Sarah Coburn in mad scene from Donizetti's "Lucie de Lammermoor"

Donizetti's "Lucie de Lammermoor," 1839 French version of his Italian warhorse "Lucia di Lammermoor," and Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee's "Jerry Springer: The Opera" opened on the same night in Cincinnati in June, 2008.  The popular grand opera played at Music Hall.  "Jerry," which is about Cincinnati's former mayor-turned-trash-TV icon, inhabited New Stage Collective's modest alternative space at the opposite end of Over-the-Rhine.

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Steve Reich

Music08, the latest edition of MusicX, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's summer new music festival, took its final bows June 22.  At least for now.  Funding for CCM's summer new music festival was discontinued last fall, effective in 2009, but options are being explored to keep it going.  With the Cincinnati premiere of Steve Reich's Double Sextet, a Music08 co-commission for eighth blackbird, and "singing in the dead of night" by David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe of New York's Bang on a Can, it couldn't have been a stronger leave-taking.
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eighth blackbird

Music08's June 20 concert at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music featured the world premiere of Daniel Kessner's "Harmonic Space" co-commissioned for eighth blackbird by Music08 and a consortium of other arts groups and organizations. Kessner's work was a beauty and was expertly performed by the noted new music ensemble.  The program also showed off an arresting piano duo, Frederic Rzewski and Joel Hoffman. More to come?
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Nicholas Kendall

Violinist Nicholas Kendall sparked the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra's June 15 "Musical Seasons" concert in the new Anderson Center in Cincinnati's Anderson Township with Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" and Astor Piazzolla's "Cuatro Estaciones Portenos" ("Four Seasons of Buenos Aires").  The pairing was actually an interleaving, with Piazzolla's four pieces heard between corresponding concertos by Vivaldi.  CCO music director Mischa Santora presided at the upbeat event as conductor, narrator and host. 
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Shu-Ying Li as Madame Butterfly

Giacomo Puccini's deathless opera "Madame Butterfly" makes a strong statement against the international sex trade.  The message is even more universal in the Mark Lamos/Michael Yeargan production for New York City Opera.  Minimalist and transpiring on a stage framed by a pair of huge shoji screens and a stair unit, the production, presented by Cincinnati Opera June 11 at Music Hall and stage directed by Lamos, allows nothing to distract from singers and the music.  Nothing did, with a cast of compelling singing actors, headed by Chinese soprano Shu-Ying Li in her Cincinnati Opera debut.
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James Conlon

The 2008 Cincinnati May Festival concluded with a multi-media performance of Berlioz' "Romeo and Juliet" Symphony, an affirmation of the 135-year-old festival's intention to remain abreast of the 21st century.  Music director James Conlon led the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, May Festival Chorus and soloists Isabel Leonard, John Aler and Donnie Ray Albert in a performance that engaged the eyes as well as the ears.
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May Festival Chorus director Robert Porco

Robert Porco, architect of Cincinnati's remarkable, modern day May Festival Chorus, led the fourth evening of the 2008 festival May 23 at Music Hall in a program of sacred works comprising Faure's Requiem, Vivaldi's Gloria and Bach's Cantata No. 191, "Gloria in excelsis Deo," in its May Festival premiere.
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Violinist Zach Brock

Jazz violin has a new and exciting champion, Zach Brock who thrilled listeners with his band Arrival/Departure at Cincinnati City Hall May 9.  It was the second and final concert of "The Mayor's 801 Plum Concerts," held in council chambers on two Friday evenings each spring. 
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Matt Bogart

The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra's semi-staged performance of Bernstein's "West Side Story" May 9 and 10 in Greaves Concert Hall at Northern Kentucky University showed the area what can be done with talent, will and most of all, heart.
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Janine Jansen (photo by Felix Broede)

For critic Michael-Georg Müller of Germany's Neue Rhein Zeitung (NRZ), there was only one attraction on the program when the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performed in Düsseldorf's Tonhalle April 14, violinist Janine Jansen. (English translation by John J. Hutton)
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Palau de la Musica Valencia at night

Reviews are still coming in from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's tour of Europe with music director Paavo Järvi in April. Here is a "dreamy" one from Valencia (Palau de Musica, April 16) by Alfredo Brotons Munoz of Levante. Janine Jansen in Britten's Violin Concerto, Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony and "who else but Mozart?" English translation by Elizabeth Hutton.
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First Unitarian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio

The Linton Chamber Music Series ended with flair May 4 at First Unitarian Church in Cincinnati.  Performing were pianist Lars Vogt, violinist Alexander Kerr, violist Michael Strauss and cellist Eric Kim.  It was a kind of Schubert to the Roma via Brahms with a bit of Janacek in between.
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Paavo Järvi reacting to audience at Music Hall

Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra closed their 2007-08 season with Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" in a rare performance that brought to mind -- of all things -- chamber music.  Carrying the seasonal theme further was the world premiere of Cincinnati composer Robert Johnson's "prairyerth."  For balance there was Mozart, impeccably performed by pianist Lars Vogt.
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Cincinnati's considerable musical culture was on display across the generations April 30 in the annual joint concert by the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestras at Music Hall. It was kind of a "family" event for siblings Natania and Benjamin Hoffman.  Cellist Natania, 16, was soloist in the opening movement of Lalo's Cello Concerto.  CSYO concertmaster Benjamin, 18, who served as concertmaster of the blended orchestra, played the solos in the final movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade."
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The Cincinnati Symphony was "not just impeccable" in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 April 16 in the Palau de la Musica in Valencia, writes Rosa Sola in El Pais.  Under music director Paavo Järvi, it was able to enter "the narrow redoubt of what cannot be forgotten."  As for Janine Jansen in the Violin Concerto by Benjamin Britten, there were lots of gaupa's ("pretty woman") mixed in with the bravas. Spanish text with English translation.
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