Choral Olympics Comes to Cincinnati

Posted: Jun 30, 2012 - 11:30:07 PM in: news_2012

2012 World Choir Games poster by C.F. Payne

The 2012 World Choir Games will take place July 4-14 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the first time the event has been held in the United States. It is only fitting. Cincinnati has long been a song-filled city, from the English and German singing societies that sprang up with the waves of immigration in the early to mid-nineteenth century, to the founding of the Cincinnati May Festival in 1873, still the oldest continuing choral festival in America. Presented by INTERKULTUR, a non-profit organization in Germany dedicated to furthering international understanding through musical competitions, the WCG, called the "Olympics" of choral music, will bring 362 choirs to Cincinnati from 64 countries and 22 states in the U.S.
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"Porgy and Bess" (the Opera) Comes to Cincinnati

Posted: Jun 27, 2012 - 10:20:48 PM in: news_2012

Scene from Houston Grand Opera production of "Porgy and Bess"

"Porgy and Bess" is an opera, nothing less. That's not why it hasn't come to Cincinnati Opera before now. Since it was written in 1935, it has been cut, altered and re-packaged as music theater. It has finally been re-claimed for the grand opera Gershwin intended and is taking its place as perhaps America's greatest opera. Soprano Measha Brueggergosman and baritone Jonathan Lemalu sing the title roles in its Cincinnati Opera premiere, opening July 28 at Music Hall.
(first published in Express Cincinnati, June, 2012)
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Cole Named Dean of Berklee in Valencia

Posted: Jun 27, 2012 - 8:50:07 PM in: news_2012

Brian Cole

One of Cincinnati's "own," University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music graduate Brian Cole, has been named academic dean of Berklee in Valencia, the Berklee College of Music's first international campus in Valencia, Spain. Cole, who earned his doctorate in conducting at CCM in 2005, goes to Valencia from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he has been associate dean of the Puerto Rico Conservatory for the past seven years.
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Constella Festival Fulfills Promise with Expanded Season

Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 12:37:28 AM in: news_2012

Jean-Yves Thibaudet

There were skeptics when violinist Tatiana Berman founded and organized the first Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts in Cincinnati in the autumn of 2011. It was such an outstanding success that it will encore Sept. 30-Nov. 6, 2012 with an expanded season. Musical offerings will include pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, clarinetist Anthony McGill, the Tokyo String Quartet, Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, pianist/composer Nico Muhly, four world premieres and two Cincinnati premieres. The Festival has attracted 16 Festival partners (there were eight last year) for a bounty of traditional chamber music, vocal and choral performances, jazz, dance, drama, visual art and multi-media events.
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Comedy and Tragedy Open Cincinnati Opera's 2012 Season

Posted: Jun 11, 2012 - 2:46:51 PM in: news_2012

Scene from "Pagliacci," Calgary Opera, November, 2011

Cincinnati Opera opens its 2012 season on both a tragic and comic note, with a double bill of Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" and Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi" June 14 and 16 at Music Hall. One is a tragedy. The other is a comedy. But which will end the show? Will you leave the hall singing Vesti la giubba or O mio babbino caro? The latter, not only to send the audience home in a good mood, but because "Pagliacci" opens with a prologue and "Schicchi" ends with an epilogue, giving director Alain Gauthier the perfect device to tie the two operas together. (first published in Express Cincinnati, June 2012)
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Projekt Wolfgang Brings Chamber Opera to Cincinnati

Posted: Jun 6, 2012 - 12:24:12 AM in: news_2012

Projekt Wolfgang, an initiative by a pair of students at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, aims to fill a gap in the Cincinnati music scene, chamber opera. Antoine-Francois López and Isaac Selya will conduct performances of a Mozart double bill, "Der Schauspieldirektor" and "Bastien und Bastienne" June 9 and 10 at Hoffner Lodge in Cincinnati (appropriately enough a former Masonic lodge). The operas will be fully staged, with a cast of CCM students and graduates and a 26-piece orchestra. - [Read more]

Bagwell a Rising Star

Posted: May 13, 2012 - 4:17:44 PM in: news_2012

James Bagwell

The Cincinnati May Festival has helped nourish many talents over its 139 years -- and vice versa. Of those keeping its standards high, May Festival Youth Chorus director James Bagwell occupies a distinguished place. Bagwell leads his young charges in sacred motets at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Kentucky, an annual May Festival event, May 13.
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The Cincinnati May Festival is 139

Posted: May 9, 2012 - 8:43:00 PM in: news_2012

Herald trumpeters at the Cincinnati May Festival in Music Hall

Cincinnati's May Festival, 139 years old this season, is the oldest continuing choral festival in the Western Hemisphere. Music director James Conlon returns to lead it May 11-19 at historic Music Hall with blockbusters like Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and Brahms' "A German Requiem"; also music by the other two "Bs" (Bach and Beethoven), an all-French program and an evening of Tchaikovsky, including arias and choruses from his operas. The centerpiece, 130-voice May Festival Chorus will be joined by sopranos Nicole Cabell, Hana Park and Heidi Grant Murphy, tenors John Aler and Rodrick Dixon, baritones Stephen Powell and John Relyea and basses William McGraw and Yohan Yi. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is the official orchestra of the May Festival.
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"Maria de Buenos Aires" Coming to Cincinnati

Posted: May 7, 2012 - 10:28:37 PM in: news_2012

photo by Susana Mulé

Astor Piazzolla's "tango opera" "Maria de Buenos Aires" has been making its appearance on stages in recent years, in the United States and elsewhere. It comes to Cincinnati, co-produced by Cincinnati Opera, concert:nova and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, July 25 and 27 in, appropriately enough, the Music Hall Ballroom. Fully staged, it will feature nationally known tango dancers Fernanda Ghi and Guillermo Merlo, with Colombian soprano Catalina Cuervo in the title role.
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A Valentine for Mr. Beach

Posted: May 3, 2012 - 9:04:49 PM in: news_2012

Joseph M. Beach at his home in Lexington, Kentucky (photo by Donna LaBach)

On April 27 I paid a visit to my first music teacher, Joseph Beach in Lexington, Kentucky. Mr. Beach, who taught music for 42 years and was director of the orchestra at Henry Clay High School in Lexington for 29 of them, is 93 now and still lives in Lexington. His wife Virginia passed away several years ago and he lives alone, but the joy of a life well lived and the huge flock of children (counting his many students) whose lives he has touched accompany him everywhere. There is music always playing in his house (from Lexington's classical music radio station). His son Larry drives him wherever he needs to go, including concerts by the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, which he helped create. And yes, Brahms is still his favorite composer. (first published in The Cincinnati Post, February 14, 1996)
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Introducing Louis Langrée, Cincinnati's Lucky 13

Posted: May 3, 2012 - 2:29:20 AM in: news_2012

Louis Langrée

In a wide-ranging interview following his appointment as 13th music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, French conductor Louis Langrée expressed his feelings about the CSO, the city and most eloquently, about music itself. His success, he said, was par volonté et par hazard ("by will and by chance") and he thanked his organist father for setting him on the path to become a musician. Announced at a press conference at Music Hall April 20, Langrée succeeds former CSO music director Paavo Järvi, who stepped down in May, 2011 after ten years with the orchestra. - [Read more]

Rach 2 Marks Polusmiak's Farewell

Posted: Apr 26, 2012 - 11:45:59 PM in: reviews_2012, news_2012

Sergei Polusmiak

In one of the more regrettable actions on the arts and culture front in the tristate region, Northern Kentucky University has decided not to renew pianist Sergei Polusmiak's contract when it expires at the end of the spring semester. NKU music department chairman Kurt Sander calls it a "change of focus," with the school seeking someone in the area of collaborative piano. A student of Regina Horowitz in his native Ukraine, Polusmiak, 61, has been artist-in-residence and Tom and Christine Neyer Family Professor of Piano at NKU since 1998. For his final concert at NKU, Polusmiak performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the NKU Philharmonic Orchestra led by Frank T. Restesan April 24 in Greaves Concert Hall.
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Louis Langrée Appointed Cincinnati Symphony Music Director

Posted: Apr 24, 2012 - 4:06:09 PM in: news_2012

Louis Langrée speaking at a press conference at Music Hall in Cincinnati April 24, 2012

French conductor Louis Langrée has been appointed 13th music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, beginning with the 2013-2014 season. Langrée, who is music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York, succeeds Paavo Järvi, who stepped down in May, 2011. Langrée's CSO contract is for four years. - [Read more]

Give Me a P-I-A-N-O

Posted: Apr 9, 2012 - 9:40:24 PM in: news_2012

Irving Berlin said it in ragtime in "Stop, Look and Listen" in 1915 ("I Love a Piano"). If you, too, love a piano, there's plenty on the keys during the coming month in Cincinnati. There's "Pianopalooza" and the "Bear Cat Piano Festival" at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lang Lang with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the "Rach 2" at Northern Kentucky University with artist-in-residence Sergei Polusmiak. (first published at www.expresscincinnati.com)
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Two Faces of Stravinsky

Posted: Mar 6, 2012 - 7:57:51 PM in: news_2012

Igor Stravinsky

While not exactly a chameleon, Igor Stravinsky did explore a variety of musical styles during his compositional career, from expressionism to serialism, with neo-classicism in between. Two exemplary works will be performed in Cincinnati in March, his incendiary Russian ballet "The Rite of Spring" (1913) and his neo-classic, English language opera "The Rake's Progress" (1951). Cincinnati Ballet and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will team up on the former; the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and Vocal Arts Ensemble on a concert performance of the latter. (first published at www.expresscincinnati.com)
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