'What's on David Bowie's Playlist' and Six More Classical Music Events to Hit This Week

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This is a busy week with lots of choices so let's get to them.

What’s on David Bowie’s Playlist? That may surprise you. Avner Dorman and CityMusic Cleveland will explore some of the late pop icon’s wide musical tastes in five concerts running from Wednesday, March 15 through Sunday, March 19. Hint: it includes music by John Adams, Anthony Fiumara, Philip Glass, and Richard Strauss, plus Bowie’s own music. The free concerts begin in Collinwood. Details here.

Ensemble 1816 (Jesse Blumberg, baritone, David Breitman, fortepiano, and Johanna Novom, violin) will bring period instruments to the music of Spohr, Schubert, and Beethoven at the Tregoning & Company Gallery on Wednesday, March 15 at 8:00 pm. Free, but seating is limited.

It’s all-Stravinsky at Severance Hall on Thursday, March 16 and Saturday, March 18 as Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and Miami’s Seraphic Fire in the composer’s groundbreaking Fireworks, Apollo, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and Threni: Lamentations of Jeremiah. Tickets here.

Here’s an instrument you won’t often hear on the concert stage. Didjeridu virtuoso Stephen Kent will join the Del Sol String Quartet in works by Peter Sculthorpe on the Tuesday Musical FUZE! Series at the Akron Art Museum on Saturday, March 18 at 7:00 pm (tickets available online). He’ll also play a solo recital of his own compositions at Cleveland’s SPACES gallery on Sunday, March 19 at 7:30 pm (tickets: $15 at the door, or reserve online).

The Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s annual NEOSonicFest of new music launches on Friday, March 17 at 7:00 pm at the Church of the Covenant with organist Jonathan Moyer and trumpeter Roy Poper (highlight: György Ligeti’s famous Volumina). The festival continues on Sunday, March 19 at 3:00 pm with a concert of music by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild in Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin Wallace, with more performances next week. Donations are welcome at the door for each event.

The Carpe Diem String Quartet will feature music by Schubert, Sergei Taneyev, and its own violist, Korine Fujiwara, on the free Rocky River Chamber Music series at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church on Monday, March 20 at 7:30 pm.

Things really get congested on Tuesday, March 21. You can choose pianist Marc-André Hamelin in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art (7:30 pm, Cleveland International Piano Competition series — tickets available online), the Jerusalem Quartet at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights (7:30 pm, Cleveland Chamber Music Society series — tickets here), or organist Jonathan Ryan performing Bach’s German Organ Mass with Trinity Chamber Singers (7:30 pm at Trinity Cathedral — freewill offering). You can’t lose with any of these events.

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