Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra president Steven Monder at Music Hall in Cincinnati

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra president Steven Monder wasn't wearing a tie for his "retirement event" June 29 at Riverbend Music Center.  Monder, 63, retired June 30 after 37 years of service to the orchestra, 31 of them in the top leadership position, making him the longest-tenured chief executive of any major American orchestra.
  - [Read more]

Click http://www.cincinnatiopera.org/webisodes for what you can expect at Cincinnati Opera’s “Lucie de Lammermoor,” to be presented by Cincinnati Opera at 7:30 p.m. June 26 and 28 at Music Hall.

Soviet tank in Tallinn, Estonia, scene from "The Singing Revolution"

Besides Cincinnati Opera, there's a lot of singing going on this week in Cincinnati. Check out Cincinnati World Cinema's "The Singing Revolution" at 7 p.m. June 25 and 26 at the Cincinnati Art Museum to see how it can change the world.  www.cincyworldcinema.org   And Trekkie alert: The Cincinnati Pops led by Erich Kunzel presents "Star Trek: The Music" June 28, and in news of music in Cincinnati, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music has appointed Robin Guarino of New York's Juilliard School as J. Ralph Corbett Distinguished Chair in Opera effective Sept. 1, 2008.


  - [Read more]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Cincinnati's Fine Arts Fund, oldest and most profitable in the U.S., made it through a difficult year to report on-target donations for 2008.  The total raised was $12.3 million, $3,000 over the campaign goal.  The announcement was made in conjunction with the presentation of the Scripps Corbett Awards, successor to the Post Corbett Awards, founded 26 years ago by arts patrons J. Ralph and Patricia Corbett and the Cincinnati Post.  The Post, owned by Cincinnati-based Scripps Howard, ceased publication Dec. 31, 2007.
  - [Read more]