classical revolution ann arbor

Mendelssohn octet, with oboe on second violin part of course

Last Wednesday, a very surprising and wonderful thing happened: snowed-in members of the Cleveland Orchestra came to Silvio’s Organic Pizza for a night of chamber music. I thought I’d get down my account of what happened before it’s completely gone from my memory.

For us, this was a case of being in the right place at the right time: (1) they played Hill Auditorium last night just as the snowstorm was getting into full swing—a brilliant concert, by the way; (2) Wynton Marsalis & Jazz at Lincoln Center got stuck in Toronto; (3) we have chamber music jam sessions every Wednesday night; (4) I knew a violist in the orchestra, Joanna Patterson, from Seattle Youth Symphony; and (5) Liz Stover of UMS keeps track of us on Facebook. (Can I call this a “perfect storm” without it sounding quite as cliché as usual?) Thanks to Liz and Claire Rice at UMS for connecting things together, to Carol Lee Iott, personnel director of the Cleveland Orchestra, for getting the word out on their end, and to Stephen Shipps, violin professor, for bringing in a raft of new student musicians that hadn’t been to CR before. And especially to Silvio Medoro, who made his wonderful pizza joint the perfect place for the whole shebang on extremely short notice.

I was blown away by how many Cleveland Orchestra members showed up to play, which I don’t think is just a statement about the Wednesday night scene in Ann Arbor—it shows a real openness on their part. Two appearances by celebrities (at least within the classical music world) were particularly unexpected: concertmaster Bill Preucil, who had dinner plans at 7:30, showed up right at 6:30 to play quartets for an hour with Joanna and a rotating band of local cellists and violinists. Later in the evening, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano soloist touring with the orchestra, jumped into the fray with the finale from the Brahms G minor piano quartet, elevating the dinky little piano we had donated a few months ago to newfound heights.

In all, we played music from 6:30 PM to nearly midnight, the program including:

• Various Beethoven and Mendelssohn quartet movements
• Schubert cello quintet
• Bach trio sonatas
• Brahms G minor piano quartet (finale)
• Beethoven serenade for flute, violin, and viola
• Mozart horn quintet
• Brahms B major piano trio
• Rachmaninoff Vocalise arranged for three basses
• Mozart flute quartet
• Mendelssohn octet (with oboe on second violin)

and probably more, but my memory is limited.

An attempt at listing the musicians that played, in alphabetical order:

• Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
• Martha Baldwin, cello
• Ed Baskerville, cello
• Charles Bernard, cello
• Katie von Braun, violin
• Lindsey Bordner, violin
• Charles Carleton, bass
• Hans Clebsch, horn
• Scott Dixon, bass
• Max Dimoff, bass
• Alicia Doudna, violin
• Max Geissler, cello
• David Harrell, cello
• Kat Lawhead, viola
• Amy Lee, violin
• Hilary Lewis, viola
• Corie Lint, cello
• Joanna Patterson, viola
• William Preucil, violin
• Frank Rosenwein, oboe
• Jake Saunders, cello
• Julia Siciliano, piano
• Anča Skálová, violin
• Josh Smith, flute
• Brian Thornton, cello
• Dan Winnick, violin

and I know I’m forgetting the names of at least one bass student, two violin students, and probably others.

I was also happy to see administrative bigwigs there—along with Carol Lee were Cleveland executive director Gary Hanson and general manager Gary Ginstling, and life-of-the-party Ken Fischer, president of UMS. I think their presence was a good thing not because Classical Revolution needs direct support from or entanglement with large, well-endowed arts organizations, but rather that a group of people that may read about things like CR, even abstractly like the idea, were able to see it in the flesh. Under normal circumstances, I suspect a trip to a local Cleveland bar may not have made it onto their busy schedules.

Zachary Lewis of the Cleveland Plain Dealer was traveling with the orchestra, and wrote a nice little piece, focusing of course on the “orchestra’s unexpected night off” angle.

Let’s just hope blizzards keep more orchestras stuck in town. When’s the Berlin Philharmonic here next?