CCM Announces 2013-14 Mainstage Concert Series Schedule

Photography by Dottie Stover.

CCM is pleased to announce initial details on its 2013-14 Mainstage Series of concert performances. Encompassing more than 40 different concerts, this series begins with a production of Verdi’s grand opera Don Carlos on Sept. 22 and concludes with the annual concerto competition-winners concert on April 11.

The internationally acclaimed Ariel Quartet will present a complete tour of Beethoven’s string quartets as part of CCM’s upcoming season, with six concerts scheduled for January, February and March.

CCM’s 2013-14 concert series also features a rare staged performance of Bach’s St. John Passion presented in conjunction with the Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts, a year-long Britten Centennial Celebration, a jazz tribute to the Rolling Stones, a concert dedicated to Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday, a performance of John Adams’ opera-oratorio El Niño and much more.

Several popular concert productions are also returning, including the annual Feast of Carols, Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite featuring CCM’s Jazz Ensembles and Musical Theatre Dancers, the annual PRISM concert and the latest installment of Pianopalooza.

Event Information
All events listed below take place on the campus of the University of Cincinnati unless otherwise indicated. Please see individual event information for single-ticket prices and ordering information.

New subscription and flex ticket packages go on sale Monday, June 17, 2013. Single tickets go on sale beginning Monday, Sept. 9.

All event dates and programs are subject to change. Visit ccm.uc.edu or contact the CCM Box Office at 513-556-4183 for the most current event information.

ON SALE NOW: Subscription and Flex Ticket Packages For CCM’s 2013-14 Season

CCM presents a “must-see” series of performing arts events in 2013-14. Subscription and flex ticket packages are on sale now!

Subscriptions and flex ticket packages for what the Cincinnati Enquirer has dubbed CCM’s 2013-14 “mega-season” go on sale at 12 noon today!

Featuring over 50 major concerts and theatre arts productions, CCM’s 2013-14 season spans the spectrum of the performing arts.

Learn more about our Mainstage Series of Opera, Musical Theatre, Drama and Dance here.

Learn more about our schedule of Chamber Music, Choral, Jazz, Orchestral, Winds and Special Event Concerts here.

Secure your seats before these must-see performances sell out!

For more information, contact the CCM Box Office at 513-556-4183 or boxoff@uc.edu. You can also visit us online at ccm.uc.edu/boxoffice.

Download a copy of our 2013-14 Season-at-a-Glance now!

Stay tuned to this site for more information about the exciting things we have planned for 2013-14!

CCM Student Marie Bucoy-Calavan Named As Inaugural May Festival Choral Conducting Fellow

Marie Bucoy-Calavan has been named the inaugural recipient of the May Festival Choral Conducting Fellowship. She will enter her third year of studies in CCM’s DMA in Choral Conducting program this fall.

We are delighted to report that DMA candidate Marie Bucoy-Calavan has been named the inaugural recipient of the May Festival Choral Conducting Fellowship. This new position was established thanks to the incredible foresight and generosity of Ginger Warner and was created as part of an ongoing collaboration between the May Festival and CCM’s Department of Choral Studies. Each year, a May Festival Fellow will be selected from CCM’s pool of Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting students and will serve as the Assistant Conductor of the May Festival Chorus.

“The new May Festival Choral Conducting Fellowship provides unique professional training for CCM’s doctoral choral conducting students,” explains Director of Choral Studies Earl Rivers, “providing them opportunities to conduct rehearsals, as well as to attend May Festival Board and Artistic Planning meetings to learn how a world-renowned Choral Festival is successfully produced.”

Bucoy-Calavan will begin her duties with the May Festival Chorus next fall. As Assistant Director she will be responsible for running select rehearsals and smaller sectional rehearsals. In addition Bucoy-Calavan will conduct some concerts within the community. Commenting on her appointment, Bucoy-Calavan says, “I am very excited and honored at the chance to have a mentorship with [May Festival Director of Choruses] Robert Porco. I attended the Conducting Masterclass that the May Festival held a year ago, and was inspired by his musical insights and skill for teaching conducting. I look forward to the fall and to the prospect of working with the May Festival Chorus.”

Learn more about the May Festival Choral Conducting Fellowship.

CCM Drama, Dance, Choral, Piano, Musical Theatre And More On Display This Weekend!

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CCM’s stars of tomorrow will be shining bright in a wide variety of concerts and productions running this weekend!

CCM’s 2012-13 Studio Series concludes with a production of Emily Mann’s powerful docu-drama Execution of Justice, running through April 20 in UC’s Cohen Family Studio Theater. Admission is free, but reservations are required. This production contains mature subject matter. Learn more about this production here.

CCM’s Ballet Ensemble also presents its annual Spring Dance Concert this weekend, with performances running through April 20 in Patricia Corbett Theater. This year’s program features unique collaborations with CCM’s Chamber Choir and Chamber Players. Learn more about this production here.

At 8 p.m. this Saturday, April 20, the CCM’s Chorale and Concert Orchestra join forces with a variety of special guests to present Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony and other works in Corbett Auditorium! Learn more about this performance here.

CCM’s annual celebration of the art of the piano returns at 7 p.m. this Sunday, April 21, as Pianopalooza VIII showcases our most spectacular student pianists! Learn more about this performance here.

CCM Ensembles Join with Xavier University Concert Choir and Cincinnati Children’s Choir to Perform Britten’s ‘Spring Symphony’

‘Spring Symphony’ composer Benjamin Britten, circa 1949. Photography by Roland Haupt; courtesy of http://www.britten100.org.

CCM’s Chorale and Concert Orchestra join forces with the Xavier University Concert Choir and Bel Canto Choir of the Cincinnati Children’s Choir for a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony and other works at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, in UC’s Corbett Auditorium. The program will also include Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis for string orchestra and Edward Elgar’s concert overture In the South. Tickets are on sale now.

Britten’s Spring Symphony, Op. 44, was commissioned and dedicated to Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which shared the 1949 premiere with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in July (in Amsterdam) and August (with the BSO at Tanglewood). This choral symphony was written just four years after Britten’s widely acclaimed Peter Grimes opera when the composer was 35.

CCM Announces 2013-14 Mainstage Series of Opera, Musical Theatre, Drama and Dance

The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) is pleased to announce details for the 2013-14 Mainstage Series of opera, musical theatre, drama and dance productions!

The 2013-14 Mainstage Series features both classic and contemporary masterworks for the stage, including Arthur Miller’s Tony Award-winning The Crucible, the masterful comic opera Don Pasquale and an extended run of the musical that swept the world: Les Misérables.

CCM’s student and faculty artists also bring two classics of the screen to life – with Mainstage productions of Singin’ in the Rain and Owen Wingrave. Plus, guest artist D. Lynn Meyers directs CCM’s stars of tomorrow in the Drama Desk and Tony Award-winning Metamorphoses.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of CCM’s Dance program, the 2013-14 Mainstage Series also includes a lavish production of the beloved romantic ballet Giselle.

This year’s must-see Mainstage Series features seven fully staged works guaranteed to fill audiences with delight, with performances scheduled from Oct. 2, 2013, through April 19, 2014. All performances take place in the Corbett Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Cincinnati campus.

Production and ticketing details are below. Priority subscription packages go on sale May 2013. Single tickets become available in August, but subscribing is the only way to guarantee your seats for these must-see shows!

Visit ccm.uc.edu/boxoffice/subscribe.html to register for CCM’s mailing list, and the Box Office will provide you with additional information on this year’s subscription options.

Renowned Pianist and Conductor Leon Fleisher to be Honored by the University of Cincinnati

Renowned pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher will receive an honorary doctorate at UC’s Commencement Ceremony on April 27.

Legendary pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher will be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music at the University of Cincinnati Commencement Ceremony at 9 a.m., Saturday, April 27, in Fifth Third Arena.

Fleisher is widely recognized as one of the world’s truly great artists. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Chair of Piano served as Great Master Instructor for a residency at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music last October.

Fleisher recently discussed his CCM residency with Suzanne Bona on WVXU’s Around Cincinnati. You can listen to the full interview here.

CCM Alumnus David Daniels Profiled in April 2013 issue of ‘Opera News’

Photographed by Michal Daniel as Orfeo in the Minnesota Opera production of Orfeo ed Euridice, 2010
© Michal Daniel 2013

CCM alumnus David Daniels (BM, 1990) is profiled in the April issue of Opera News, which is on newsstands now. As previously reported, the acclaimed countertenor is a 2012 Opera News Award-winner.

In the lengthy profile, Opera News editor Adam Wasserman writes, “Daniels has the uncanny ability to bridge the gap and make us believe that the composer’s note barely had time to dry on the page before it came forth from his mouth. It seems to me that the highest compliment one can pay Daniels — now in the third decade of an unprecedented career in opera — is that the music he sings sounds both strikingly contemporary and as though it were written precisely for his voice.”

Read the entire profile here.

Daniels will be singing the title role in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Giulio Cesare this month. The production is scheduled to be broadcast as a part of the Met’s “Live in HD” Series on April 27, 2013.

CityBeat’s Annual ‘Best of Cincinnati’ Issue Spotlights CCM

We are delighted to be named “Best Place to Catch a Rising Star” in CityBeat‘s annual Best of Cincinnati issue, which is on newsstands (and available online) now! CityBeat‘s editors write:

UC’s College-Conservatory of Music is one of the top three musical theater programs in the nation. Every year hundreds of aspiring high school kids audition for one of 20 or so slots in the freshman class. (That’s more selective than most Division I sports teams.) Following graduation, they head straight for Broadway where multiple productions typically feature CCM alumni. It’s not unusual for one or two to be nominated for Tony Awards, such as Karen Olivo as Anita in the recent revival of West Side Story.

We are equally thrilled to report that CCM student Kris Rucinski was recognized for performing the year’s “Best Piano Concerto” during last November’s American Voices XV concert. Again, CityBeat‘s editors write:

At a November American Voices concert honoring great American Modernist composers, UC College-Conservatory of Music first-year graduate student Kris Rucinski wowed and thrilled an audience with his performance of Lou Harrison’s challenging, complicated Piano Concerto. The late Harrison wrote it for Keith Jarrett, an indication of just how demanding a work it is. By turns fiery and meditative, developing through four challenging movements, it is as much Cecil Taylor-ish eruptive Jazz as it is calm Classical, but Rucinski showed himself more than up for the task and ready to be Jarrett’s successor – or anyone’s. One only hopes there are more chances to see him while he is a student here and before he becomes an in-demand concert soloist.

We would like to congratulate all of our friends and partners also featured in this special issue of CityBeat, too!

CCM Chair of Drama Richard E. Hess Receives Fulbright Scholar Award

Drama professor Richard Hess (right) led a contingent of students to Kenya in 2011 where they met refugees such as Abdi Rashid, a writer (left), who translated Hess’ words to Somali.

Richard E. Hess, the A.B., Dolly, Ralph and Julia Cohen Chair of Drama at CCM, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach and research at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya during the 2013-­14 academic year, the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced recently.

Hess’ research project, The Collapsible Space Between Us: Creating Artistic Identity through Theatre-­Making in Kenya, will allow him to work with actors as an acting teacher, on original devised theatre as a director and in educating theatre-­makers: actors who are story­tellers with strong identities interested in creating exciting physical theatre.

Hess is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in 2013-­14.

Hess first traveled to Nairobi in June of 2011 to create an original theatre piece with refugees from the Dadaab Refugee Camp and CCM Drama students. The Dadaab Theatre Project performed at World Refugee Day with support from the United Nations and the Great Globe Foundation.

“In Kenya I met a group of multi-cultural, international, multi-language strangers who used the currency of theatre to open hearts, share identities, and give voice to the unspoken,” Hess explains. “I encountered heroic bravery and tangible hope, and was surprised by the intense trust and humbling respect given to me so easily. The Africans made me feel valued as a teacher in a way I have never felt. I am eager to return.”