NEWS
Preview: "Cleveland Orchestra to headline Cleveland Museum of Art centennial fest with free concert"
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) has published a preview of The Cleveland Orchestra's performance at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, June 26, as part of the museum's centennial celebrations.
Led by associate conductor Brett Mitchell, the orchestra will offer a program directly inspired by visual art and the museum's holdings specifically.
Local art lovers, rejoice. Upon close inspection, the orchestra's museum program reveals a wealth of extra-musical connections certain to make a Clevelander's heart flutter.
First up: the "Engelkonzert" ("Angelic Concert") from Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler." Not only does the opera concern a painter. The composer himself also visited the Cleveland Museum of Art, in 1939, one year after the opera's premiere.
Bartók, too, also famously came to Cleveland, treating patrons at the museum in 1928 to three of his "Hungarian Sketches" in their original versions for solo piano. Here, in June, the orchestra will perform all five.
The three remaining works on the program are Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," a tone poem depicting a summer solstice feast day (the museum also celebrates summer solstice June 25); and Respighi's "Three Botticelli Pictures" and Adam Schoenberg's "Finding Rothko," both of which are based on famous artists represented in the museum's collection.
To read the complete preview, please click here. To read the official news release from The Cleveland Orchestra, please click here.
Preview: "Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra: a conversation with Brett Mitchell"
Brett Mitchell leads the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra at Severance Hall. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)
Cleveland Classical has published a preview of the final concert of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra's 30th season, presented this Sunday, May 8 at 3 p.m. at Severance Hall. Music Director Brett Mitchell discussed the orchestra's performances of Adam Schoenberg's Finding Rothko, Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto, and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances:
“This is going to be a very special concert,” Brett Mitchell said during a telephone conversation. “These are all magnificent but challenging pieces, but with no surprise the orchestra has risen to the occasion admirably.”
To read the complete preview, please click here.
Preview: "The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra shines at Severance Hall"
Cool Cleveland has published a preview of the final concert of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra's 30th season, presented this Sunday, May 8 at 3 p.m. at Severance Hall.
For 30 seasons, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra has been giving young players in grades 6-12 from across the region who are serious about their music the opportunity to work with other high-caliber players and learn to perform with them in an orchestral setting.
One of the best perks is that they get to perform on the stage at Severance Hall where, for the evening, they can imagine what it would be like to be in the Cleveland Orchestra. For their next performance, they’ll play Adam Schoenberg’s “Finding Rothko,” Erik Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto featuring 18-year-old Jieming Tang, and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. COYO music director Brett Mitchell conducts. Tickets are $15.
To read the complete preview, please click here.
Audio: Brett Mitchell previews the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra's 30th season finale on WCLV
Brett Mitchell joined host Bill O'Connell on WCLV Classical 104.9 this afternoon to discuss the final concert of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra's 30th season, presented this Sunday, May 8 at Severance Hall. To hear this interview, please click here.
Debut with the Colorado Symphony
Brett Mitchell will make his debut with the Colorado Symphony on July 16, 2016, leading the orchestra in a performance previewing their 2016-17 season, including works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and more. For more information, please see the concert listing on the orchestra's website and this story on KUSA, Denver's NBC affiliate.
Preview: "Cleveland Orchestra releases details of 2016-17 programming for families and children"
Brett Mitchell will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Michael Daugherty’s ‘Metropolis Symphony’ on its 2016-17 family series.
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) has published a preview of The Cleveland Orchestra's 2016-17 family series, which begins on Sunday, October 30 with "Superman at the Symphony":
Associate conductor Brett Mitchell leads this celebration of Cleveland's native superhero, featuring music from "Superman" by John Williams and Michael Daugherty's "Metropolis Symphony."
On Sunday, April 2, Mr. Mitchell will close the 2016-17 series with "Peter and the Wolf":
Back by popular demand, Magic Circle Mime Company returns to Severance Hall to collaborate with the Cleveland Orchestra and associate conductor Brett Mitchell in a "re-telling with a twist" of Prokofiev's classic for children, "Peter and the Wolf."
To read the complete preview, please click here.
Preview: "The Boise Philharmonic launches its music director search with a season of guest conductors"
The Idaho Statesman has published a brief preview of the Boise Philharmonic's 2016-17 season, during which Brett Mitchell will guest conduct several performances of Kevin Puts's Millennium Canons, Adam Schoenberg's Finding Rothko, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. To read this preview, please click here.
Preview: "Collaboration of Cleveland cultural giants adds a new play to the repertoire"
Brett Mitchell in rehearsal with The Cleveland Orchestra at the Allen Theatre, April 2016.
NPR affiliate WKSU has produced a preview of The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Play House's world-premiere collaboration, The Good Peaches.
Brett Mitchell, associate conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, is in charge of the music. Logistics have been challenging and rehearsals intense in this joint endeavor. “This is absolutely a major collaboration, as it should be to celebrate Cleveland Play House’s centennial.” ...
Mitchell knew the plot twist needed dramatic but contrasting music, both tempestuous and contemplative. “My task,” he says, “was to see if I could find some repertoire already written that might help tell the story.” To evoke the violent storm, he chose the crashing crescendos of Benjamin Britten’s “Sea Interludes” from the opera “Peter Grimes.” But when Aurora’s whole world changes, the music does, too.
“Everybody she knows, everything she knows has disappeared after this storm,” says Mitchell. “And as Aurora starts to feel her way through this new world and try to get her bearings, that’s when we make the shift from the kind of full orchestra cacophony of the Britten to the very minimalist textures of just the string section.” Strings alone play John Adams’s “Shaker Loops.” ...
“We’re trying to blend this great art form that the Cleveland Orchestra does so exceedingly well with a new medium, to create something that’s perhaps greater than just an orchestral performance or just a theatrical performance.”
To read more and hear the complete story, please click here.
Preview: "Cleveland Play House presents 'The Good Peaches': Brett Mitchell & Laura Kepley"
Cleveland Play House artistic director Laura Kepley and Cleveland Orchestra associate conductor Brett Mitchell at the WCLV studios.
The Cleveland Orchestra's Brett Mitchell and Cleveland Play House's Laura Kepley recently spoke with WCLV Classical 104.9's Jacqueline Gerber about their upcoming world premiere collaboration, The Good Peaches. To hear this interview, please click here.
To hear it as it appeared on WCPN's The Sound of Applause, please click here.
Previews: "'The Good Peaches' headlines Cleveland theater openings for the week of April 11"
A number of news outlets have published previews of The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Play House's upcoming world-premiere collaboration—led by Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell—including mention on The Plain Dealer's (Cleveland) list of "5 events not to miss this week":
While half the Cleveland Orchestra plays Mozart and Haydn this week, the other half will be performing Britten and John Adams in "The Good Peaches," a brand-new play with music by Quiara Alegría Hudes. In this third collaboration with Cleveland Play House, the orchestra will depict a storm and internal stress while the actors offer up a story of survival and self-discovery.
To read the complete list, please click here. Please also visit the following previews:
- The Plain Dealer: "'The Good Peaches' headlines Cleveland theater openings for the week of April 11"
- The News-Herald: "Cleveland Play House, Cleveland Orchestra get together for ‘Good Peaches’"
- Cleveland Scene: "Ten Classical Music Events Not to Miss This Week"
- Crain's Cleveland Business: "Ten new things to do in Cleveland through April 21"
Preview: "Cleveland Play House, Orchestra partnership blossoms with 'The Good Peaches'"
Cleveland Orchestra associate conductor Brett Mitchell, seen here at Severance Hall, will preside over the performances of works by Britten and John Adams featured in "The Good Peaches," a new play by Quiara Alegria Hudes. (Roger Mastroianni)
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) has published a preview of the upcoming collaboration between Cleveland Play House and The Cleveland Orchestra: the world premiere of The Good Peaches by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes.
Two seminal works of music help achieve that [epic quality]: Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" (from his opera "Peter Grimes") and "Shaker Loops," by John Adams. Both will be performed by the orchestra onstage under associate conductor Brett Mitchell.
Selected, Hudes said, for their power to "express something the words cannot," the two scores unfold separately, one movement at a time, after each scene. Britten conjures the storm. Adams calms it. Only near the end, Mitchell said, do music and speech overlap.
"All of a sudden [late in 'Shaker Loops']," Mitchell said, "the characters start speaking again, and the impact of hearing it all fully married like that, at the end of the production, is to take us out of the mythical world and very much into the present day."
The idea, though, isn't just for Britten and Adams to provide nonverbal commentary. As much as their music reflects on the drama, so does the drama reflect on their music.
Hudes said one of her goals with the back-and-forth layout is to juxtapose what she called the "primal" nature of theater and the sophistication of classical music and the orchestra....
Mitchell, for his part, is confident "Good Peaches" will succeed, here and abroad.
Not only, he said, is this production is "truly world-class" and "worthy of the centennial." The play alone is "a special thing for the world of art in general."
To read more, please click here.
Previews: The Cleveland Orchestra announces its 2016-17 "At the Movies" series
Several media outlets have published previews of The Cleveland Orchestra's 2016-17 "At the Movies" series, including several productions to be led by Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell. From The Plain Dealer (Cleveland):
Classical music isn't the only discipline the Cleveland Orchestra dominates in Northeast Ohio. No, these days, the group also has the film-music market cornered.
How so? With its "At the Movies" series, the fifth season of which the orchestra recently announced. Having hit on a winning formula – live performances with film – the group next season plans to keep the projector running, and audiences happy.
In December 2016, Mr. Mitchell will lead Dmitri Tiomkin's score for It's a Wonderful Life, and in June 2017, he will lead four performances of Leonard Bernstein's score for West Side Story to close the orchestra's 2016-17 subscription season. For more information, please read these previews in The Plain Dealer, Broadway World, and AXS.
Preview: "The Good Peaches"
Roger Mastroianni
Departures has published a preview of the upcoming collaboration between Cleveland Play House and The Cleveland Orchestra: the world premiere of The Good Peaches by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes:
While Lin-Manuel Miranda has gone on to stratospheric levels of fame since his first Broadway musical, “In the Heights,” hit the stage in 2008, playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes—who wrote that musical’s book—has enjoyed a quieter but no less lauded career. (Four years ago, she won the Pulitzer for her play “Water By the Spoonful.”) But April seems to be Hudes’s month. She’ll start by premiering a new play, “The Good Peaches,” about a young girl’s fantastical adventure, as a collaboration between the Cleveland Playhouse and the Cleveland Orchestra; it’ll be performed onstage with the orchestra, with a score including familiar works by composers Benjamin Britten and John Adams.
To read the complete preview, please click here.
Preview: "Storm Chaser: A piece with the Cleveland Orchestra makes waves at the Cleveland Play House"
Cleveland Magazine has published a preview of the upcoming collaboration between Cleveland Play House and The Cleveland Orchestra, led by Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell:
In an instant, her world is swept away. Aurora, the young protagonist in The Good Peaches, running April 14-16 at the Cleveland Play House, must learn to cope after a flood claims her family and village. Although the play has a minimalist set and only three speaking actors, the flood is portrayed through a more visceral medium: music from an onstage orchestra. The third collaboration between the Cleveland Play House and the Cleveland Orchestra, The Good Peaches is written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Quiara Alegría Hudes and directed by Cleveland Play House artistic director Laura Kepley. After collaborative brainstorming, Hudes selected two pieces of music from options chosen by Cleveland Orchestra associate conductor Brett Mitchell and wrote the play while listening to them. We take note of how the music carries two key scenes.
To read more, please click here.
Brett Mitchell to lead multiple concerts on Cleveland Orchestra Miami's 2016-17 season
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) has published a preview of Cleveland Orchestra Miami's 2016-17 season, which includes multiple performances led by Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell. To read the complete article, please click here. To read the news release from Cleveland Orchestra Miami, please click here.
Preview: "Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra to join Youth Chorus for March 4 concert"
Cleveland Classical has published a preview of Brett Mitchell's upcoming subscription performance with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra:
On Friday, March 4 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra will perform what director Brett Mitchell says is the most challenging piece the orchestra has played during his tenure. “Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka is certainly a challenging undertaking even for the best of professional orchestras,” Mitchell pointed out during a telephone interview. “But I’ve been with COYO long enough to know that whatever challenge is put in front of the musicians they will, without fail, rise to the challenge. In fact, they always end up exceeding my expectations.”
In order to give his players a head start with learning Stravinsky’s seminal work, Mitchell enlisted the assistance of The Cleveland Orchestra itself. “The first rehearsal back in December was a side-by-side with TCO. The opportunity to sit next to professionals, who have played the piece many times, really helped the young musicians up the confidence factor. As a result they came into the second rehearsal far more assured because of that experience.”
Three days prior to our conversation, Mitchell arranged for a second side-by-side rehearsal. “This is the first time we have ever approached a project like this with side-by-sides at the front and the back ends of the rehearsal process. To watch the professionals and the young musicians come together — and watch the one-on-one mentoring relationships that develop — was heartwarming and speaks miles about our organization and how truly interwoven COYO is into the fabric of TCO. We’re all part of the Musical Arts Association, we’re all in this together with the same mission: to present the best music we possibly can for our audiences.”
The concert’s second half will be dedicated to works for chorus and orchestra. The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus, prepared by their director Lisa Wong, will be featured in Aaron Copland’s Canticle of Freedom and Johannes Brahms’s Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny).
To read the complete article, please click here.
Preview: "10 Classical Music Events You Shouldn't Miss This Week"
Brett Mitchell's performance with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Youth Chorus this Friday evening at 8 p.m. has been listed in Cleveland Scene's "10 Classical Music Events You Shouldn't Miss This Week." To read this article, please click here.
Previews and Audio: Upcoming concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra
Several media outlets have previewed the upcoming collaboration between The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Ballet, and Csárdas Dance Company, which will be led by the Orchestra's associate conductor Brett Mitchell on Friday, February 26. To read an article in Cool Cleveland, "Cleveland Orchestra celebrates ballet and folk dance at Severance Hall," please click here.
Mr. Mitchell also recently discussed this performance and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra's upcoming subscription concert with host Mark Satola on WCLV Classical 104.9. COYO's performance—presented on Friday, March 4 at Severance Hall—will feature Stravinsky's Petrushka, as well as Brahms's Schicksalslied and Copland's Canticle of Freedom in their annual collaboration with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus. To hear this complete interview, please click here.
Brett Mitchell leads the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in performance at Severance Hall. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni.)
Preview: Cleveland Cello Society
Cleveland Scene has published a preview of Brett Mitchell's upcoming appearance with the Cleveland Cello Society on Sunday, February 28. At this event, Mr. Mitchell will conduct a career retrospective interview Stephen Geber, former principal cellist of The Cleveland Orchestra, and will lead performances of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus and Randall Thompson's Alleluia. To read this preview, please click here.
Previews: "Cleveland Orchestra will perform Balanchine's 'The Nutcracker' as part of 2016 Holiday Festival"
(Photo by Alexander Iziliaev of Pennsylvania Ballet)
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) has published a preview of The Cleveland Orchestra's 2016-17 production of The Nutcracker, which will be led by Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell. Presented in collaboration with Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Ballet, the production will be staged at the State Theatre at Playhouse Square, and will run for seven performances between November 30 and December 4, 2016.
The new production will differ markedly from those of recent years, principally through the involvement of Pennsylvania Ballet, led by Angel Corella and last seen here in partnership with the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center in 1984. Notably, Pennsylvania Ballet performs the Balanchine version of "Nutcracker," which includes several unique scenes and de-emphasizes romantic elements through the casting of children in certain lead roles.
To read the complete article, please click here. To read an additional preview in AXS, please click here. To read Pennsylvania Ballet's 2016-17 season announcement with additional information, please click here.