It'll be like "Auld Lang Syne" when violinist Chee-Yun performs with the Cincinnati Symphony Wednesday evening at Music Hall. She won't play the Robert Burns air heard everywhere on New Year's Eve. You'll hear Saint-Saens' "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso" and Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen" instead. But the theme of remembrance fits. Chee-Yun, a busy international artist whose home base is Cincinnati, made her debut here with the Saint-Saens in a 1991 Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra concert.  She has performed with the CSO three times, twice with CSO music director emeritus Jesús López-Cobos, with whom she has made two recordings for the London Philharmonic.
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It was the big red "A" that did it. Three resolute travelers – Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra violist Judith Martin, retired CSO violist Allen Martin (Judy’s husband) and I – emerged from the subway in Sapporo, Japan just after 11 p.m. Nov. 4. We were looking for a tall white building, the Hotel Arthur Sapporo, first stop on the CSO’s two-week tour of Japan. It had been a 26-hour trek from Cincinnati and we were ready to call it a day.   - [Read more]

Brian Cole, conducting assistant of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and Demetrius Fuller, music director of Arc Chamber Ensemble, attended master classes led by CSO music director Paavo Järvi's father Neeme Järvi in Pärnu, Estonia last summer. It was their first international conducting workshop and they brought back encounters with greatness and a very surprising country.   - [Read more]

Down from the billboards. Feet on the ground. Paavo Järvi hit the pavement running when he returned to Cincinnati this week. The Cincinnati Symphony music director, who completed a tour with Munich’s Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra Sunday, then flew straight to Cincinnati, opens his third season with the CSO this weekend.   - [Read more]

It’s a big weekend for University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music dean Douglas Lowry. Two world premieres isn’t bad, and that’s how many Lowry works will get their first hearing as the fall concert season unfolds. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra led by music director Paavo Järvi will open their 2003-04 season with Lowry’s "Exordium Nobile" ("Grand Opening") Friday and Saturday at Music Hall. The Starling Chamber Orchestra will premiere Lowry’s "The Meadow Ground" Sunday in CCM’s Corbett Auditorium.   - [Read more]

It was a Neeme Järvi moment. Clutching a bouquet of lilies in his left hand, the Detroit Symphony music director led the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the State Academic Choir of Latvia in an encore from Mozart’s Requiem Sunday evening in Pärnu, Estonia.   - [Read more]

Cincinnati's Music Hall inspires many things: mystery, awe, love. Drive past her at night, especially near Halloween, and you can feel the mystery. She was built over a 19th-century potter's field and human remains have been unearthed over the years. Music Hall's hulking facade, with its conical spires and huge rose window, is arresting any time of day. Her history will be celebrated with a 125th anniversary party May 7 at Music Hall.   - [Read more]

When composer Erkki-Sven Tüür was growing up in Estonia, he was like a bird in a cage. He could sing his own songs – as he did with his popular rock group In Spe ("In Hope") – but he could not fly off and enjoy the music of others. Estonia was part of the Soviet Union then. Travel outside the country was restricted, and Western contemporary music was not performed. "I couldn’t even visit my sister in Finland," said Tüür. "It was only after some years of Gorbachev’s perestroika that things started to change." Tüür’s first trip outside the Soviet Union was to Finland in 1988. He quickly made up for lost time.
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Who can resist Santa Claus? Not Paavo Järvi, who got a great big hug from Robert Kasemägi after conducting the Estonian National Symphony in Pärnu, Estonia Feb. 20. Kasemägi, a former French horn player with the Estonian Opera Orchestra and an old friend of the Järvi family, used to dress up as Santa Claus for Neeme Järvi's children Paavo, Maarika and Kristjan.   - [Read more]