NEWS
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.
Preview: Brett Mitchell's debut with the Colorado Symphony
Denver's NBC affiliate, KUSA, has published a preview about the Colorado Symphony's summer 2016 concert series, including Brett Mitchell's debut with the orchestra:
Season Preview 2016/17!
Brett Mitchell, conductor
Boettcher Concert Hall
July 16, 2016 - 7:30 p.m.
This is a special preview of select works on the 2016/17 season lineup. The Colorado Symphony and guest conductor Brett Mitchell will be taking audience members through a few of the works that will define the next year for the Colorado Symphony.
The performance will include works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and more. To read the complete preview, please click here. For additional information, please see the concert listing on the orchestra's website.
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.
Review: "Cleveland Orchestra bears musical fruit in 'The Good Peaches' theater collaboration"
Cleveland Orchestra associate conductor Brett Mitchell (pictured here in a dress rehearsal) presided over performances of works by Britten and Adams that formed the musical backbone of "The Good Peaches," a new play by Quiara Alegría Hudes premiered last week by Cleveland Play House. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) has published a review of The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Play House's recent world-premiere collaboration, The Good Peaches:
One little-recognized truth about the Cleveland Orchestra: any subset boasts the quality and cohesion of the full group.
Case in point: on stage in "The Good Peaches," a new play-with-music by Quiara Alegría Hudes premiered last week with the Cleveland Play House, the half-size orchestra under Brett Mitchell held its own beautifully.
The performances themselves were beyond reproach. Indeed, Friday night at the Allen Theatre, the orchestra did more than accompany the production. Responsible for more than half the show's total length, it supported and nearly carried the show.
Three of [Benjamin] Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" and [John] Adams' "Shaker Loops" handily encapsulated the storm and electric aftermath at the core of "Peaches," a fairy tale-like coming-of-age story.
The music, played in alternation with the acting, was highly effective, especially as shaped by Mitchell. Involved in the project from its beginning, the orchestra's associate conductor displayed nothing but a keen ear for drama and a solid grasp on what elements of the scores best applied.
[The orchestra] had no trouble conjuring the organic glory of Britten's "Dawn" or the sea in both calm and tumultuous states. After Aurora, the play's protagonist, rode the waves that destroyed her world, the orchestra painted pictures even more vivid in the mind's eye.
No less significant were the contributions made by Adams and the orchestra in "Shaker Loops." Almost everything that makes the 1978 minimalist masterpiece great also served to benefit "Peaches."
The anticipatory tension, shimmering surface, and swelling momentum in the music, deftly rendered by Mitchell and the orchestra, exactly mirrored Aurora's initial confusion about her situation and gradual development of an independent spirit. The two works even shared a sense of the profound, a basic grounding in timeless wisdom.
To read the complete review, please click here. To read the theatrical review from The Plain Dealer, please click here. To read a review in the Akron Beacon Journal, please click here.
Review: "When New Ground goes old school with ‘The Good Peaches’"
Photo by Roger Mastroianni
Cleveland Jewish News has published a review of The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Play House's recent world-premiere collaboration, The Good Peaches:
Part of this year’s New Ground Festival, which is CPH’s annual showcase of new theatrical works, is a gorgeous, limited run collaboration with the world-class Cleveland Orchestra called “The Good Peaches.”
The commissioned piece, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes (“Water by the Spoonful,” “In the Heights”), tells a simple folktale of a young girl who is sent by her seamstress mother to deliver a very special wedding dress to the Queen. The girl gets lost in an epic storm along the way and survives on the peaches she plucks out of the water over flooded orchards.
Interwoven with Hudes’ poetic storytelling are stirring excerpts from “Sea Interludes” and “Shaker Loops” by classical music and opera composers Benjamin Britten and John Adams, respectively, as well as modern dance choreographed by GroundWorks’ David Shimotakahara.
Adeptly directed by CPH’s Laura Kepley and The Cleveland Orchestra’s Brett Mitchell, this is the third such collaboration between these two powerhouse institutions....
Although the movements dominated by words and those dominated by music often fought each other for supremacy, “The Good Peaches” was an absolutely beautiful production.
To read the complete review, 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.
Review (Fort Worth Star-Telegram): Brett Mitchell's debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Brett Mitchell in concert with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at Dallas City Performance Hall on March 12, 2016.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has published a review Brett Mitchell's debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, making note (as did the Dallas Observer) of his adventurous programming:
The orchestra, situated within one of the most acoustically stunning rooms in North Texas, nimbly worked through [Wojciech Kilar's Orawa], its playing crisp yet propulsive, surging from [its] light, brisk opening moments to its thunderous finale.
[Adam Schoenberg's] Finding Rothko proved equally compelling... The full orchestra achieved what Mitchell described in his brief, pre-performance remarks as Schoenberg’s desire to make the visual auditory. Vivid swells of sound rolled forth, by turns dissonant and spectral, but always pulsing with life and luminosity...
Taken together [with Bryce Dessner's Lachrimae and St. Carolyn by the Sea], the program proved to be a fascinating fusion of artistic disciplines.
It also served as a reminder, in a somewhat incongruous setting, of rock’s eternal promise of youth—the oldest piece performed Saturday was from 1986—and how even a genre perceived as staid and set in its ways can be open to thrilling new avenues of expression, and, in the process, attract audiences that might never otherwise venture inside a proper concert hall.
To read the complete review, please click here.
Review (Dallas Observer): Brett Mitchell's debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Brett Mitchell leads his debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at Dallas City Performance Hall on March 11, 2016.
The Dallas Observer has published a review Brett Mitchell's debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, taking particular note of his adventurous programming:
Guest conductor Brett Mitchell raised the stakes in terms of repertoire, completely avoiding classical standards to present...a concert made up entirely of music written in the past thirty years.
While the Dallas Symphony has not had an exactly stellar record for new music in recent years, conductor Mitchell managed not only to introduce serious music of our time, but, with a careful and imaginative balance of composers and concepts, did so in an admirably palatable manner.
To read the complete review, please click here.
Video: Brett Mitchell leads The Cleveland Orchestra in concert at Patrick Henry School
CMSD News (Cleveland Metropolitan School District) has produced a video about Brett Mitchell's recent education program—called "A Matter of Time: What Makes Music Tick?"—presented with The Cleveland Orchestra at Patrick Henry School, including footage of the performance and a post-concert interview with Mr. Mitchell.
Review: Cleveland Cello Society
ClevelandClassical has reviewed Brett Mitchell's recent appearance with the Cleveland Cello Society, at which he led performances of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus and Randall Thompson's Alleluia, and conducted an interview with Stephen Geber, former principal cellist of The Cleveland Orchestra. To read this review, please click here.
Brett Mitchell to lead multiple subscription weeks with The Cleveland Orchestra in 2016-17 season
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced its 2016-17 season, during which Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell will lead multiple subscription weeks.
From March 2 to 4, 2017, Mr. Mitchell will lead an all-American program featuring the first Severance Hall performances of the Symphonic Suite from Leonard Bernstein's On the Waterfront, the first Cleveland Orchestra performances of Augusta Read Thomas's Violin Concerto No. 3 ("Juggler in Paradise") with concertmaster William Preucil, and Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3.
Mr. Mitchell will also lead the Orchestra's season finale from June 1 to 4, 2017, when he will conduct four performances of Leonard Bernstein's score for West Side Story alongside the film, in honor of the composer's upcoming centennial.
For complete details about The Cleveland Orchestra's 2016-17 season, please see this official news release and this article in The Plain Dealer.