The Allen Art Museum at MOCA Cleveland

As many of you may know, the Allen Art Museum has been temporarily closed for a renovation project, opening back up in Spring 2011. A portion of the collection has been loaned to other esteemed museums throughout the country, including Cleveland's own Museum of Contemporary Art.

AAM's loan is very important to MOCA's newest exhibition, *From Then to Now* : Masterworks of Contemporary African-American Art. Roughly 15 major works from the AAM are included in this show.

The show is on view January 29th, 2010 through May 9th, 2010.

Come to the opening night celebration on Friday, January 29, 2010. This is FREE and open to the public.

The evening starts at 6pm with a talk entitled "blackfacers, hustlers, oracles, & saplings," an interview between artist iona rozeal brown and exhibition curator Megan Lykins Reich. What are Hoochie Puti? Where is HEZ? Why does Yoshi ride a Big Wheel? These and other questions will be answered. Additional questions provided by the students who worked with brown on her January 2010 residency will round out the discussion.

FAMILY ART STUDIO / 7-9pm

A special place for kids to make art of their own, while enjoying the opening night excitement. Treats provided by Whole Foods: Cedar Center.

MEMBER VIP LOUNGE / 7-9pm

MOCA Members enjoy VIP treatment, a signed exhibition poster, and a complimentary cocktail, with exclusive access behind the velvet rope.

From MOCA's website:
Unprecedented in our region, the exhibition brings together for the first time the rich holdings of contemporary African American art drawn from preeminent collections of contemporary art in the region - the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, the Akron Art Museum, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Progressive Corporation, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Presented will be works by some of the most important artists of our time in a range of media - works on paper, painting, sculpture, and installations. The exhibition features 25 artists, and begins with signature pieces by such pioneering figures of the 1970s and 1980s as Romare Bearden or Alma Thomas, and continues up to the present with prime examples of works by artists such as Lenardo Drew, Alison Saar, Willie Cole, David Hammons, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, René Green, Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley, among others. Addressing a range of themes and issues, the exhibition presents an overview of the rich cultural heritage voiced by contemporary African-American artists in their examination of history, identity, and memory. Their universal search for meaning in facing the past and confronting the challenges of the present binds these works together in wha t ultimately represents a celebration of and triumph of the creative spirit.

Two Classic American Operas in Oberlin

On Saturday, January 30th, members of the Oberlin winter-term operas will perform two classic American operas: Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium and Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. The operas will be presented as a double-bill on one night only, Saturday, January 30, at 8 p.m. in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel. There will be a 15-minute intermission between the two operas.

Admission is free and no tickets are required. Finney Chapel is wheelchair accessible and free parking is available throughout the Oberlin campus.

From the press release:

The operas are produced by Jonathon Field, Oberlin’s director of opera theater, under the auspices of Oberlin College’s Winter Term Committee and with the support of Oberlin Opera Theater. Field is director of The Medium; Alan Montgomery is conductor of the pit orchestra, a chamber ensemble featuring Oberlin Conservatory students. Joseph Stepec, a junior in the conservatory, takes the baton for Trouble in Tahiti, which is directed by Scott Skiba ’03.

Field paired The Medium and Trouble in Tahiti to highlight what he calls the “rhythm of the American experience.” Both operas incorporate music unique to American culture: the old-fashioned waltz and folk music of The Medium and the modern pop music of television commercials and swing bands of Trouble in Tahiti. Together, explains Field, these operas present the “dark and light side of American culture.”

The Medium, originally a two-act operatic tragedy by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gian Carlo Menotti (The Consul, The Saint of Bleecker Street), is condensed into one act in Field’s production. In it, a faux psychic, Madame Flora, her daughter, Monica, and a mute servant boy from Budapest, Toby, fake séances to cheat families desperately seeking to connect with their deceased loved ones. The tables are turned against Madame Flora when she begins to hear a phantom voice unnoticed by anyone else; she loses her grip on reality as she searches hysterically for the source.

Nine-time Grammy Award winner Leonard Bernstein, composer of such musical treasures as West Side Story, On the Town, and Candide (which will be staged in March 2010 by the Oberlin Opera Theater) wrote Trouble as a one-act opera about an average family in an anonymous 1950s suburb. Husband Sam and wife Dinah seek reconciliation for their troubled marriage but are continuously peeved by one another’s habitual annoyances, reflected in antagonistic actions. By contrast, a cheerful chorus reveals Dinah and Sam’s unspoken desires for a life that reflects the harmonious and romantic storyline of the feature film Trouble in Tahiti.

Principal roles in The Medium will be played by Kate Rosen (Madame Flora), Hilary Sample (Monica), Amalia Goldberg (Mrs. Gobineau), Malachi Kanfer (Mr. Gobineau), and Shannon Rieke (Mrs. Nolan). Principal roles in Trouble in Tahiti will be played by Meris Gadaleto (Dinah) and Alex Boyd (Sam); Danielle Lombardi, Matthew Brewer, and Paul Whitsett will play the Trio.

Debra Nagy '00 & '02 and Les Délices

Les Délices will present two concerts in the Cleveland area on Saturday, February 20 & Sunday, February 21, 2010. In addition to Debra Nagy (BM '00 & MM '02), Scott Metcalfe, Emily Walhout (BM '83), and Lisa Crawford (Emeritus Professor of Harpsichord) will be performing.

I wrote about Les Délices back in September here.

Les Délices presents "Hommages" as the second concert in their new series' inaugural season, an intimate program of musical tributes and caricatures. The group will perform at Tregoning & Company, the highly esteemed gallery inside the W. 78th St. Studio complex (1300 W. 78th St., Cleveland) on Saturday, February 20 at 8pm, and repeats its program inside Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights (2860 Coventy Rd., Shaker Heights) on Sunday, February 21 at 4pm.

The program will feature a suite for oboe by Louis-Antoine Dornel that contains musical portraits of composer Louis-Nicolas Clérambault and the flutist René Pignon Descoteaux, in addition to Jean-Philippe Rameau and Antoine Forqueray's brilliant caricatures of each other. Composers also paid tribute to departed colleagues or mentors through highly personalized laments known as tombeaux. Viola da gamba player Emily Walhout will perform Marin Marais' tombeau for his teacher, Monsieur de Seainte-Colombe.

Finally, François Couperin's Apotheosis of Lully forms the centerpiece of Les Délices' "Hommages" program. Richly imagined by Couperin as a series of musical scenes depicting Jean-Baptiste Lully's ascent into heaven, the Apotheosis will be performed with the original French narration that describes the Elysian fields and recounts a fictionalized confrontation between Lully and the Italian master Arcangelo Corelli.

Tickets for all concerts in the series are available at Les Délices. $20 General Admission, $18 Seniors & Members of Plymouth Church. $5 Student Rush available at the door.

Reading by Thomas Mullen '96

Thomas Mullen '96, the author of The Last Town on Earth (which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today, was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, a New York Times Editor's Choice, and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction), will be giving a book reading/signing at Joseph Beth Booksellers in Lyndhurst on Wednesday, February 24 at 7pm on his new book, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers.

For more information about the event, visit Joseph Beth Booksellers.

Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Legacy Village
24519 Cedar Road
Lyndhurst, OH 44124
(216) 691-7000

A 1996 Oberlin alum, he majored in English and History, worked in (and received a stylish wardrobe from) the subterranean Oberlin Seniors Thrift Store, and DJed a 4 AM jazz show that surely no one listened to. During his senior year he committed the very un-Oberlin act of asking out a young woman he'd never spoken to before, when the two of them happened to cross paths in the incredibly romantic parking lot of Dascomb Hall. He and she are now married and live in Atlanta with their two sons.

In award-winning author Thomas Mullen's evocative new novel, the highly anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed debut, The Last Town on Earth, we follow the Depression-era adventures of Jason and Whit Fireson-bank robbers known as the Firefly Brothers by the press, the authorities, and an adoring public that worships their acts as heroic counter-punches thrown at a broken system.

Now it appears they have met their end in a hail of bullets. Jason and Whit's lovers-Darcy, a wealthy socialite, and Veronica, a hardened survivor-struggle between grief and an unyielding belief that the Firesons are still alive. While they and the Firesons' stunned mother and straight-arrow brother wade through conflicting police reports and press accounts, wild rumors spread that the bandits are at large. Through it all, the Firefly Brothers remain as charismatic, unflappable, and as mythical as the American Dream itself, racing to find the women they love and make sense of a world in which all has come unmoored.

Complete with kidnappings and gangsters, heiresses and speakeasies, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers is an imaginative and spirited saga about what happens when you are hopelessly outgunned-and a masterly tale of hardship, redemption, and love that transcends death.

Artist Recital Series February 3, 2010

Oberlin College will launch the spring season of its Artist Recital Series on Wednesday, February 3, 2010, with an 8 p.m. performance in Finney Chapel by one of today’s finest pairs of classical musicians: violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jeremy Denk.

Finney Chapel is located at 90 North Professor Street and is wheelchair accessible. Free parking is available throughout the Oberlin College campus.

Bell’s beautiful sound, virtuosic technique, and musical maturity have garnered him praise as “one of the finest musicians of his generation,” (The Washington Post), and Musical America recently named him the 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year. Denk, a 1990 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, has attracted increasing attention in recent years; in his “thrilling” Carnegie Hall debut last season, he brought “a rare combination of command and spontaneity to his dynamic performances,” said the New York Times.

The duo will perform a program of violin sonatas from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries by Bach, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel. Their performance at Oberlin is one of the first stops on a U.S. tour this February and March, culminating in performances at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Tickets are available through Oberlin College’s Central Ticket Service (CTS). Purchase tickets online at www.oberlin.edu/artsguide; by phone at 440-775-8169 or 800-371-0178; in person at the CTS box office, located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium at 67 North Main Street in Oberlin; or by mail, by submitting the order form available on the website.

The program for this concert and other upcoming ARS concerts are as follows:

Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 8 p.m.
JOSHUA BELL, violin
JEREMY DENK, piano
J. S. Bach: Violin Sonata No. 4 in C minor, BWV 1017
Saint-Saëns: Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano in D minor, Op. 75
Schumann: Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano in A minor, Op. 105
Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Piano (1927)
Tickets: $28; Seniors and OCID $22; Students $16

Thursday, March 18, 2010, 8 p.m.
TAKÁCS STRING QUARTET
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 6, Op. 18, No. 6
John Psathas: A Cool Wind
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 7, Op. 59, No. 1 (“Razumovsky”)
Tickets: $28; Seniors and OCID $22; Students $10

Friday, April 9, 2010, 8 p.m.
THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA
Semyon Bychkov, conductor
Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin
Dutilleux: Métaboles
Schumann: Symphony No. 2
Tickets: $28; Seniors and OCID $22; Students $10

Sunday, April 11, 2010, 8 p.m.
AMERICAN BRASS QUINTET
50th Anniversary Celebration
Program to be announced
Tickets: $28; Seniors and OCID $22; Students $10

Healing Companions by Jane Miller '83

Jane Miller '83 has a new book available - Healing Companions: Ordinary Dogs and Their Extraordinary Power to Transform Lives.

Jane was recently featured in the Oberlin News Tribune, with a lovely article about her book.

If you live in Oberlin, stop by the Oberlin Bookstore - as Trade Book Manager, I am proudly displaying a copy in our front window!

Upcoming events for Jane include signings at the following places and times:

Joseph Beth Booksellers

28 Jan 2010 07:00 PM

Lyndhurst, OH

The Cleveland Clinic Joseph Beth Booksellers

29 Jan 2010 12:00 PM

Cleveland Clinic Miller Building

Barnes & Noble Booksellers

30 Jan 2010 01:00 PM

Crocker Park, Westlake, Ohio

Visit her website at www.healing-companions.com for more information, including information about readings and signings.

Congratulations!

Concerts featuring the music of H. Leslie Adams '55

On Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 4:00 p.m., as part of the Cleveland Institute of Music 19th Annual Black Heritage Concert, H. Leslie Adams' Hymn to All Nations will be presented by the Nathaniel Dett Concert Choir, under the direction of William Woods. Other works will also be performed.

Kulas Hall
Cleveland Institute of Music
11921 East Boulevard
Cleveland OH 44106

The event is free, but passes are required. Please call the CIM Box Office at 216.791.5000 ext. 411 starting February 1 to request a pass.

On Monday, February 15, 2010 from 2:00-5:00 p.m., the Adams Fan Club will present "An Informal Final Gathering." Guest artists Eliesha Nelson, viola and Dianna White-Gould, piano, will perform Adams' new work, L'Extasy D'Amour.

Seifullah Art Gallery
14940 Euclid Avenue;
East Cleveland OH 44112.

The gallery can be contacted at 216-268-1008

H. Leslie Adams is a 1955 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. For more information about Mr. Adams, please click here.

Tracy Chevalier '84 and her newest novel Remarkable Creatures

Tracy Chevalier '84 will be reading and discussing her newest novel (release date of January 5, 2010) Remarkable Creatures, on Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 7pm at Joseph Beth Bookstore in Legacy Village. Ms. Chevalier is the bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, The Lady and the Unicorn, and The Virgin Blue, amongst other titles.

From the Joseph Beth website: "[T]he stunning new novel Remarkable Creatures [is] about how one woman's gift transcends class and social prejudice to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, it is a a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship."

The discussion and signing is co-hosted by Joseph Beth Bookstore and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. As a special addition, Dr. Linda Spurlock will give a free talk at 6:30pm about “Women’s Careers in Science”. The museum will also bring fossils for attendees to touch.

For more information on Tracy Chevalier, please click here. For more information on Remarkable Creatures, please click here.

The Plain Dealer Review of Remarkable Creatures can be found here.

This promises to be an exciting event, and should the weather cooperate, I will be there! I hope to see many of you as well!

Thursday 7 January, 7pm, Cleveland OH
Joseph Beth Bookstore
Legacy Village
24519 Cedar Rd
Lyndhurst OH 44124