An Opera About Escaping From a Fundamentalist Mormon Sect and the Rest of the Classical Music to Catch This Week in Cleveland

Dark Sisters comes to the Cleveland Museum of Art this week Credit: Courtesy Photo

Among other topics, this week’s picks hint at spring, celebrate a famous Italian composer’s 500th birthday, waft the audience on an historical tour of the Iberian peninsula, and turn news headlines into opera.

– Tito Muñoz, former assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra and most recently music director of the Phoenix Symphony, returns to town for an appearance with the CIM Orchestra at Severance Music Center on Wednesday at 7:30. Zachary Brandon will be featured in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, and Muñoz and the ensemble will tackle Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring. It’s free, but tickets are required — register online.

– Chicago’s Schola Antiqua will celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina with a program of motets, psalms, settings for the Mass and spiritual madrigals that he wrote for the Roman Catholic Church. The free concert on Friday at 7:30 is part of the Helen D. Schubert series at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland.

– Also on Friday at 7:30, the Resonance Project — Guillermo Salas-Suarez, Baroque violin, Qin Ying Tan, harpsichord, and Brian Kay, Baroque guitar and percussion — will give a pay-what you wish concert of Spanish music at Forest Hills Church in Cleveland Hts.

– Saturday and Sunday will see two performances at the Cleveland Museum of Art of Nico Muhly’s opera Dark Sisters by CIM Opera Theater directed by JJ Hudson and conducted by Rakefet Hak. Read Mike Telin’s preview article here about the 2 pm production, which is based on the true story of escaping from a fundamentalist Mormon sect.

– Also on Saturday, Ian Maksin, cellist, composer, and multilingual vocalist who sings in nearly 40 languages, will bring his 2025 Cello For Peace Tour to the Maltz Performing Arts Center for a 7:30 performance. Tickets available online.

– Sunday’s events include a free, 4 pm organ recital by Mario Buchanan on the Church of the Western Reserve Concert Series in Pepper Pike and a free, 7 pm concert presentation in Stull Recital Hall of creative work produced by students on Oberlin’s TIMARA in Berlin Winter Term project.

– This week’s picks end on Tuesday with two head-to-head performances, both at 7:30, and both in academic venues. Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series presents New York Philharmonic principal clarinet Anthony McGill with pianist Emanuel Ax in Finney Chapel (tickets available online), and the Cleveland Institute of Music hosts Gateways Brass Collective, the resident ensemble of the Rochester-based Gateways Music Festival, in Mixon Hall (free, but tickets required — register online).

For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.

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