Today we’d like to introduce you to CityMusic Cleveland.
We’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
CityMusic Cleveland was founded in 2004 to make high-quality classical music concerts accessible throughout the greater Cleveland area. A small group of volunteers saw the need to extend the cultural resources of Cleveland into underserved neighborhoods. Our mission is to develop audiences and build communities through the arts by presenting the finest quality performances of classical repertoire, eliminating the twin barriers of high ticket prices and unfamiliar venues, working with neighborhood leaders to enrich the cultural offerings of their communities, and providing quality arts education programs. We believe that the arts are essential to healthy communities and that by gathering for concerts we can help connect neighbors, encourage empathy, and positive impact civic engagement.
Since 2004, CityMusic has performed over 350 free concerts and built up an enthusiastic following. Until the pandemic started, CityMusic performed four orchestra programs per season, with each program performed in 4-5 different local venues. We have featured some of the most dynamic soloists in the world, including violinists Gil Shaham, Jennifer Koh, Kyung Sun Lee, Rachel Barton Pine, Tessa Lark, Sayaka Shoji, and Adele Anthony; cellists Edward Aaron and Jan Vogler; vocalists Sasha Cooke, Chabrelle Williams, Joshua Blue and Raymond Aceto; clarinetists Franklin Cohen and Daniel Gilbert; saxophonist Timothy McAllister; and jazz artists John Clayton, Dominick Farinacci, and Orlando Watson.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We have operated with a spirit of innovation and a commitment to welcome more and more people into the CityMusic family for the past 18 years. Because we focus on free concerts to provide access, we depend on donations and grants to pay our musicians and staff and keep our doors open. We are constantly working to sustain the broad public support that keeps our programs going and our musicians employed. Sometimes we fly under the radar because funders and media outlets may be more interested in prestigious institutions than a group that performs for free. We maintain the highest standards of artistic quality and present innovative programs to serve our community in the best way that we can. The pandemic has been hugely challenging for performing arts organizations. We have reinvented the way we program to create safe conditions for musicians and audience members. Over the past two years, we have presented smaller scale, chamber music concerts on a monthly basis to provide opportunities for the audience to experience live music and for our musicians to keep working and creating.
What makes you happy?
Music, innovation, collaboration, and community. The connection between our musicians and our audiences is the lifeblood of CityMusic, and our hallmark is presenting classical music in new ways alongside the old to attract the widest possible audience.
Our current season, the Justice, Equality, Hope Chamber Music Series, shows how challenges can spark innovation. We have commissioned 11 female composers to write new works inspired by the series theme, and 10 local visual artists to create works inspired by the image of Lady Justice. Justice, Equality, and Hope are concepts that we consider central to our democracy, and yet they remain elusive in our society. The series celebrates how the arts are constantly engaging with the issues relevant to everyday life and can be used as a lens to understand different perspectives, build empathy, explore new ideas, and process trauma.
Upcoming highlights:
Transcendence – February 27, 2022
For our February 27 program, we are collaborating with GroundWorks DanceTheater to produce a multimedia concert experience at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus in Slavic Village. Pianist Donna Lee came up with the idea to add a dimension of movement to Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Watch out for a video version of the collaboration posting to our Youtube page this Spring.
Vision Statement for the Project and Choreography
Composer Olivier Messiaen’s seminal work “Quartet for the End of Time” spoke to me on so many levels. From the music and its structures, I felt there was a way to imagine, through movement, a kind of internal journey: one experienced through the process of dying and involving memory, pivotal moments in time, reconciling the past, and not being trapped by our fate. Like the music, this internal journey seemed not to lead to despair, but away from the abyss towards the possibility of release and transformation. Working in collaboration with cinematographer Kuo-Heng Huang, we have tried to capture imagery and action that lives in the space between consciousness and unconsciousness. And in thinking about the work’s title – that moment of passing from one state to another, of crossing a boundary – what do we find?
– David Shimotakahara (Director, Choreographer)
Slavic Village Then and Now, April 8-10, 2022
The next out-of-the-ordinary collaboration will be Slavic Village Then and Now in April 2022, featuring soprano Chabrelle Williams and young Cleveland poet King Weatherspoon. Two composers, Jasmine Barnes and Jessica Meyer are writing song cycles that use Weatherspoon’s poetry for string quartet and soprano. The program will evoke the current experience of youth in the City of Cleveland, which has the highest child poverty rate of any large American city, juxtaposed with music written during Cleveland’s heyday in the early 20th century. Violinist Miho Hashizume decided to feature Weatherspoon’s poetry because it spoke to the pandemic experience of her elementary violin students at Mound School in the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland. She found Weatherspoon’s poetry to be “raw and powerful, giving me a better understanding of what it’s like to live in such environment where parents are so stressed out.” While honoring the power of Weatherspoon’s words we hope to build understanding of the challenges faced by local youth and how the wider community can better support them.
Pricing:
- All concerts are FREE!
Contact Info:
- Email: info@citymusiccleveland.org
- Website: www.citymusiccleveland.org
- Instagram: instagram.com/citymusiccleveland
- Facebook: Facebook.com/CityMusicCleveland
- Twitter: twitter.com/citymusicCLE
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/citymusiccleveland
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/citymusic
Image Credits
Gary Adams
Lilia Sciaretti
Sawsan AlHadadd
