Fri 7/9 @ 6PM
Sun 7/11 @ 3:30PM
Violinist Jinjoo Cho, who has taught at Oberlin Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music, is well known to local audiences from her performances with many different ensembles and concert series.
She’s also the founder of ENCORE Chamber Music to nurture the next generation of musicians with programs such as its summer intensive at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills. The organization also hosts a six-week summer event called Music & Ideas Festival, with most than 40 public events including concerts, panels, master classes and more.
The theme this year is “Fire,” and it’s featured performances “sparked by” artists and thinkers. On Friday July 9 it will dedicate an evening to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, whose work was infused by the lifelong pain she suffered due to an accident as a teenager. It opens with a discussion called “Frida Kahlo & Beethoven: Disability in the Arts,” followed by a concert with guitarist Jiji Kim “and friends” who include violinists Jinjoo Cho, Sibbi Bernardsson and Minhye Choi; violinist Stephen Wyrczinski; and cellist Max Geissler. They’ll perform a program of music by composers such as Astor Piazzolla, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Manuel Ponce, as well as compositions by Jiji Kim herself.
Sunday July 11’s program is inspired by environmental activist Greta Thunberg. It opens with a panel discussion at 3:30, followed immediately by the concert “Earth Music with ENCORE artists.” Jinjoo Cho will be joined by ten other musicians, playing Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mere L’Oye, the U.S. premiere of Juri Seo’s “Songbird” and “Crosswinds” by Cleveland composer Margaret Brouwer.
All discussions and performances take place at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts on the Gilmour Academy campus. For more information and tickets go to encorechambermusic.org/FESTIVAL.