Sun 10/23 @ 7PM
Harpist Yolanda Kondonassis landed in Cleveland to study at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she now heads the harp department. But that only scratches the surface of her voluminous career and priorities. She’s performed around the world with orchestras and as a soloist, and released numerous records, with a commitment to supporting new music for the instrument. She’s a teacher, a speaker and an author of books about playing the harp. She’s also a long-time dedicated environmental activist, who’s founded her own environmental nonprofit, Earth at Heart®, and has even written a children’s book about protecting the Earth.
Last spring, she brought all of that together on a release for Cleveland-based Azica Records called FIVE MINUTES for Earth. It includes 15 new works, inspired by Earth’s beauty and its challenges, each around five minutes in length, which she solicited from a variety of currently working international composers. The title reflects not only the pieces’ length, but also the urgency of confronting the climate crisis.
Now Kondonassis is debuting a concert version of the project with 17 world premieres taking place at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. It will include earth-inspired works for solo harp composed by Jocelyn C. Chambers, Chen Yi, Michael Daugherty, Daniel Dorff, Reena Esmail, Keith Fitch, Patrick Harlin, Stephen Hartke, Nathaniel Heyder, Takuma Itoh, Aaron Jay Kernis, Steven Mark Kohn, Philip Maneval, Máximo Diego Pujol, Arturo Sandoval, Gary Schocker, and Zhou Long, which originally appeared on the album. While Kondonassis will perform most of them, several will be played by Kondonassis’ former students Ina McCormack, Xiao Du, Juan Riveros and Grace Roepke.
The multi-disciplinary concert at CMA will also include photographic and video images projected behind each musical work, earth-inspired poetry by Cleveland Orchestra English horn player Robert Walters the presentation of the winner of Earth at Heart’s Poster Contest, and the world premiere of a new vocal work by composer/librettist, Steven Mark Kohn, featuring vocalists from the Cleveland Institute of Music.
“The idea of including a specially-commissioned work of poetry by an outstanding Cleveland-based poet, young visual artists from the Cleveland School of the Arts, vocalists from the Cleveland Institute of Music and several exceptional, emerging harpists in this concert event just seemed right, given that the FIVE MINUTES project is all about bringing the artistic community together in the earth conservation effort and facilitating the opportunity for artistic contribution to result in monetary assistance for worthy earth conservation causes through the sponsorship of Earth at Heart,” says Kondonassis.
That this concert is happening in Cleveland is a stroke of good/bad luck. The FIVE MINUTES premieres were scheduled for two concerts, one in New York and one in Los Angeles, in April but Kondonassis was unable to do them due to a slip on ice.
For tickets go here.