The Cleveland Cello Society - 2017-18 Season

MIKE BLOCK is a pioneering multi-style cellist, singer, composer, and educator, hailed by Yo-Yo Ma as the "ideal musician of the 21st-Century", and acclaimed by the NY Times for his "vital rich-hued solo playing". While still studying at the Juilliard School, Mike joined Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, with which he has toured extensively throughout the world, and won a 2017 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album. Mike is also an active recording artist of original material, folk music, cross-cultural collaborations, and he has an ongoing project to record all of the Bach cello suites in acoustically glorious bathrooms of famous concert halls, via BachInTheBathroom.com.

From 5-7 PM, Mike will give an all ages workshop for area cello students, intermediate level and above.

Madeleine Kabat was just named Assistant Principal Cello of the Milwaukee Symphony.  She recently made her solo debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and has twice “saved the day” for orchestras, stepping in on short notice to play Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto with the Madison(WI) Symphony when their soloist was delayed and the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Springfield (MO) Symphony at the last minute when their cellist was injured.  Ms. Kabat has won top prizes in competitions including the Klein International and Fischoff, and holds diplomas from the Juilliard School, Rice University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Oberlin College, where she was a teaching assistant for Darrett Adkins.
Peter Thomas, cellist in the Milwaukee Symphony and Madeleine’s husband will be her collaborative partner on the evening’s program, which will include works by Brahms, Cassado, Popper and the world premiere of a work by Brian Packham.

Dane Johansen joined The Cleveland Orchestra at the beginning of March 2016.  He was cellist with the Escher String Quartet for five years, during which he and his colleagues were BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, and also recipients of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Martin Segal Award from Lincoln Center.  For many years, Dane Johansen has dedicated time and energy exploring Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello.  He performed them at New York’s Alice Tully Hall in 2010 and also throughout his 580-mile pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain in 2014; the story of his adventure on the Camino with Bach was made into a documentary film called Strangers on the Earth.  A native of Fairbanks, Alaska, Dane Johansen studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, and at the Juilliard School, where he earned his artist diploma.  He also studied privately with Bernard Greenhouse.

The evening’s program will offer works for solo cello and duos in collaboration with colleagues from The Cleveland Orchestra.