Canton Symphony Goes For Baroque

Canton Symphony Goes For Baroque

By Tom Wachunas 

     If not performed in a properly balanced fashion, Baroque-era music is often a more cerebral encounter than an emotionally alluring one to the listener. Musicians can get so caught up in delivering the music’s characteristically frothy ornamentation (which does allow for some exciting virtuosity on the part of soloists) that their technical prowess overshadows its intended “spiritual” affect, which can range from dramatic urgency and melancholy to reverential majesty and unfettered joy.

    Fortunately, the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) avoided that shortcoming during its all-Baroque concert on November 3 in Umstattd Performing Arts Hall. Not surprisingly, in performing the nine works on the program (four by Handel, and one each by J.S. Bach, Jeremiah Clarke, Arcangelo Corelli, Johann Pachelbel and Antonio Vivaldi), the orchestra was technically faultless. Most important and inspiring, though, was the pure expressivity of textures and moods conveyed by the musicians.

   Genuine emoting was abundantly present in the four vocal pieces that featured guest artist Erin Cooper Gay, who is both a professional French Horn player and a remarkable soprano. Her singing is well endowed with a seductively warm, lyric quality. In fact, Gay was at one point the CSO principal horn for eight years, and I can’t help but think that the aural character of that instrument has somehow magically fused with her voice.

   She clearly captivated the audience with her characterization of mournful solemnity in Lascia ch’oi pianga (Let me weep), the most famous aria from Handel’s opera, Rinaldo. But the versatile Gay also offered a delightfully lighthearted side in her portrait of a frenetic caffeine addict sipping coffee in J.S. Bach’s whimsical Cantata No. 211, aka The Coffee Cantata. Introducing the work, a very good-humored Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann regaled the audience with a schmaltzy short monologue on coffee, the “devil’s brew,” as he at one point quaffed heartily from a mug of beer.  

     Gay’s performance of the Vivaldi tone painting, In Furore Iustissimae Irae (In the Fury of the Most Just Wrath), was utterly breathtaking. The work is a propulsive expression of God’s anger at human malfeasance, an impassioned promise of repentance, and an otherwise electrifying showpiece for coloratura virtuosity. Gay embraced its melodic leaps and churning chromatic descents with astonishing vigor.  

    In Let the Bright Seraphim, an aria from Handel’s oratorio, Samson, Gay was ebullience personified. The rich timbre of her voice was wholly stunning in her intricate harmonies with Scott Johnston, CSO principal trumpet, who had dazzled us earlier in the program with Jeremiah Clarke’s famous The Prince of Denmark’s March.

    Along with a mesmerizing rendition of Pachelbel’s iconic Canon in D Major, and a fittingly majestic reading of Handel’s Watermusic, this program in its entirety rekindled my appreciation of Baroque music. Additionally, the concert was a tantalizing demonstration of CSO’s bilingual capacity, so to speak. These players are eminently fluent in the musical languages of mind and heart.    

 

    PHOTOS: (top) Soprano Erin Cooper Gay; CSO principal trumpeter Scott Johnston    

Joseph Hertzi's Grand Adventure

Joseph Hertzi’s Grand Adventure

By Tom Wachunas

     I have to smile when I still hear some people affectionately refer to the Canton Museum of Art (CMA) as “The Institute.” While the CMA assumed that name on its 60^th anniversary in 1995, these folks also remember its earlier designation, the Canton Art Institute, which traces its beginnings to 1935 and the Little Civic Art Gallery in the Canton Public Library. In 1941, the Institute moved to the renovated Case Mansion at 1717 Market Avenue N., once listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, but demolished in the early 1990s. By that time, the Institute had long before moved to the newly built Cultural Center for the Arts, which officially opened in December, 1970.   

    Any appreciation of the Institute/Museum would be woefully deficient without considering – indeed savoring – the very remarkable contributions and accomplishments of Joseph R. Hertzi (whom I will henceforth occasionally refer to as Joe). During its Annual Meeting on September 25, the CMA Board of Trustees conferred on him the title “Director Emeritus” in recognition of his 38 years of service.

   ‘Service?’ Quite so. But after my delightful two hour visit with Joe at his North Canton home on October 7, and receiving a hefty pile of collected newspaper articles, photos, catalogues and annual reports to peruse, I think we should add another descriptor to our appreciation of his truly distinguished tenure: legacy.

 He and his wife-to-be, Judith (who passed away in 2011), were two of only three students to graduate from the Akron Art Institute School of Design in 1954. When Joe spoke of his wife of 54 years during our talk, his visage took on a palpable glow as he tenderly recalled her artistry and their passionately shared commitment to art education. Helen Carringer wrote in an article for the Canton Repository in 1963 that “Judith and Joe Hertzi go together something like salt and pepper or bread and butter.”

    After graduating, and during their courtship, Judith began teaching at the Canton Art Institute while Joe worked at Goodyear. At her suggestion he entered a painting in the Institute’s 1955 juried Fall Show of Ohio artists. And here, it’s fair to say, is where Mr. Hertzi’s art career began in earnest. The painting - an abstract called Orchestration in Jazz and inspired by Stan Kenton’s music - won a prize and was bought by Institute Director Joseph Hutchinson, becoming the first of several Hertzi originals to be purchased over the years for the Institute’s permanent collection.

    Hutchinson (who was to become Best Man at the Joe and Judith’s wedding) invited Joe to join the staff in 1956 as Director of Education. Then, in 1961, Joe was named Institute Director, commencing a ten-year period during which, according to the Institute’s 50^th Anniversary Commemorative publication in 1985, he “…almost single handedly ran the Institute. Many of the traditions and practices of the Institute observed to this day began under his direction, and there was a dramatic increase in the number of exhibitions with special emphasis on local and regional artists, growth in membership, more and varied educational programs, and attendance at Institute art classes went well over the 1,000 mark.”

    Additionally, he was highly instrumental in the years-long planning stages of the new Cultural Center for the Arts. With eyes widening as he recalled those days and the many that would follow, and with a broad, wistful smile, he nodded and said, “There were just so many adventures we had.”

   More adventures would ensue after 1971, when for six years Joe shared directorship with two interim directors before being reappointed to full control from 1977 to 1988. His accomplishments during this time included the All Ohio Biennial Exhibition (an event that was eventually discontinued after Hertzi’s directorship), significant additions to the permanent collection, great improvements in the scope and professional quality of exhibitions, and substantial growth in community and corporate support.

    Among the particularly high points were two exhibitions in 1985. For the first time since its founding in 1866, the prestigious American Watercolor Society (AWS) premiered its 118^th annual juried show outside New York City. The Institute was already dedicated to showing Ohio watercolorists as well as eager to show touring versions of AWS exhibits. But this time, Hertzi had succeeded in prompting AWS president Mario Cooper to bring the original exhibit here, and more than 11,000 visitors converged on the Institute to view it. And certainly even more celebrated that same year was “Andrew Wyeth: Works from Public and Private Collections.” Hertzi and Donald Getz designed the catalogue that contained an essay on the artist and his work written by M.J. Albacete, who had become the Institute’s first Associate Director in 1979.

   Through it all, Joe continued to be an active artist, pursuing a variety of media and styles. He and Judith raised two daughters, Lisa and Emily, avidly instilling in them their own artistic passions. Joe continued working with the Museum until his retirement in 1994.

    And with that, I will end by going back to the opening moment of our invigorating meeting. Call it a welcoming ritual, or an intriguing peace offering. All visitors to the Joseph Hertzi household are quickly invited to select one of his original artworks in the form of a column of transparent colored resin beads mounted on a metal rod, called a Beadsicle. The simple, charming name originally came from Joe’s eight year-old grandson, Benjamin Cornelius.

    I regard my newly acquired Beadsicle with a great degree of reverence and gratitude. It does everything Joe hoped it might do, such as, in his words “…provide spiritual sensibility and healing qualities,” and perhaps much more. It’s a kind of magic wand, actually. For when I recently hung it outdoors, it caught the breeze, and the western sun, and began twirling in a tantalizing dance of multicolored glimmerings all in a vertical row. I thought of Joe’s years of dedication, the accumulated years, one-by-one, and vicariously embraced his hopes, goals, dreams, successes. So many adventures. The marvelous cadence of a life in art.

    PHOTOS (from top): Joe Hertzi in his studio; Orchestration for Jazz, oil on board, 1955, courtesy Canton Museum of Art; some collected documentation; my Beadsicle, made by Joe Hertzi

Digesting a Faustian Farce

Digesting a Faustian Farce

By Tom Wachunas

 

     On its surface, the narrative premise of Little Shop of Horrors, currently playing at Players Guild Theatre in Canton, is patently ridiculous, despite the fact that it’s intended to be unabashedly farcical. Here’s a sci-fi horror spoof about a nebbishy Skid Row flower shop worker who is promised fame and fortune if he feeds human flesh and blood to a voracious alien houseplant intent on dominating the world. Is this stage art of any real consequence?

    Then again, let’s not forget the maxim offered by a master of comic absurdity, Johnny Carson: “If you buy the premise you buy the bit.” I find it interesting that the original working script, written by Charles Griffith for the 1960 film that inspired this stage musical, was titled “The Passionate People Eater.” Operative term here: passionate.

    Directed and choreographed by Michael Lawrence Akers, this tongue-in-cheek Guild production does indeed have passion, though certainly not of the high-brow heroic sort. Call it passion for parody. And when delivered with panache, as is the case here with Akers’ sizzling cast, parody can be an efficacious art in itself.

    Tom Bryant turns in a credible and sturdy portrayal of Mr. Mushnik. World-weary, cranky and domineering, he’s the owner of a flower shop on the verge of closing for lack of business. But he finds a giddy new life unfolding when his assistant, Seymour, acquires an exotic houseplant that attracts lucrative media and public attention.

   Playing Seymour, Matthew Heppe is spot-on as a lovably nervous nerd  (right down to his taped eyeglasses) who pines so much for the girl of his dreams, co-worker Audrey, that he names his prized plant Audrey II. While Heppe’s singing voice doesn’t employ any showy vibrato, his tonality is nonetheless confident, pure and warm.

    Sarah Marie Young is delightfully cheeky in her role of the scatterbrained Audrey. Her singing of Somewhere That’s Green is rich with a sweet woundedness, and easily the show’s most genuinely touching song.

    Other than the carnivorous Audrey II, the human antagonist here is Audrey’s sadistic biker- dentist boyfriend, Orin, played by Ryan Nehlen, who is as abusive to Audrey as he is to his patients. The audacious Nehlen is both chilling and utterly hilarious, like some sociopathic Fonzie from a parallel universe. He gets his comeuppance in one of the show’s most raucous scenes (with Seymour), singing Now (It’s Just the Gas).

   Another electrifying component of the production is the saucy trio of women characters played by Russelle’ Sanchez (Ronnette), Ruby Myles (Crystal), and Tahja Grier (Chiffon). Like a street-wise Greek chorus, they bring a palpable sparkle to the musical score – a spicy blend of early 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and Motown. Several times during the matinee performance I saw on October 20, the trio’s singing got so lost in its own swagger that the lyrics were obscured and harmonies slightly off-pitch. But in the larger scheme of things, and given the sheer glow of the trio’s infectious energy (made all the more tangible in the intimate surrounds of the Guild’s arena theater), it was a minor flaw.

   And even what the audience doesn’t see on stage makes a vital contribution. Bart Herman is the off-stage voice of Audrey II, and his facile vocalizing gives the cantankerous carnivore’s menacing demands a seductive, even soulful edge. Inside the huge Audrey II is puppeteer Stephen Middaugh, who actually animates the creature with a variety of apropos moves and moods. Also from off-stage, the sound from the super-hot live band directed by Steve Parsons is in perfect aural balance with the singing.

    While there’s nothing intrinsically wrong about escapist entertainment, I nonetheless left the theater thinking that this particular show is as much a cautionary tale for our time as it is simply a whacky, macabre “comedy.” There’s no happy ending to Seymour’s deal with the devil, as it were. The story is perhaps a sobering parody of how our modern culture is consumed by its monstrous pursuit of material gain and celebrity. Food for thought, to be sure.

Little Shop of Horrors, presented by the Canton Players Guild Theatre, shows at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, THROUGH NOVEMBER 3, 1001 Market Ave. N in Canton. Tickets $17 at  www.playersguildtheatre.com or at 330-453-7617

    PHOTOS, courtesy Michael Lawrence Akers: (Top) Sarah Marie Young as Audrey, Matthew Heppe as Seymour; (Bottom) Bart Herman (left), Stephen Middaugh

Joie de la Danse

Joie de la Danse

By Tom Wachunas

 

“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”  -Merce Cunningham

 

    Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. In the 21 years I’ve been back in Canton (after 14 years in New York City), writing about the visual and performing (local theatre and the Canton Symphony) arts around here, I’ve written nothing on dance. This is a glaring irony, considering that nearly half of my published journalistic output in New York was in the realm of dance – Modern dance, to be specific. This is not to say I had any disdain for classical ballet, especially considering that virtually all the best modern dancers I encountered in New York were well trained in at least the rudiments of that form.

    Compared to the flourishing dance landscape of New York, I wrongly assumed that Canton of the 1990s was a veritable desert in that regard. And honesty compels me to confess that whether from laziness or effitist snobbery (as in, ‘can any really good dance come from Canton?’) on my part, I never seriously considered much less saw the Canton Ballet in performance. Call it a classic case of contempt prior to investigation.

    After seeing the October 11 Director’s Choice concert at the Canton Palace Theatre, I can say only that, with hat in hand, I’ve been missing a deeply significant element of the Canton cultural profile.

    Under the leadership and training provided by Cassandra Crowley, the Canton Ballet Artistic and Executive Director since 1980, dancers from the company have garnered considerable recognition in prestigious competitions as well as moving on to dance professionally with highly reputable companies. The level of technical excellence required for such achievements was for the most part abundantly evident during the October 11 event, which was a thoroughly engaging mix of traditional (i.e., more classically-oriented) and modern choreography.

    Among the more enthralling works on the program was Jubilation, choreographed by Angelo Lemmo, Canton Ballet’s Choreographer in Residence since 1991. Set to a medley of traditional gospel songs, the work is a tour de force of soulful expressivity – at once graceful, sensual and visceral. Those qualities were particularly well personified in a duet by Bradley Beckwith with Kirstyn Wolonsky during a stunning version of “Amazing Grace.”

     After intermission, Wolonsky, a 9-year Canton Ballet student and junior at Lake High School, was utterly hypnotic in her poignant solo during the meditative Glimmer of Hope, choreographed by Christina Digiuseppe. Wolonsky’s fluidity was magical, making me wonder at how she could so effortlessly transition from her repeatedly lithe, recumbent floor rolls and extensions back into upright position.

    Guest artist Ethan Lee, who trained for ten years under Crowley at Canton Ballet and is now a member of NEOS Dance Company of Mansfield, was certainly mesmerizing enough in two works during the first half of the program. But nowhere was he more physically and emotionally commanding than in the second half’s Hellas, an intense, sinewy solo work set to music by J.S. Bach and choreographed by Jin Byung Cheol.

    The piece – indeed the entire evening – refreshed my long-neglected appreciation of seeing dance live on stage. I was delightfully reminded that of all humanity’s forms of codified expression, dance is arguably the most primordial. And Terpsichore may well be the most ancient Muse, still inspiring compelling responses to being alive.

 

    PHOTO: The Dance Class, by Edgar Degas            

Prismatic Devotions

Prismatic Devotions

By Tom Wachunas

 

    “Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the Universe.” -   Galileo

    “Geometry is the knowledge of the eternally existent.” –Pythagoras

    “Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless.” –Euripides

    Exhibit: math.LOGOS.music – language of The Divine, work by Amy Schlabach, THROUGH NOVEMBER 3, at Little Art Gallery, located in the North Canton Library, 185 N. Main Street, North Canton, 330-499-4712 Ext. 312,  http://www.ncantonlibrary.com/?q=little_art_gallery

    Let’s get spiritual – and personal. I try not to use the word “powerful” too lightly when describing the impact that some works of art have on me. But in this case, Amy Schlabach’s vibrant paintings merit that term and then some. Here I mean ‘powerful’ to signify what I consider to be the single most edifying function and capacity of art: To transport both mind and heart to a specific spiritual place; to reflect, honor and otherwise successfully direct our attentions to the source of all human creativity - God.

    Before reading any of the pieces’ titles, or Schlabach’s other written materials provided by the gallery, even the quickest glance at these radiant, iridescent paintings imparts an experience that is as much “religious” as it is purely aesthetic. It helps to know that the capitalized word LOGOS in the title of the show means WORD in Greek. And here, not just any word, but the word, in reference to Christ, as boldly revealed in the first verse of the gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

    Schlabach’s deep appreciation of (and college degree in) mathematics generated fervent awe of her Creator. Mathematics is a lens – or better yet, prism – through which she sees evidence of a Divine plan. Her acrylic paintings are meditative, harmonious fusions of geometric and organic shapes saturated with sumptuous color. These are abstract configurations that are, like much of mathematics itself, executed with impressive, formulaic exactitude. Yet for all of their hard edges and crisply defined shapes, they nonetheless pulse with a soft, painterly energy, evoking the undulating luminescence of stained glass windows in a church. It’s a visual quality greatly heightened by the generous addition - to her already regal palette -  of powdered 24K gold, along with silver and copper.

    There’s also a musicality about these compositions in the way Schlabach establishes varying rhythmic patterns of shapes and linearities within the picture plane, suggesting what one might call the Divine heartbeat of the universe, at once cosmic and profoundly intimate. In her statement, she cites her musical inspiration this way: “Behind the ethereal harmonies of music is the calculable beauty of mathematics. Numbers weave a dance through the overtones, timbre, pitch, and rhythms of music.”  

    What I find most enlivening about this body of work shouldn’t be a surprise to those of you who have been reading my posts with any regularity. In the context of the often ugly pluralism of ideas and forms we can encounter in postmodernist art, the real power and beauty of this exhibit is its single-minded, courageous declaration of faith in Biblical truth. Here is an eloquent reminder that mathematics isn’t so much a human invention per se as much as it is one of the many ways (gifts, actually) God uses to reveal himself to us.

    But most important, the Word.  Schlabach’s triptych, Godhead, is a gorgeous homage to the Trinity, with the Hebrew word for Eternal Father in the left panel and, signifying the Holy Spirit, a dove in the right panel. Hovering in the center, the Cross of Christ. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17)

    I’ll sing to that.   

     PHOTOS, courtesy Elizabeth Blakemore (Little Art Gallery Curator), from top: The Godhead; Revelation 22:1,2 ; Archimedes’ Constant (y)

Refined Crudities

Refined Crudities

By Tom Wachunas

 

    “There is no art without intoxication. But I mean a mad intoxication! Let reason teeter! Delirium! The highest degree of delirium! Plunged in burning dementia! Art is the most enrapturing orgy within man's reach. Art must make you laugh a little and make you a little afraid. Anything as long as it doesn't bore.”  -Jean Dubuffet

    EXHIBIT: Curiosities: Work by Tom Megalis, THROUGH OCTOBER 26 at Translations Art Gallery, 331 Cleveland Avenue NW, downtown Canton  www.translationsart.com/curiosities  http://www.megalisart.com/

 

   This collection of two and three-dimensional works (something of a mini-retrospective, actually) is a raucous hybridization of modernist visual languages. The earliest language goes back 100 years to Cubism, with its radical deconstruction of the painted picture plane and its integration of found objects.  From there, it would be difficult to believe that Tom Megalis hasn’t consciously distilled a syntax that blends such dialects as Jean Dubuffet’s art brut, Saul Steinberg’s off-kilter cartoons, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s oracular primitivism, or Tim Burton’s more macabre figurations, to name just some.

    That said, Megalis certainly brings his own imaginative recipe for animated storytelling - both prosaic and poetic - to this multiplicity of influences. Combined with his dizzying arsenal of fabrication techniques and media (read his statement at the gallery or on the Translations web page), he has concocted a highly textured gumbo, as it were, or chunky-style hunter’s stew of motley characters and narratives.

   Some of his depictions - his jarring Trouble at the Doorstep from 1998, or the dowdy Smoking and Drinking Woman (2011), for example - are earthy, essentially low-relief sculptures, scruffily painted and constructed with utilitarian detritus such as slices of wood, scrap metal, and corrugated board. His three-dimensional pieces, such as the sinewy musician in Flute Shed, and the whimsical Brush Head Man, are gritty, highly tactile assemblages full of humor and mischief.

    The more recent (2013) acrylic and spray painting, The Birth, is a commandingly sprawling abstraction. Far from a romanticized translation of wondrous or tender nativity, this is a visceral, writhing array of amorphous anatomical shapes interspersed with thick paint splats and drips – an altogether electrified grimace.   

   In general, the physical rawness of this art exudes a picaresque sensibility,   not too unlike the untamed, indelicate spirit we once commonly associated with “outsider art.” So yes, to borrow from the Dubuffet quote above, this is indeed delirious art that can make you laugh,… or be a little afraid. The collection here presents a tenuous balance of innocent playfulness with palpable angst. Still, it’s art that intoxicates with an uncanny mystique.

    PHOTOS, from top: The Birth; Trouble at the Doorstep; Brush Head Man; Eden; Stand Up 

A Mixed Scottish Bag from Canton Symphony Orchestra

A Mixed Scottish Bag from Canton Symphony Orchestra

By Tom Wachunas

 

    What more appropriate way to begin a Scottish-themed program than with a live pipe and drum band? Members of the Celtic Eagle Pipe Band joined the Canton Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in opening its 2013- 2014 season with Marches and Airs, written by local composer and Music Director of the Tuscarawas Philharmonic, Eric Benjamin.

    In his program notes, Benjamin made no secret of his love for the sound of bagpipes.  Addressing the task of effectively blending the orchestra with the sequence of six traditional Scottish tunes that comprise the work, he wrote, “As the music exists for pipes and drums alone, the challenge for me as an arranger was to come up with interesting things for the orchestra to do so as to contribute something unique to the sequence.”

    Not least among the challenges was to allow the orchestra instruments to be heard against a loud group of three pipers and two drummers. When the piece began, with distant, dream-like tones from the bagpipes emanating from the rear of the auditorium, there was every indication that a pleasing aural blend was achievable as the orchestra echoed the haunting effect from the stage.

    The performance waxed problematic, however, when the band marched to the very front of the house to play the remainder of the piece. Here, the famous (or infamous?) Scottish two-tone pipe wail became an obstacle to hearing the orchestra. To be fair, there were some audible enough passages wherein the orchestra delivered genuinely stirring and lush melodic transitions between pipe tunes. But such moments were short-lived respites from the seemingly incessant off-pitch piercings of the bagpipes. Notably absent from the overall sound was a counter- balance that might have been accomplished with elevated sonority from the bass instruments. Yet for all of that, the performance exuded a type of frenetic heroism, prompting a portion of the audience to a standing ovation.

    Violinist William Preucil, concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra, was the guest soloist for the second work on the program, Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. If wizardly technique were the sole measure of perfect playing, this performance would indeed qualify as a flawless gem. Through all four movements, the work calls for commanding virtuosity from the soloist in articulating flurries of arpeggios, sustained trills and crisp double-stoppings. Preucil met that requirement with astonishing precision and fluidity.   

    Largely missing, though, was the emotional resonance of the folk melodies which inspired the composer. The prevailing spirit here seemed more intellectual than lyrical.  As the sonic temperature of Preucil’s playing remained somewhat tepid throughout, Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann kept the orchestra at a similarly understated level, no doubt to stay balanced with both Preucil’s soft touch and the important, lovely accompanying solo work  from CSO principal harpist Nancy Patterson. As it was, the performance elicited another standing ovation.

    So too the evening’s final work, Mendelssohn’s magnificent Symphony No. 3, the “Scottish.”  Only this time, the reaction from the audience seemed more unanimous and palpably electric, surely because the orchestra had shed all traces of the overly-finessed restraint so apparent in the previous work.

    Mendelssohn’s compelling and evocative musicality, especially in the drama of the third movement and vivacious majesty of the finale, provided solid ground from which the orchestra could truly soar. With impeccable artistry, the CSO demonstrated the full range of its technical and expressive capabilities. And nowhere in this remarkable body of musicians are those elements more evident than in the powerful, refined sonority of the string section. This was the orchestra we came to hear.

    PHOTOS (from top): CSO Music Director Gerhardt Zimmermann; Composer Eric Benjamin; Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil

    www.cantonsymphony.org