Linking Legacies Performs Music by Local African American Composers and the Rest of the Classical Music to Catch This Week

Linking Legacies performs this weekend Credit: Courtesy Photo

Cleveland is blessed with orchestras — world class, professional, vocational, and student — and many of them are busy this week playing programs of repertoire both adventurous and familiar.

– On Thursday, the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra, led by Douglas Droste, features soprano Kate Tiemens in Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a nostalgic setting of words by James Agee (7:30 in Gamble Auditorium)

– Also on Thursday, British composer/conductor Thomas Adès joins soprano Sasha Cooke and The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in the U.S, premiere of the co-commission, America: A Prophecy, plus Jean Sibelius’s The Oceanides, Kaija Saariaho’s Oltra Mar, and Charles Ives’ Orchestral Set No. 2 (7:30 at Severance Music Center, repeated at 8 pm Saturday).

– On Saturday, Kristopher Morron leads the Contemporary Youth Orchestra and cellist Elisa Moulthrop in Grazyna Bacewicz’s Concerto No. 1, Dylan Trần’s 1000 Words, Gala Flagello’s Everything Beautiful, and works by Nubia Jaime-Donjuan, Katie O’Hara LaBrie, Cameron Sheldon, and Morron (7:30 at the Maltz).

– Also on Saturday, cellist Ovidiu Marinescu joins Victor Liva and the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra for Joseph Haydn’s Second Concerto and Johannes Brahms First Symphony (7:30 in CSU’s Waetjen Auditorium, repeated Sunday at 3 at Westlake PAC).

– The CIM Orchestra will wrap up the week on Tuesday at 7:30 with a similarly mainstream program (Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with Viviana-Zarah Baudis, and Brahms’ Second Symphony) led by Sameer Patel at Severance Music Center.

Three concerts this week give a nod to Black History Month.

– On Friday, the local ensemble Linking Legacies performs music by African American composers with ties to Northeast Ohio (6 pm in Toby’s Gallery for Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art.) On Saturday, the Euclid Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, & Gospel Band present Spiritual Echoes: A Black History Celebration (7:30 at Tri-C Metropolitan Campus Auditorium.) And CityMusic Cleveland plays works by George Walker, John Coltrane & Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (7 pm, East Mount Zion Baptist Church).

– Pianocentric events include Friday’s CSU Keyboard Extravaganza — solo, duo and multiple-piano works performed by current students & faculty members Angelin Chang & Jackie Warren (6 pm, Drinko Recital Hall) and Víkingur Ólafsson and Yuja Wang play a joint recital (Sunday at 3, Severance Music Center).

– There are two interesting programs featuring solo artists to note: No Exit presents trombonist John Faieta (7 pm Friday at Heights Arts) and cellist Annie Jacobs-Perkins (7:30 pm Tuesday at Stocker Center in Elyria).

– And three small ensemble programs feature Cleveland Orchestra members & friends in J.S. Bach’s Art of Fugue (3 pm Sunday at Dunham Tavern), tenor JR Fralick & Friends on the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series (7:30 pm Monday, West Shore Church), and eight Erie Coast Cellists will premiere Margi Griebling-Haigh’s Voices from the Other Side (7 pm Tuesday at Federated Church, Chagrin Falls.)

– Finally, Les Délices will host tenor Nicholas Phan for the first performance of Viet Cuong’s A Moment’s Oblivion in a program of French Baroque music played by Debra Nagy, oboe, Shelby Yamin, violin, Rebecca Landell, viola da gamba, and Mark Edwards, harpsichord (3 pm Saturday in Heights Theater (repeated Sunday at 3 pm).

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

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