riverbend season with (respectively) violinist Mikhail Simonyan and the Von Trapp Children. Music08 continues at the University of College-Conservatory of Music with guest composers Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Jack Body and more. The Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra led by Mischa Santora celebrates the season itself with soprano Indra Thomas ("Summertime") at CCM and Anderson Center.
- [Read more]

Chamber Orchestra Features Classics, Folk Music and Spanish Heroes in 08-09

Posted: Jun 17, 2008 - 1:21:40 AM in: news_2008

From Appalachia to Iberia, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra led by Mischa Santora offers three mini-festivals in 2008-09. Highlights include Beethoven with Awadagin Pratt, "Three Kentucky Psalms" by Alice Parker, Manuel de Falla's "Master Peter's Puppet Show" with the Madcap Puppet Theater and a staged performance of Mozart's "Don Giovanni."
- [Read more]

Symbiosis at CCM: Music08, Accent08_Crescendo08

Posted: Jun 12, 2008 - 9:18:32 PM in: news_2008

Music08, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's annual new music festival, has parallel programs for younger students. Accent08 is for college and advanced high school musicians. Crescendo08 is for high school and middle schoolers. All happen at the same time, June 15-21, in a week-long symbiosis at CCM.
- [Read more]

Music08 Showcases Reich, Rzewski and Body

Posted: Jun 11, 2008 - 12:18:48 AM in: news_2008

eighth blackbird

Music08, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's annual new music festival June 15-22 at CCM, features guest composers Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski and Jack Body. Highlight of the eight-day event is the Cincinnati premiere of Reich's Double Sextet performed by eighth blackbird. Thought it may be the last of CCM's MusicX new music festivals, at least for a while, it promises to be an upbeat one. To be heard opening night -- 8:30 p.m. June 15 in Robert J. Werner Recital Hall -- will be Rzewski's "The Fall of the Empire," a Music07 commission performed by CCM percussionist Allen Otte, and Piano Trio No. 2, "Lost Traces," by MusicX artistic director Joel Hoffman, head of the CCM composition department. Rzewski and Hoffman will close the show with their joint composition Music08 Music, Part I, for duo piano. Admission is free and open to the public.
- [Read more]

Take Center Stage

Posted: Jun 10, 2008 - 3:30:43 PM in: news_2008

Member of concert:nova at the Coffee Emporium on Central Parkway, October, 2007 (L to R: flutist Randolph Bowman, clarinetist Ixi Chen, violist Heidi Yenney, bassoonist Jennifer Monroe and cellist Ted Nelson)

Cincinnati Opera Center Stage, a social group comprising young operaphiles, helps launch the Opera's 2008 summer festival with a kick-off party from 8 p.m. to midnight June 14 at the Contemporary Arts Center, Sixth and Walnut Streets, downtown. The party will have rain forest theme, inspired by Daniel Catan's "Florencia en el Amazonas," to be given its regional premiere by Cincinnati Opera July 10 and 12 at Music Hall. There will be music, dancing, a tapas buffet and full cash bar. Special guests will be members of concert:nova, Cincinnati's hip, new chamber ensemble devoted to expanding the concert experience.
- [Read more]

Butterfly Season at Cincinnati Opera

Posted: Jun 9, 2008 - 12:03:26 PM in: news_2008

Japanese swallowtail butterfly (byasa alcinous)

Cincinnati Opera's 2008 summer festival opens June 11-15 at Music Hall with Puccini's "Madame Butterfly," one of two operas on the season roster that borrow the delicate papillon as central imagery. The other, Daniel Catan's "Florencia en el Amazonas," to be heard July 10 and 12, is about an opera diva in search of her first love and inspiration, a butterfly hunter in the Amazon rain forest. Rounding out the season are Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor," June 26 and 28, and Verdi's "La Traviata," July 23 and 27, whose heroines both have symbolic analogues in the world of Lepidoptera.
- [Read more]

Future of MusicX Detective Work for Joel Hoffman

Posted: Jun 8, 2008 - 1:09:50 PM in: news_2008

Joel Hoffman

For Joel Hoffman, head of the composition department at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, saving CCM's annual MusicX new music festival is a matter of patience and sleuthing. The latest edition, Music08, a week-long encounter between master composers and invited members of the younger generation, happens June 15-22 at CCM with guest composers Steve Reich, Jack Body and Frederic Rzewski. Free public performances include the Cincinnati premiere of Reich's Double Sextet June 22 by eighth blackbird. MusicX, along with virtually all of CCM's summer programs, fell to the budget ax last fall, effective in 2009.
- [Read more]

Shu-Ying Li: A Butterfly Who Has Everything

Posted: Jun 5, 2008 - 10:52:00 AM in: news_2008

Shu-Ying Li as Madama Butterfly

With the look of an Asian. the personality of an Italian and a keen dramatic sense, Chinese soprano Shu-Ying Li is a rare combination to sing Puccini's "Madama Butterfly." Li will sing the tragic heroine for Cincinnati Opera June 11-15 at Music Hall. The production, by Mark Lamos for New York City Opera, with its wide open, minimalist look, seems ideally suited for her with its focus on the music and drama.
- [Read more]

From Inner Peace to Iguanas

Posted: May 30, 2008 - 12:02:35 PM in: news_2008

Meditate with concert:nova, go madcap with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and meet denizens of the Zoo with Cincinnati Opera as Cincinnati arts organizations reach out this week in some surprising ways.
- [Read more]

Femme Fatale at CCM

Posted: May 30, 2008 - 1:55:25 AM in: news_2008

Wesley Lawrence as Giovanni and Paola Gonzalez as Beatriz in Daniel Catan's "Rappaccini's Daughter" at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

"Rappaccini's Daughter," the ultimate femme fatale, comes to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music May 3-June 1. The Spanish language opera by Mexican composer Daniel Catan is both a Cincinnati premiere and first fruit of the new Corbett Foundation Opera Fusion Program, an artistic and academic collaboration between CCM and Cincinnati Opera.
- [Read more]

Hearing with the Eyes as Well as the Ears

Posted: May 15, 2008 - 9:45:21 PM in: news_2008

Tenor John Christopher Adams as Rodolfo and soprano Danielle Walker as Mimi in the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's "La Boheme"

Bip informs "Boheme." Music and canvases at Twist. Guest director Chuck Hudson, a disciple of French mime Marcel Marceau, brings his expertise in "corporeal" theater to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's "La Boheme," final main stage production of the 2007-08 season. And the dynamic chamber ensemble concert:nova welcomes artist Anya Gerasimchuk at Jean-Robert de Cavel's new lounge (Twist) on Fourth Street.
- [Read more]

Cincinnati's May Queen Holds Court 87th Time

Posted: May 14, 2008 - 8:19:02 PM in: news_2008

James Conlon

The Cincinnati May Festival is the aristocrat of Cincinnati's arts organizations. Begun in 1873 and housed in Music Hall, built for it in 1877, it is the oldest continuing choral festival in the Western Hemisphere. The 2008 edition opens May 16 at Music Hall with a concert performance of Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" with music director James Conlon leading the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, May Festival Chorus and a cast headed by soprano Angela Brown as Leonora and tenor Salvatore Lecitra as Don Alvaro.
- [Read more]

A is for Accent (W is for Wow)

Posted: May 7, 2008 - 3:56:53 PM in: news_2008

Accent05 participants (left to right) Joel Campbell, Benjamin Hoffman and Peter Chen outside Mary Emery Hall at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (photos by Joy Campbell

One of the big bright spots in the summer program at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music is AccentX, a chamber music festival (and more) for college age and advanced high school students. I found myself hardly believing my ears when I heard a CD of excerpts from Accent07 performances sent to me by visionary founder Dorotea Vismara Hoffman. Meanwhile CCM's summer programs are endangered, funding having been cut off effective in 2009 for all that lack independent support. They include AccentX, MusicX, Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca (Italy), Grandin Festival, etc. It's a UC-wide problem, with budget cuts being made in some of the university's most successful areas.
- [Read more]

Disney with the Pops, Jazz at City Hall, Rumble at NKU

Posted: May 6, 2008 - 3:35:49 PM in: news_2008

Erich Kunzel

The XXIX Olympiad summons Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops to Beijing in August for opening weekend of the Summer Olympic Games. Meanwhile, hear them in music from Disney films at Music Hall. Or jazz violinist Zach Brock in Cincinnati City Council chambers or Bernstein's "West Side Story," inventively staged by the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra and the Department of Theatre and Dance at Northern Kentucky University.
- [Read more]