– Members of The Cleveland Orchestra will join Karamu Artists for a special “Legacy: Past, Present, and Future” concert at Karamu House on Wednesday at 7 curated by Allison Loggins-Hull. Then the Orchestra will welcome pianist Lang Lang to its home at Severance Music Center on Thursday at 7:30 with Franz Welser-Möst on the podium (repeated Friday at 11 and Saturday at 8). And on Friday at 8, the next generation of orchestra musicians will take over as Daniel Reith leads the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in Valerie Coleman’s Umoja, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, and Lalo’s Cello Concerto.
– Oberlin Conservatory is even busier than usual this week, beginning on Wednesday at 7:30 with the Contemporary Music Ensemble (Timothy Weiss leads works by trombonist and composer Alex Paxton in Warner Concert Hall), continuing with the Sinfonietta featuring faculty composers Stephen Hartke and Jesse Jones on Thursday at 7:30 in Warner (Weiss conducts, with faculty baritone Timothy LeFebvre), and the Chamber Orchestra featuring student pianist Jiongli Wang in Chopin’s 1st concerto Friday at 7:30 in Finney Chapel (Raphael Jiménez also conducts Cashel Day-Lewis’s Black River Prelude — a world premiere — and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony).
– The Oberlin list continues with vocal music, including two concerts by the Collegium Musicum led by Steven Plank (Friday and Saturday at 7:30 in Fairchild Chapel), and a joint performance by the College Choir and Musical Union on Sunday at 2:30 in Finney Chapel (Gregory Ristow leads Maurice Duruflé’s Gregorian chant-inspired Requiem with faculty organist Jonathan Moyer, plus student composers’ works celebrating the Bicentennial of Lorain County).
– And Oberlin will mark Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day — on Sunday at 4:30 in Warner Concert Hall, with a concert featuring a speech by Holocaust survivor Carol Wilner and a string trio written at Terezin by Gideon Klein shortly before he was transferred to Auschwitz. Faculty violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson will perform on one of the instruments from the Violins of Hope collection.
All of those Oberlin performances will be webcast.
– Moving on across Northeast Ohio, there’s lots of interesting chamber music on the docket: North Coast Winds in “The Jazz Fascination” (Sunday at 2 at Hudson Library), the Cavani String Quartet with the Verona String Quartet in Andrew Rindfleisch’s Phantasmagoria for string octet (Sunday at 4, St. Wendelin Church in Tremont), Cleveland Orchestra members Afendi Yusuf, clarinet, and Wesley Collins, viola, with pianist Dawoon Chung (Monday at 7:30 on the Rocky River Chamber series), Les Délices exploring the London of 18th-century Afro-British musician Charles Ignatius Sancho (Sunday at 7, Rocky River Library), and pianist Garrick Ohlsson on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series (Tuesday at 7:30 at Disciples Church).
– Calendar not full yet? Pianist Lang Lang presents his “101 Pianists” extravaganza on Friday at Noon at Tri-C’s Metro Auditorium, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra hosts guitarist Jason Vieaux on Saturday at 7:30 at Church of the Covenant, organist Davis Badaszewski plays early music at First Church in Painesville on Sunday at 3, and alto saxophonist Perry Roth solos in the Glazunov concerto with Heights Chamber Orchestra on Sunday at 3:30 at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts. West Shore Chorale closes Sunday’s list with a 7:30 concert of Haydn & Vivaldi at Avon Lake PAC.
Click here to visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings page for more information.
This article appears in Apr 24 – May 7, 2024.