ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE YEARS

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Artists2020

Next season’s Matinee Musicale Cincinnati artists include trumpet virtuosa Ashley Hall, pianist Albert Cano Smit, the Dover Quartet, soprano Nicole Cabell, violinist Christina Nam, and tenor Pene Pati.

We just got back from the Awards Luncheon of Matinee Musicale Cincinnati, a musical organization which has been making miracles happen by presenting, for the past ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE YEARS, an annual series of concerts.

Along with introducing to Cincinnati the likes of singers Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Marian Anderson, Nadine Sierra, and Jamie Barton, as well as instrumentalists Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Arthur Rubinstein and Van Cliburn in the early stages of their careers, the good people at Matinee Musicale Cincinnati have been giving thousands of dollars year after year from the endowment Louise Dieterle Nippert left to Matinee Musicale Cincinnati to aid young and promising pianists, cellists, violinists, oboists, trumpet players and other instrumentalists and to singers of every voice type.

In today’s line up of first and second prize winners we heard a remarkably gifted group of hopefuls and, among them, some who made one sit up and listen. Via video we heard soprano Elena Villalon who has been accumulating honors of recent, including being chosen as one of the national finalists for the MET Opera auditions.

Violinist Gabby Sewell, a young girl barely out of her teens, elicited the biggest ovation of the morning with a formidable performance of Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, a technical hurdle-course that would give pause to many a violinist twice her age. In the fall she enters CCM as a freshman on a violin performance program with professor Kurt Sassmannshaus. We’ll be watching.

All the youngsters in attendance went home with a nice check and a full tummy after lunch with the audience. We went home contented to know that there are many good hearted music lovers in Cincinnati who are not merely satisfied with the enjoyment of music but that through volunteer work, a modest annual membership and the purchase of an unreasonably low-priced subscription ticket are making a difference with the future of music.

For further information on Matinee Musicale Cincinnati call 859 781 0801 OR 513 231 0964 and/or go to http://www.MatineeMusicaleCincinnati.org

Rafael de Acha    http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”