The Cleveland Orchestra at Home in Gordon Square

Cleveland Orchestra Musicians Miho Hashizume and Shachar Israel at Sweet Moses in Gordon Square. Photo by Roger Mastroianni.

For two years, Cleveland Orchestra musicians have been stepping out of Severance Hall and into the Happy Dog for intimate, informal concerts — and audiences love it. Now, the Cleveland Orchestra is settling into the Gordon Square Arts District for a week packed with free events, the orchestra's first neighborhood residency in Northeast Ohio.

From May 11 to 17, audiences can attend pop-up concerts, educational programs for students and chamber ensemble performances in locations where you never thought you’d see a violin.

“It’s an exciting time for artistic revival in Cleveland,” says Ana Papakhian, communications director for the Cleveland Orchestra. Musical entertainment is not the only benefit, though. “Events like this increase foot traffic,” she says.

The At Home series kicks off Saturday with an oboe duet at Gypsy Beans & Baking Co. It culminates Thursday, May 16, when the Cleveland Orchestra performs at St. Colman Catholic Church. The full orchestra concert marks the first time in more than 30 years that the Orchestra has performed on Cleveland's West Side. Tickets are available now at multiple locations.

The events encourage untraditional interactions between orchestra musicians and the public. The musicians, who are consistently eager to get involved in neighborhood benefits, offered an overwhelming number of suggestions for the Gordon Square events.

“They are very passionate about growing their art form,” says Papahkian. 

Other events include numerous appearances by the Cleveland Orchestra chamber ensemble, a musical collaboration with Cleveland Public Theatre, a screening at the Capitol Theater of the "Orchestra’s Bruckner Symphony No. 4" performance in Austria, and a panel discussion held by the City Club of Cleveland on the impact of arts and culture on neighborhood development.

Papakhian hopes people will make plans to go, and that others will be surprised.

“Some people will walk in to get coffee or shop and encounter the musicians by accident,” she says. “That’s the magic of it.”

For a full schedule of events, visit clevelandorchestra.com/athome.

Drum Roll, Please

Stewart Copeland

Stewart Copeland is a fan of Balinese music.

So it’s not terribly surprising that the drummer for the Police and composer of operas and film scores also has a certain affection for the gamelan (GAM-uh-lon), a family of percussion instruments indigenous to the Indonesian islands of Bali and Java.

It’s an interest that came in handy when the Dallas Symphony Orchestra commissioned him to create a piece featuring the Texas percussion quintet D’Drum.

“As a fan of music in general and somebody with an interest in what’s next, what’s cool and interesting-sounding, an American composer playing with gamelan bells — that sounds interesting to me,” he says of the challenge.

The result was Gamelan D’Drum, a three-movement, 35-minute composition for world percussion and orchestra, which will be a part of the Cleveland Orchestra’s first concert of its 2012-13 Fridays@7 series Oct. 5 at Severance Hall. “I’m an American guy. I’m not Balinese. This isn’t a representation of Balinese music,” says Copeland, who will be on-hand for the performance. “This is American music using very exotic instruments that bring with them all kinds of exotic atmospheric baggage.”

Q: Why did the Dallas Symphony Orchestra select you for this commission? 
A: There are things on paper, I guess, that would make me a good choice. Fusion is part of the credential. I think one thing that gave them great comfort was the fact that I’ve got art credentials but also professional credentials. A couple of the guys earn a living as film composers and as producers. They appreciate the value of working with somebody who understands a deadline, somebody who understands things that artists don’t usually have to deal with. And I myself, as an artist, place great value on craft and professionalism, stuff that I learned in 20 years as a film composer.

Q: Why did you accept it? 
A: Working with a big orchestra like the DSO is something that doesn’t come around every day of the week, and getting a chance to not only work with such an orchestra, but being commissioned to write something really out of the normal run of orchestral composing experience. Throw in the fact that when I got a look at these guys [in D’Drum], what they can do and their collection of instruments — and there’s this incredible collection of instruments to compose for, to be accompanied by a mighty symphony — we were at “yes” two reasons ago.

Q: Was that instrument collection your biggest challenge in composing the piece? 
A: Every stage of it was challenging. [Working with] instruments like the rice trough – call that an instrument? How do you notate for that? Well, you notate it exactly the same way you do as with all the other Balinese instruments. And at the end of the day, getting that onto a page that the conductor can read was also a challenge.

Q: In 1989, you attended Cleveland Opera’s world premiere of your first opera, Holy Blood and Crescent Moon. What do you remember about that experience? 
A: Opening night was a big splash. Everyone had a great time. The standing ovations — it really just felt like a big smash. … The next morning the B cast, at 9 o’clock or some ungodly hour, were all back at the State Theatre. They bring in these kids who couldn’t give a hoot about anything other than the fact that they got a day off from geography, French, reading, writing and arithmetic. The minute the countertenor comes out squealing, there was a big laugh. The morning after the night before was an adventure in humility. We can laugh about it now. In fact, I laughed about it at the time. I mean, you couldn’t not laugh. It was hysterical.

-By Lynne Thompson

Snowed-in Cleveland Orchestra Musicians Jam at Ann Arbor Pizzeria

The big winter storm may have caused a slight detour in the Cleveland Orchestra's concert schedule, but the ice didn't stop 30 of its members from joining young amateur and student musicians in a jam session at Silvio's Organic Pizzeria at the University of Michigan.

"It was a special moment that happened as a result of an unfortunate circumstance," says Liz Stover, programming coordinator of the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, who was part of the audience.

Stranded in Ann Arbor, their Chicago concert canceled, the orchestra members joined the local chapter of The Classical Revolution, which plays chamber music every Wednesday night.

"It was so wonderful to see these professional musicians from one of the nation's best orchestras getting down and dirty in a beer and pizza joint without some of their own instruments," says Stover.

Amidst the Coronas and pepperoni, three basses played an arrangement of Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, and other orchestra musicians performed the eloquent sounds of Mozart's horn quartet. World-renowned pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who performs with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall this weekend, played Brahms. Snowstorms may cause stress and schedule conflicts, but maybe getting stuck in Ann Arbor was really a blessing in disguise.

Orchestra critic demoted

Updated Tue. 9/30:

Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg has demoted the paper's classical music critic, Donald Rosenberg, apparently because she felt he was unfairly critical of Cleveland Orchestra director Franz Welser-Möst. She reassigned him to general arts writing, taking him off the Orchestra beat, which he had for 28 years. The decision comes after years of complaints about Rosenberg from Orchestra supporters.

This is a big story in national media and classical music circles. Here are links to the major articles:
-Thursday's New York Times article: “They’ve taken my career away from me,” Rosenberg says.
-Monday and Tuesday blog posts from Baltimore Sun classical music critic Tim Smith: "Music critics are hired to deliver critical opinions. If those opinions are not popular with some people, tough."
-Wednesday's Plain Dealer profile of Welser-Möst by Rosenberg's replacement, Zack Lewis.
-Wednesday's Cleveland Scene article: "What part of critic don't they understand?"
-Rosenberg's post-orchestra work this week, on his ballet, modern dance and classical music blog.
-PD reader rep Ted Diadun writes very cautiously about Rosenberg getting the boot.
-The Los Angeles Times classical critic says he likes Welser-Möst but thinks the Plain Dealer has damaged itself.
-A Wall Street Journal classical critic asks whether PD publisher Terry Egger should be serving on the Cleveland Orchestra's board.

Check out Cleveland Magazine's coverage of the orchestra and the newspaper: Andy Netzel's article on the orchestra's financial troubles, from June 2007, and my profile of Susan Goldberg, from this March.