A Musical Thank You

On Saturday, May 11 at 8 p.m. a group of Oberlin Conservatory faculty, students, and alumni, along with members of the baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire, will give a benefit concert for the liver transplant program at the Cleveland Clinic. The impetus for the concert comes from Oberlin Professor of Recorder and Baroque Flute Michael Lynn, who received a liver in a transplant operation at the Cleveland Clinic last fall. In appreciation of the clinic’s work, he has organized this benefit concert, which will take place in the Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Joining Lynn will be fellow conservatory faculty member Kathie Stewart (baroque flute), as well as current Oberlin student Kate Shuldiner ‘13 (viola da gamba), alumna Jeannette Sorrell ’90 (harpsichord), and several members of Apollo’s Fire, the orchestra that Sorrell founded. Lynn’s daughter Sarah, a soprano who will be entering the Oberlin Conservatory this fall, will sing.

The concert program includes works by Telemann, Handel, Marais, and others. One particularly appropriate piece was published in Marin Marais’s fifth book of pieces for the viola da gamba in 1725. Entitled Le tableau de l’opération de la taille (“A Description of the Removal of a Stone”), colloquially known as the Bladder-Stone Operation, it is one of the earliest examples of program music, or a piece that conveys a story. The piece includes detailed annotations of the procedure as represented by the music—terrifying and vivid descriptions of the actual surgery Marais himself underwent.

Lynn, in addition to his position at Oberlin Conservatory, performs regularly with Apollo’s Fire as well as the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble and the Irish band Turn the Corner. He has also published scholarly writings about the study and performance of early music in a journal format titled The Courant.

Tickets to the benefit concert are available from the box office of the Cleveland Museum of Art, available by telephone at 216-421-7350. Information about donating to the Cleveland Clinic can be found by calling 440-281-0597. This event is supported in part by the Nord Family Foundation.