Cincinnati conductor Carmon DeLeone has earned a singular distinction -- one of many in his distinguished career.  He has become a bobblehead.  In honor of his 35th anniversary as conductor of the Cincinnati Ballet Orchestra, the Ballet has created a limited editor Carmon DeLeone bobblehead doll.  The company will also devote its 2003-04 season finale to him with a showcase of his compositions commissioned for Cincinnati Ballet, including his 1998 score for "The Princess and the Pea." (first published in The Cincinnati Post April 30, 2004)
  - [Read more]

Paavo Järvi

Time is Paavo Järvi’s enemy. The clock is ticking as the Cincinnati Symphony music director sits at an outdoor café in Pärnu, Estonia, having just left a press conference where details of an upcoming music festival were announced.  It is mid-July and Järvi has come to Pärnu to coach students at his father Neeme Järvi’s annual master classes in conducting (feature article, Ohio magazine, Nov. 2004).
  - [Read more]

A busy season awaits Paavo Järvi when he returns to Music Hall in Cincinnati this week to begin his fourth season as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.  He and the CSO will make their first tour of Europe, perform their second concert in New York's Carnegie Hall, record two CDs for Telarc and present 14 concerts at Music Hall.  If you think that sounds busy, ask him how he spent his summer.


  - [Read more]

Opera is largely a summer species in Cincinnati, with Cincinnati Opera's summer festival occurring in June and July.  Ever seeking to increase musical opportunities in the tristate, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra music director James R. Cassidy hit upon concert opera.  Not only that, but he has expanded the KSO's reach to Central Kentucky by collaborating with the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre in Lexington. The first performance will take place this Friday at the KSO's performance home, Greaves Concert Hall at Northern Kentucky University, the second on Sunday at the Singletary Center in Lexington. "It will be our first bus and truck show," said Cassidy, since it marks the orchestra's first venture beyond Greater Cincinnati.
  - [Read more]

For conductor James Conlon, the Cincinnati May Festival is an affair of the heart.  Now celebrating his 25th anniversary season as May Festival music director, Conlon considers it a part of his personal as well as his professional life.
  - [Read more]

An allegory about Adolph Hitler and the real life story of the Papin sisters, who murdered their mistress in France in 1933, will share the marquee at Music Hall this week.  Presented by Cincinnati Opera, the two one-acters, Viktor Ullmann's "The Emperor of Atlantis" and Peter Bengtson's "The Maids," couldn't be more different except for one thing:  Hitler came to power in the same year the sisters committed their crime.  Opera artistic director Nicholas Muni will direct the double bill.
  - [Read more]

So-called "degenerate art," banned in Nazi Germany, meant more than Jews and Judaism, but encompassed anything presumed to be non-Aryan, said Racelle Weiman, director of the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. In observance of Holocaust Awareness Weeks 2004, the CHHE will partner with the Cincinnati Art Museum and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in a multi-media program at the Museum sampling arts works, readings and music proscribed by the Nazis.
  - [Read more]

Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra spent their spring "break" in Florida, but it was all work and little play, with six concerts in six days.  There were stops in Vero Beach, Sarasota, Orlando, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Naples.  Guest artists on the tour were the Eroica Trio -- pianist Erika Nickrenz, violinist Adela Pena and cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio -- in Beethoven's Triple Concerto.
  - [Read more]

Music director Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra head for the beach next week, Vero Beach, Florida, that is, first stop on a siven-day tour of the Sunshine State.
  - [Read more]

The Estonian National Male Choir, one of the world's elite choirs and the only full-time professional male choir, helps open the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's 2004-05 season Sept. 17 and 18 at Music Hall.  It will be their CSO debut.  The 54-member group will join the orchestra led by music director and fellow Estonian Paavo Jarvi in the first CSO performance of Sibelius' "Kullervo," based on a tragic tale from the Finnish epic "Kalevala." 
  - [Read more]