CCM’s Department of Classical Guitar Celebrates 40 Years with Free Anniversary Concert on April 6

CCM Classical Guitar Ensemble members (left to right) Kirk Redman, Evan Fiehrer, Donald Broerman and Andrew Otte.

CCM presents a special 40th Anniversary Concert of classical guitar music performed by students and alumni from the Department of Classical Guitar at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 6 in Patricia Corbett Theater. This performance is FREE and open to the public, and a gala reception will follow in the Baur Room in UC’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts.

The performance is the centerpiece of a celebratory weekend during which students, alumni and supporters of the Classical Guitar Department will gather at CCM to celebrate the department’s 40th year. The concert will showcase CCM talent at all levels, featuring the CCM Classical Guitar Ensemble, three young guitarists from the Preparatory Department and several alumni duos and trios.

Two Free ‘Music in the Gorno Library’ Concerts Showcase CCM Talent This April

Join UC Libraries at two upcoming concerts to be held in the Albino Gorno Memorial Music (CCM) Library Reading Room.

• 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 3: The CCM Philharmonia will perform Haydn’s Symphonies 6, 7 and 8 (“Morning, Noon and Night”) conducted by CCM graduate student Aik Khai Pung.
• 2 p.m. Sunday, April 14: The inaugural concert on the CCM Library’s 1888 Steinway Parlor Grand piano will feature music arranged by Clara Schumann, edited by CCM faculty member Jonathan Kregor, associate professor of composition, musicology and theory. The music will be performed by students of CCM’s Michael Chertock, associate professor of keyboard studies, and Awadagin Pratt, associate professor of keyboard studies. Dr. Kregor will give remarks about the music.

CCM’s Stars of Tomorrow Present Annual Musical Theatre Senior Showcase This Thursday (7 p.m.), Friday (8 p.m.) and Saturday (8 p.m.)

CCM Musical Theatre’s graduating class of 2013.

Cincinnati audiences will get a sneak peek at an original showcase created by the 2013 graduating class from CCM’s Department of Musical Theatre during the annual “Not Famous Yet” Showcase, which runs from March 28 (Friends of CCM benefit performance) through March 30 in UC’s Patricia Corbett Theater.

The March 28 benefit performance starts at 7 p.m. and features dinner by the bite and a post-performance celebration. Tickets for this benefit event are on sale now.

The March 29 and 30 performances take place at 8 p.m. and are free, but reservations are required.

Performance Times

• 7 p.m. Thursday, March 28 — Friends of CCM Benefit
• 8 p.m. Friday, March 29
• 8 p.m. Saturday, March 30

CCM’s Stars of Tomorrow Present Annual Musical Theatre Senior Showcase March 28-30

CCM Musical Theatre’s graduating class of 2013.

Cincinnati audiences will get a sneak peek at an original showcase created by the 2013 graduating class from CCM’s Department of Musical Theatre during the annual “Not Famous Yet” Showcase, which runs from March 28 (Friends of CCM benefit performance) through March 30 in UC’s Patricia Corbett Theater.

The March 28 benefit performance starts at 7 p.m. and features dinner by the bite and a post-performance celebration. Tickets for this benefit event are on sale now.

The March 29 and 30 performances take place at 8 p.m. and are free, but reservations are required. Tickets for these free performances become available at noon on Monday, March 25.

LCT Awards ‘S.L.U.T.’ Top Prize in CCM’s TRANSMIGRATION Series

Panelists for the League of Cincinnati Theatres (LCT) have recognized S.L.U.T. as the best production at CCM’s 2013 TRANSMIGRATION Festival, the Drama department’s annual presentation of student written and produced work. Panelists awarded second place to Sentenced, and honorable mentions to 2122 Michigan Avenue and The Sherwin Williams Effect. Congratulations to all involved!

The fifth-annual festival allows the audience to experience half-hour works produced by small groups of Drama majors, who create and design all aspects of their productions from start to finish. The festival is an exciting event for both guests and the presenters, as audiences get the opportunity to see up to four very different pieces of new theatre in a single night and the students premiere works that are entirely their own. This year, six shows were presented. “TRANSMIGRATION teaches our actors to be entrepreneurs,” says Richard Hess, chair of CCM’s Drama Department and director of the TRANSMIGRATION Festival. “There are absolutely no holds barred, with the exception of the thirty-minute time limit, allowing our students to learn to express from within.”

The 2013 TRANSMIGRATION Festival’s New Works

Running March 7 – 9, this year’s TRANSMIGRATION festival will feature student-created new works 2122 MICHIGAN AVENUE, The Opening, Sentenced, The Sherwin Williams Effect, S.L.U.T. and Void.

Audience members will have the opportunity to customize their theater-going experience by choosing to watch up to four different productions, which are performed simultaneously and in non-traditional spaces throughout CCM’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts. Learn more about each of these new, student-created works after the jump!

CCM Drama Students Present Edgy, Original Works During TRANSMIGRATION Festival

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CCM Drama students continue to learn what it takes to produce their own art as they prepare for the 2013 TRANSMIGRATION Festival of Student-Created New Works taking place March 7-9 throughout CCM Village.

The fifth-annual festival allows the audience to experience half-hour works produced by small groups of Drama majors, who create and design all aspects of their productions from start to finish. Admission to the festival is free, but reservations are required.

A.B., Dolly, Ralph and Julia Cohen Chair in Drama Richard Hess.

The festival is an exciting event for both guests and the presenters, as audiences get the opportunity to see up to four very different pieces of new theatre in a single night and the students premiere works that are entirely their own. “TRANSMIGRATION teaches our actors to be entrepreneurs,” says Richard Hess, chair of CCM’s Drama Department and director of the TRANSMIGRATION Festival. “There are absolutely no holds barred, with the exception of the thirty-minute time limit, allowing our students to learn to express from within.”

TRANSMIGRATION came into being in response to the dynamic careers of today’s professional actors. Though auditioning and getting cast for roles is the conventional way for an actor to make a name for his or herself, “the second way to make work is to gather a group of like-minded people, get together and create something… students need to know how to go into a storefront theatre and say ‘we’re going to make something in this raw space,’” Hess asserts. TRANSMIGRATION gives students real-world creative experiences that will last and develop through the rest of their careers.

CCM Dance Showcase Spotlights Student Choreographers March 7 – 9

CCM showcases the work of student choreographers March 7-9. Photography by Will Brenner.

CCM proudly presents the next Studio Series production, featuring the original works of student dance choreographers, March 7-9 in UC’s Cohen Family Studio Theater. This production is free and open to the general public, but reservations are required. The 2013 Choreographers Showcase is directed by Assistant Professor of Dance Deirdre Carberry.

CCM Dance is constantly innovating and presenting new choreography, and this showcase is no exception. Junior ballet major Elizabeth Ernst found her inspiration in a set of traditional Latin pieces arranged by Cincinnati’s beloved “Prince of Pops” Erich Kunzel. “I knew that I wanted to choreograph for the show,” she explains. “But I had no idea what I wanted to do until one day I was cleaning my room and listening to music when one of the songs [arranged by Kunzel] came on, and I could not stop dancing! I knew from that point on that if I was going to choreograph, it was going to be to that music.” Ballet with a Latin twist was the result of Ernst’s vision, involving dancers performing to a recording of the Cincinnati Pops.

CCM Welcomes Renowned Cellist Claudio Bohórquez For Master Class on March 5

Renowned cellist Claudio Bohórquez comes to CCM for a master class on March 5.

CCM welcomes renowned cellist Claudio Bohórquez for a master class from 7 – 10 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5 in UC’s Robert J. Werner Recital. This session is free and open to the general public.

The master class will kick off with a solo performance by Bohórquez, who will then be joined by the Ariel Quartet for a movement of the Schubert Cello Quintet!

Bohórquez is not only an incredibly experienced and versatile performer, but he also holds the main Cello professorship at the Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart as well as a guest professorship at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.

CCM Undergraduate Opera Series Presents New Take on Mozart’s ‘The Marriage of Figaro’

CCM Professor of Voice Kenneth Shaw.

CCM’s Opera d’arte Series proudly presents Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s timeless opera buffa Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) from Feb. 22-24 in UC’s Cohen Family Studio Theater. Under the guidance of conductor Brett Scott and stage director Kenneth Shaw, talented undergraduate opera students will present this favorite of the classical opera repertoire with a unique 1960s-inspired aesthetic. Tickets to this production are free and become available at noon on Monday, Feb. 18. Reservations are required.

Mozart wrote this comic opera in Vienna in 1786, basing the work on a play by the French writer Pierre Beaumarchais. “Figaro was the first collaboration between Mozart and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte,“ Shaw explains, “and for their source material they chose Beaumarchais’ controversial La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro), the second part of a trilogy that began with Le Barbier de Séville (later the basis for the Rossini opera of the same name). Figaro the play was censored in Beaumarchais’ native France over concerns about its ‘subversive’ plot, which depicts the efforts of a Spanish nobleman, Count Almaviva, to seduce Suzanne, a beautiful young servant of his wife, only to be thwarted and humiliated by his wife, the Countess Rosina, working in concert with the Count’s servant, Figaro, who is also Suzanne’s fiancée.”