CCM Hosts Gathering of Midwestern “El Sistema” Inspired Programs This Weekend

This Saturday, May 9, CCM will welcome “El Sistema” inspired programs from throughout the region for the Fourth Annual Midwestern Seminario.

Hosted by CCM’s Preparatory Department and Office of Community Engagement, the event will draw nearly 200 young performing artists who are involved in programs inspired by “El Sistema,” Venezuela’s National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras. Over the past 35 years, El Sistema has evolved into a world-renowned youth development program, which uses music as a vehicle for social change. El Sistema’s success in helping children build better futures has led to the creation of similar programs in over 30 countries around the world.

Participating programs include North Limestone Music Works (Lexington, KY), Shift: Englewood Youth Orchestra (Chicago), Q the Music (Dayton, Ohio), MYCincinnati (Cincinnati) and the Avondale Youth Orchestra (Cincinnati).

The Seminario‘s guest speakers will include CCM Dean Peter Landgren and UC President Santa J. Ono.

The program on Saturday, May 9, will culminate with a participant’s concert at 4 p.m. in CCM’s Corbett Auditorium. The concert is free and open to the general public!

The concert will be conducted by CCM alumni Eddy Kwon (BM Jazz Studies, 2011) and Isaac Selya (DMA Orchestral Conducting, 2014), along with Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras Artistic Director Daniel Chetel.

“We believe in the power of the arts to bring people together to create a strong, vibrant community,”  explains CCM Director of Community Engagement Anne Cushing-Reid. “This gathering reflects our ongoing commitment to community engagement and collaboration. We are also proud to support the efforts of the CCM students and alumni who are working locally with MYCincinnati, through a grant provided by ArtsWave.”

You can learn more about the other community engagement initiatives fueled by ArtsWave’s grant support here.

CCM Alumnus Carmine Miranda Releases New Album to Rave Reviews

CCM alumnus and current doctoral candidate Carmine Miranda (BM Violoncello, 2010; MM Violoncello, 2012) is making waves with his latest recording project, which unearths Carlo Alfredo Piatti’s 12 Caprices for solo cello. This Navona Records release is already receiving rave reviews from music critics around the world.

“Piatti (1822-1901) was a renowned virtuoso and teacher whose name had faded into obscurity – except to cellists, who know his 12 Caprices from their studies,” explains Mary Ellyn Hutton in her review for Music in Cincinnati. “Miranda… seeks to return them to the active repertoire, to take their place beside Niccolo Paganini’s Caprices for Solo Violin and Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello and not treated ‘as mere etudes’,” she continues.

Fanfare Magazine describes the album as, “incredible performances of works that should interest every cellist and that should be in the library of anyone who appreciates the cello and hearing it played by a consummate master like Carmine Miranda.”

According to CCN, “at a mere 25 years of age, this recording places Carmine Miranda as the youngest cellist to professionally record and release this repertoire worldwide.”

Miranda’s Piatti: 12 Caprices for Solo Cello is available now through Amazon, iTunes, Classics Online, Spotify and the Naxos Music Library. Learn more about the album by visiting http://navonarecords.com.

About Carmine Miranda
Born in Valencia in 1988 to Italian immigrants and moving to the United States at an early age, Carmine Miranda is a Venezuelan/American cellist, international soloist and recording artist. Miranda began his musical studies at the age of seven at the Carabobo State Music Conservatory in Venezuela, where he studied his first years of Theory and Solfege, finally graduating from the Private Institute of Musical Education or I.P.E.M. He studied cello with cellists Luisa Fuentes, Valmore Nieves and William Molina, at the Latin-American Academy of Violoncello, and the Simon Bolivar Conservatory of Music (the institution that spawned the famous “El Sistema”). At the same time he was a member of the National Youth Orchestra and the Orchestra of Beethoven under the direction of maestro Giuseppe Sinoppoli.

At CCM, he studied with Lee Fiser and Yehuda Hanani, obtaining a Bachelors of Arts in music, Masters Degree and Doctorate’s degree candidacy. He has participated in several music competitions as a soloist and chamber player winning several recognitions and awards at a national and international level.

An avid soloist, Miranda has performed with several chamber ensembles, orchestras and has performed in prominent concert halls and music festivals including Carnegie Hall, the Aula Magna Hall (one of the largest and most important halls in Latin America), Bowdoin Music Festival, Close Encounters with Music Series in Great Barrington, NY, among others. Miranda has collaborated with recognized international artists such as Yehuda Hanani, Awadagin Pratt, Rodolfo Saglimbeni, Spanish composer Luis Serrano Alarcón and Grammy Nominated composer Michael Hoppé.

At the age of 22, Miranda recorded the Six Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach under the label Centaur Records, joining the ranks of the youngest in the world to record the entire work. In 2013 Carmine completed the United States premiere of Nikita Koshkin’s “L’istesso Tempo” composition for cello and guitar. He was also selected to represent the University of Cincinnati as a soloist for a multi-state American tour with the CCM Wind Orchestra culminating with an opening night performance at the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) National Conference in North Carolina’s Aycock Auditorium. Currently Miranda is a recording artist for Parma Navona Records and plays on a 2005 Jules Azzi cello made in New York City.

CCM Student Isaac Selya Profiled By ‘Soapbox Cincinnati’

Orchestral conducting graduate student and Queen City Chamber Opera founder Isaac Selya.

We are pleased to report that Soapbox Cincinnati has profiled DMA candidate Isaac Selya, exploring his wok with Queen City Chamber Opera in a feature length article!

An outlet for emerging artists to advance their careers, Queen City Chamber Opera is supported in part by CCM’s ArtsWave Community Partnership grant. Selya explains, “CCM and conservatories in general are teaching musicians to be entrepreneurial, to create their own jobs. So they’ve been very supportive because this is the type of thing that creates more jobs for their graduates.”

You can read the full Soapbox Cincinnati feature here.

Price Hill String Quartet Presents FREE All-Mendelssohn Concert on May 2

The Price Hill String Quartet.

CCM’s new Community Partner the Price Hill String Quartet will present a FREE all-Mendelssohn program beginning at 7:30 p.m. this Thursday, May 2, at the LISH Art Gallery in Price Hill. This concert is open to the general public and will conclude with the first and last movements of the Mendelssohn Octet performed by the Quartet and four members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra!

The Price Hill Quartet is the string quartet of Music for Youth in Cincinnati (MYCincinnati). The Quartet is comprised of two MYCincinnati directors and two current CCM students, and is funded in part by CCM and CCM’s ArtsWave Community Partnership grant.

Learn more about CCM’s New Community Engagement Initiatives here.

CCM Announces New Community Engagement Initiatives Fueled by 2012-13 ArtsWave Grant

Participants from the Music for Youth in Cincinnati’s (MYCincinnati’s) free youth orchestra program with John Morris Russell (center) in Price Hill.

CCM is proud to announce several new collaborations supported by a grant from ArtsWave. Awarded in June 2012, CCM’s $50,000 ArtsWave Community Partnership grant was designed to develop mutually beneficial projects that will advance both organizations’ goals for the community and the arts sector.

ArtsWave’s generous support will help CCM enhance its current collaborative relationship with the School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) and will also allow CCM to formalize new partnerships with several community outreach programs, almost all of which were initiated by CCM faculty, students or alumni.

CCM Students Give Back To The Community With Cincinnati Out Reach Music Project

Cincinnati’s Fox 19 recently profiled the Cincinnati Out Reach (COR) Music Project, an after-school program co-founded and directed by CCM graduate students Deron Hall and Louisa Shepherd.

“COR Music Project aligns my professional arena with my personal arena as far as the things I am most interested in,” Hall explains. “I have a really strong interest in using the arts to change lives.”

Read Fox 19’s feature here.

CCM Students Present Two Rarely Performed Mozart Operas June 9 and 10

 

This Saturday and Sunday, the CCM student-organized Projekt Wolfgang will present two rarely performed Mozart operas, Bastien und Bastienne (1768) and Der Schauspieldirektor (1786), at the Hoffner Lodge in Northside. Each performance will feature accompaniment by the Queen City Chamber Opera Orchestra. Antoine-François López and Isaac Selya conduct.

Admission to the double-bill performance is free. Projekt Wolfgang will be accepting donations at the door for Music for Youth in Cincinnati (MYCincinnati), an El Sistema inspired program using classical music to transform the lives of children in Price Hill.