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Conductor Vinay Parameswaran Stands on the Edge of a Major Career.
Severance Hall and several Cleveland museums honored Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday. Severance Hall hosted a free community open house with performances, including a musical tribute from the Cleveland Youth Orchestra. There were also activities for kids, like the “I Have a Dream Wall” where they could write their own dreams for the world.
The Cleveland Orchestra will celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the 40th consecutive year on Sunday, January 12 at 7:00 pm in Severance Hall. Assistant conductor Vinay Parameswaran will lead the Orchestra and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus, William Henry Caldwell, director, in a program whose repertory departs slightly from past concerts.
The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) and its music director Vinay Parameswaran announced details of the 2019-20 season. The Youth Orchestra, under Mr. Parameswaran’s direction, will perform a three-concert series at Severance Hall on November 15, 2019, March 1, 2020, and May 3, 2020.
For Vinay Parameswaran, leading The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom on Saturday, August 17 at 8:00 pm will be only one important event in what has to be called a good couple of months. He’s also conducted in Europe, driven about 5,000 miles back and forth across the U.S., and gotten hitched.
The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra's May 10 concert in Severance Hall is one that the young players are themselves excited about, what with getting to play Dmitri Shostakovich's mighty Symphony No. 5. On the same concert, listeners will be excited to hear high-school Wunderkind Julia Schilz play Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy. WCLV's John Simna caught up with Ms. Schilz and COYO Music Director Vinay Parameswaran for a lively conversation about Bruch, Bartók, Shostakovich, and more.
My first opportunity to talk to Vinay Parameswaran came in the form of a phone call last week, but I already had an impression of what his players in the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra think of him. In November, violinist Célina Béthoux told me how she had gifted him an origami conductor.
This weekend The Cleveland Orchestra turns its attention to young musicians. On Friday, July 20 at 7:30 pm at Severance Hall, the three finalists from the Cooper International Piano Competition will perform complete concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Jahja Ling.
Long before they apply to college or interview for a job, aspiring young artists here learn something of the professional ropes by trying out for the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra.
“When I think of introducing the classical music that we love to young kids, Scheherazade is one of the first pieces that comes to mind,” Cleveland Orchestra Assistant Conductor Vinay Parameswaran said during a telephone conversation. “Rimsky-Korsakov’s music vividly tells the story and it’s so easy to latch onto its dramatic elements. And if you’re hearing an orchestra for the first time, you get a sense of all the colors and sounds that it can produce.”
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Vinay Parameswaran comes to Cleveland by way of Tennessee, where he served for three seasons as Associate Conductor of the Nashville Symphony. In his new role as Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra, he will lead the Orchestra in several dozen concerts each season at Severance Hall, Blossom Music Festival, and on tour. He also is music director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra.
For a conducting job at the Cleveland Orchestra, Vinay Parameswaran is about as prepared as any one person can be.