All year long, Greater Cincinnati is blissfully awash in fine music. Recitals, chamber music, opera. And then there are the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Pops and the May Festival. These are blessings that are so abundant that it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming.
But there is nothing quite like the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s Summermusik Festival. Lasting just four weeks in the closing portion of summer, it has earned a much-deserved spot in the pantheon of Cincinnati music.
In some ways, Summermusik is like summer itself – precious and all-too-brief. It is a festival filled with the unexpected. It’s unexpected because we may not have heard the works before – and also because of the way Music Director Eckart Preu brings together various works. Even more unexpected is the variety of venues, everything from traditional concert halls to neighborhood bars.
And there is one more thing: Summermusik is perennially wreathed in a sense of joy. Preu seems to have so much fun pulling all of this together. No matter how serious the music may be – and it often is – there is never anything ponderous about the gatherings. As audience members, we’re coming together for the sheer joy of sharing and discovering music.
If it sounds like I’m being unfair to other groups, I get it. But at Summermusik performances, you feel that joy in the room in the way that you do at few other performances.
Looking over this summer’s lineup, there are programs with catchy titles, things like “The Isle of Enchantment” (the music of Puerto Rico) and “Musical Renegades,” which pairs the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with that of Frank Zappa.
A certain part of the interest Summermusik generates is because of the way the concerts are packaged. But more often than not, the music featured in those cleverly named programs is fascinating. And even entertaining.
“What I love about Summermusik is all the music you do with a chamber orchestra that you just can’t do with a big orchestra,” Preu said. “I don’t have to sell 2,500 tickets. The people who come to our concerts are having a ball. They understand why we do what we do. They are curious and adventurous and want to be entertained.
“And with a small orchestra, the music becomes more transparent – you can hear the inner workings of the music so much more clearly. And for the musicians, I think it’s much more of a challenge. There is no hiding in a chamber orchestra. When you have 20 first violins, you can hide. Not in these performances.”
Sometimes those clever titles can get a little corny, like “Summer Meowsic,” featuring pet-inspired musical compositions. But for all the silliness of the name, the composers – Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Gabriel Fauré, George Gershwin, Domenico Scarlatti – are legit.
The concert title that immediately caught my eye, though, was “‘Sin’cinnati.” As the title suggests, it’s a program that revolves around the theme of sin.
“This program has been on my back burner for decades,” said Preu, noting that the centerpiece of the Aug. 22 concert is “The Seven Deadly Sins,” by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. “I was always fascinated by this piece. The concept, of course, goes back centuries. And even beyond, if you think about the idea of original sin.”
The music was distinctly modern for the 1930s. And it is thick with political and social undertones.
“The Seven Deadly Sins” premiered in Paris on June 7, 1933, less than six months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. Weill and Brecht were both Germans who had fled their homeland. The choreography was by a 30-year-old expat who had fled the Soviet Union – George Balanchine. By the time the work premiered, Hitler and his Nazi Party had assumed full control of the German government and launched their increasingly harsh oppression of Jews, a movement that would eventually expand into World War II and the Holocaust.
“When you listen to it, at first, you’re struck by how melodic the music is,” said Victoria Okafor, the Cincinnati-based soprano who will sing the work. “But the more you listen to it, the more the ominous mood of the piece settles in. It’s straightforward. But it also has a profound influence of German cabaret. What can I say – it’s very Kurt Weill.”
Okafor should know. In recent years, she has come to be regarded as a Kurt Weill specialist. In 2025, she was named a Kurt Weill/Lotte Lenya Artist by the Kurt Weill Foundation, the first artist to receive the recognition since 2023. In 2021, she was awarded the second prize of the Lotte Lenya Competition, named for Weill’s wife, a noted singer-actor who would later win acclaim in Hollywood and on the Broadway stage.
“Weill was always experimental with subject matter,” Okafor said. “That’s part of what made him such an ideal creative partner for Brecht,” one of the most significant theater radicals of the 20th century. “Weill felt that you can’t just rely on the voice to be beautiful. Sometimes, the voice needs to be ugly. To him, the story-telling was as important as the singing. That’s why I love his music so much. He really made his singers work hard.”
“The Seven Deadly Sins” is more than a collection of musical portraits, though. Weill referred to it as a ballet chanté or a “sung ballet.” He and Brecht believed that, for this work, movement should carry equal importance to the singing. So Preu recruited Cincinnati Ballet dancer Simone Muhammad to dance as Okafor’s onstage alter ego. In turn, Muhammad recommended that Preu engage former Cincinnati Ballet dancer Joshua Stayton – now artistic director of the Azara Ballet in Sarasota – to choreograph the work.
“It’s interesting – I’ve never worked with a chamber orchestra before,” said Muhammad. “Usually, it’s been big orchestras.” Think “Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake,” the sort of story ballets that are staples of most ballet companies. “I’m looking forward to the intimacy of working with a smaller orchestra. And with just one singer.”
And how about the material itself?
“This is definitely not the type of score I perform to every day,” Muhammad said. “But I think it’s going to be extremely fun to dance to, to embody all these different emotions, these different sins. And to act with this music. It will be a completely new experience.”
It’s worth noting that the following day’s A Little Afternoon Music recital, meant to offset all that sinning, is titled “Virtues: a Moral Compass.” But when Preu set out to program the performance, he found it a bit of a struggle. “I quickly realized that virtues were not as interesting as the sins,” he said. “Virtues took out all the fun out of the music, all the spice.”
Overcoming those initial hurdles, he ended up with a recital featuring Okafor (in a church!) that’s filled with optimism and variety, ranging from works by Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms and Florence Price to Morten Lauridsen.
Preu can never explore a piece of music or an idea deeply enough. So rather than limit his exploration of sin to a single concert, he added a second, related presentation.
The July 29 show is called “The 7 Deadly Sins of Cincinnati” and features local historian and columnist Greg Hand. It takes place at Urban Artifact in Northside. Hand, a retired University of Cincinnati public relations executive, has spent much of his life rummaging around in libraries and archives and is always ready to share a good – and well-researched – story.
In fact, he’s part of a group of local historians who specialize in entertaining twists on history they call “stand-up history.”
“The stand-up history is an offshoot of my ‘Cincinnati Curiosities’ blog,” Hand said. The whole premise of the blog is reminding Cincinnatians that the mythology they cling to so passionately was not always the way that Cincinnati was. Before 1920, this was a totally different city, weird and, in some cases, a very menacing city.”
Apparently, before 1920, the centers of “sin” were located on this side of the river. It would be a decade or so before Newport and Covington assumed those mantles.
“Cincinnati had a huge red-light district in the West End,” said Hand. “The Boss Cox machine required an open city. That meant that gambling was allowed. But only as long as you paid your bribes. Liquor and beer flowed freely, even on Sundays. Organized crime? It was all here in Cincinnati. I think it was a more interesting city back then.”
Human nature, it seems, hasn’t changed much in the ensuing century. That’s part of what drew Preu to the Weill-Brecht collaboration.
“Weill may have been writing nearly 100 years ago, but I think all of this material is relevant today,” Preu said. “The pursuit of money and career, how we sell ourselves out, how much do we compromise our own values. And pride? Wars have been fought over pride. So yes, I think this music is still relevant. There are lessons to be learned.”
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