Cleveland Classical

DIARY: WEEKEND, Friday-Sunday, February 6-8, 2026

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND CLASSICAL MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS:

Violinist Augustin Hadelich, a favorite with Cleveland audiences, returns to solo with The Cleveland Orchestra in a performance that promises to be a fresh take on the venerable concerto by Felix Mendelssohn (read his written responses to Mike Telin’s questions here). Speaking of venerable works, guest conductor Antonello Manacorda will re-interpret Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, the expressive, two-movement torso of a work that’s come to be known as “the Unfinished,” to fill out the three concerts that began on Thursday at 7:30 and will be repeated on Friday and Saturday at Severance Music Center.

Guest conductor Andrew Grams (pictured) will lead CityMusic Chamber Orchestra in the group’s February tour around greater Cleveland with their program “American Dreams.” Elliott Carter’s Sound Fields, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and Aaron Copland’s Suite from Appalachian Spring will visit St. Noel in Willoughby on Friday, the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus on Saturday (all at 7:30), and Our Lady of Angels on Sunday (at 2:30).

On Friday at 7 pm No Exit New Music presents LIGAMENT. Vocalist Anika Kildegaard and bassist Will Yager, bass, will play works by Zac Fick-Cambria, Ruby Fulton, James Dillon, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Katherine Balch, preceded by a brief opening set by the Cleveland State Percussion Ensemble. Friday’s performance in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State University will be repeated on Saturday at Praxis Fiber Workshop.

And on Friday at 7:30, Cleveland Chamber Choir will present its program Love in Bloom, with Romance- and nature-inspired music by Benjamin Britten, Tōru Takemitsu, Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen, and Brandon Waddles at Kent United Church of Christ, repeated in Cleveland on Saturday in Trinity Cathedral and on Sunday in Ahstabula.

One-off performances include Edel Muñoz on the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series (Saturday at 7:30 at the Maltz), The Resonance Project’s Qin and Strings presents A Century of Chinese Music with Ann Yu, violin, and Irwin Shung, piano (Saturday at 7:30 at Forest Hill Church), the Cleveland Cello Society’s Cello Explorations with Mark Kosower presents Music and Memories of Janos Starker, beginning with Kosower’s performance of Zoltán Kodály’s Solo Cello Sonata, followed by a 40-minute audiovisual presentation (Sunday at 2 pm at The Music Settlement), Heights Arts’ Close Encounters presents From East to West with the Taplin Quartet (Sunday at 2 pm at Dunham Tavern Museum), Rocky River Presbyterian’s Artist Concert Series presents the Thorpe Ensemble (Sunday at 2 pm), and the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus hosts organist Damin Spritzer (Sunday at 4 pm).

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

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Reaching back into the 15th century, we’ll begin by marking the death of Flemish composer Johannes Ockeghem in Tours on February 6, 1497. [Read More…]

Tuesday Musical to feature Boston Brass & Imani Winds

by Mike Telin

Since 1997, the Imani Winds have been at the forefront of expanding the wind quintet repertoire through their commissioning projects, adventurous programming, and unique collaborations, which have attracted audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

Since 1986, Boston Brass have been delighting audiences with one-of-a-kind musical experiences that feature imaginative classical arrangements, jazz standards, and the best of original brass repertoire.

On Tuesday, February 10 at 7:30 pm, these two venerable ensembles will join forces at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. Presented by Tuesday Musical, their program will include original works and arrangements of pieces by Dmitri Shostakovich, Paul Hindemith, Stevie Wonder, Astor Piazzolla, and Lalo Schifrin as well as a commissioned piece by trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval. Tickets are available online.

How did Boston Brass — José Sibaja and Jeff Conner (trumpets), Chris Castellanos (horn), Domingo Pagliuca (trombone), and William Russell (tuba) — and Imani Winds — Brandon Patrick George (flute), Mekhi Gladden (oboe), Mark Dover (clarinet), Kevin Newton (horn), and Monica Ellis (bassoon) — come together?

[Read on…]

No Exit Presents LIGAMENT: an interview with Anika Kildegaard

by Mike Telin

This week No Exit presents LIGAMENT — Anika Kildegaard (voice) and Will Yager (double bass) — on Friday, February 6 at Kent State University’s Ludwig Recital Hall and on Saturday, February 7 at Praxis Fiber Workshop.

Their program features works by Zac Fick-Cambria, Ruby Fulton, James Dillon, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Katherine Balch. The Cleveland State Percussion Ensemble will perform a brief opening set. Both free concerts begin at 7:00 pm.

No Exit’s Laura King spoke with Anika Kildegaard to learn more about her musical path and the intimate, exploratory listening experience LIGAMENT will offer their Northeastern Ohio audiences.

The interview is reposted with the permission of the ensemble and author.

[Read on…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir combines music, flowers, and poetry with “Love in Bloom”

by Stephanie Manning

In the midst of such a chilly and snowy start to the year, a concert titled “Love in Bloom” might sound refreshing right about now. “It should be a very heartwarming program,” Cleveland Chamber Choir artistic director Gregory Ristow said about the group’s upcoming performances. “Even if we are still shivering like crazy in this cold Ohio winter.”

This week, the Choir will tour the Northeast Ohio area with a collection of love songs, presenting concerts at United Church of Christ in Kent (February 6), Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland (February 7), and Bethany Lutheran Church in Ashtabula (February 8). Tickets are pay-what-you-wish and can be reserved online.

[Read on…]

See all previews

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Africa→West Percussion Trio (Jan. 26)

by Kevin McLaughlin

On Monday evening, January 26 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society offered listeners a kind of gentle shock: a stage transformed into what looked like a percussionist’s greenhouse — a whole garden of instruments, some recognizable, many not, brightly colored and often hard to name.

Africa → West Percussion Trio (Jamie Ryan, Ryan Korb, and Josh Ryan) made an evening out of that abundance, blending West African and Afro-Caribbean traditions with their Western classical and jazz training. The playing was expert, but the trio’s real gift was making the unfamiliar feel accessible — and joyful. [Read on…]

Akron Symphony looks forward to 2026 with composers new and old (Jan. 17)

by Stephanie Manning

The musical journey of a concert can’t always be summed up by its title. The Akron Symphony’s January 17 performance certainly delivered on its promise of “Beethoven’s Seventh” with a dignified reading of that famous work. But the headline did not hint at the more intriguing pieces on offer — nor the idea that this program aimed to spark enthusiasm about the year ahead.

“Hope and optimism” were the words that conductor Christopher Wilkins used to describe the musical choices to the audience in E.J. Thomas Hall on Saturday.

This idea of looking toward the future appeared right away with a piece by Sarah Hegenderfer, a composition student at The University of Akron. Her lovely little gem of a piece, Clearing of Snow, paints a winter scene at sunset in lush textures.

[Read on…]

Cleveland Jazz Orchestra & Musical Theater Project at the Maltz (Jan. 24)

By Kevin McLaughlin

On Saturday at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and The Musical Theater Project offered a timely reminder: Hoagy Carmichael wasn’t just the composer of “Stardust.” He was one of America’s great musical storytellers — a songwriter with a midwestern plainness that could turn suddenly tender, funny, or wise in the space of a single line.

Star Dust: The Songs of Hoagy Carmichael, part of the two organizations’ tenth season of collaboration, folded biography and performance into a single leisurely program. The format has become a signature of these shows: songs set in context by narration, supported by projected slides and film excerpts. Here those visuals — Carmichael portraits, footage of Carmichael in motion, stills from To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) — were discreet, and perhaps too few. But they reinforced the point that this music came from a particular life, and a full one.

[Read on…]

See all reviews

Brownbag Concert: Madness & Melancholy at Trinity (Jan. 21)

By Kevin McLaughlin

At noon on alternate Wednesdays, Trinity Cathedral becomes a refuge from the workweek. On January 21, the Cleveland Chamber Choir’s Brownbag Concerts continued a downtown tradition started in 1978 by Cleveland Classical.com’s own Daniel Hathaway — a series that offers listeners a midday pause, with informal, high-quality performances and a welcome sense of community.

The Cleveland Chamber Choir has recently been part of this tradition as artist-in-residence, offering programs that complement the cathedral’s acoustic and reward an audience listening closely over the lunch hour. For this concert, a subset of the full choir performed: Abigail Hakel-Garcia (soprano and violin), Kira McGirr (mezzo-soprano) Gregory Ristow (tenor and harpsichord), Dominic Aragon (baritone), and Adrian Murillo (theorbo).

[Read on…]

Relic Ensemble: Odyssey at Heights Theater (Jan. 18)

By Kevin McLaughlin

On Sunday, January 18, the New York–based Relic Ensemble presented an imaginative interweaving of Baroque music and Homer’s Odyssey at Heights Theater. The project used historical layering as its technique, allowing ancient Greece, Baroque Europe, and the present to meet on the premise that an epic can be retold in different ways without losing its force.

Operating from its early-music comfort zone, Relic assembled a sequence of Baroque movements, chosen for their affect and fitted to eight episodes from Homer’s tale. The music leaned toward illustration rather than direct dramatic correspondence — a tension that would surface more fully as the evening unfolded. Still, the fleet, precise, and often virtuosic playing of the ensemble carried the evening.

[Read on…]

No Exit and Zeitgeist: An Evocation of Our Current Time (Jan. 9)

by Mike Telin

On Saturday, January 9 at SPACES, Cleveland-based No Exit and St. Paul-based Zeitgeist continued their long-standing collaboration with An Evocation of Our Current Time.

Unlike most performances where the audience is aware of what they will be experiencing, this one gave you very little information in advance other than it was to be “a 55-minute multimedia experience that draws on improvisation, film, artificial intelligence, environmental manipulation, lies, magic, gaslighting and other forms of chicanery.”

Unlike most No Exit concerts there were no elaborate programs to follow. And instead of presenting a number of works by a variety of composers, An Evocation of Our Current Time was a single work by No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer with technical assistance by James Praznik. As the capacity audience took their seats in the long gallery they were face to face with a dozen musicians, a projector, and a white wall.
[Read on…]

See all reviews

To•Day

DIARY: WEEKEND, Friday-Sunday, February 6-8, 2026

Pre•Views & Features

Tuesday Musical to feature Boston Brass & Imani Winds

No Exit Presents LIGAMENT: an interview with Anika Kildegaard

Cleveland Chamber Choir combines music, flowers, and poetry with “Love in Bloom”

To•Day

Pre•Views & Features

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