New Kids on the Block Return for The Main Event

Get ready for this summer's biggest block party as the New Kids on the Block return to The Q tonight. This time they're backed by the crazy, cool pop stars of the '90s TLC and Nelly for The Main Event, where each artist will perform their biggest career hits. A 360-degree, arena-spanning stage will bring the audience up close with the boy band as they perform old-school songs such as "Step by Step" and "My Favorite Girl" alongside newer hits including "Crash" and "10." Joey McIntyre and Jordan Knight will also be performing solo hits as they venture out on catwalks. With cannons of confetti and a quick change cam that reveals a sneak-peek between costume changes, this show is sure to heat things up. So we talked to Danny Wood about being back on the road and what keeps him motivated.

Q: What can guests expect?
A: It’s definitely a unique tour with a lot of nostalgia. It’s a girls’ night out basically. You can get together with your friends and get the babysitters and leave the husbands and the boyfriends behind and have a good time.

Q: Will there be any onstage collaborations?
A: It’s very difficult when you’re putting a tour together this size, and everyone’s rehearsing in different parts of the country. We were only in the same spot in Vegas right before the first show. Everyone’s got families, and Nelly goes on way before we do, so it’s not an easy thing to put together.

Q: What do you enjoy most about these shows and how is it different than performing back in the '80s and '90s?
A: For me, personally, it’s being able to share it with my family. I have my daughters out here on the road with me. They’re 16 and 17 and they’re enjoying the road and going to the shows. My dad’s out on the road with me too, and he’s 73 years old. He’s having a blast. That’s the part that’s most enjoyable for me. You definitely have a great appreciation for being able to have a second chance at doing this again and to be able to be playing all these arenas.

Soulful Band Bassel and The Supernaturals Address the Syrian Civil War in Hometown Show

Photo Credit: CB Lindsey

Five days before Bassel and the Supernaturals left on tour in 2012 to promote its EP Dreamer, frontman Bassel Almadani’s apartment complex burned down. Since moving to Chicago from Ohio with his band, Almadani has encountered setbacks including theft and a fainting spell that led to broken teeth and broken noise. Almadani also struggles with the reality that his family is living inside the conflict in Syria. But Almadani isn't defeated. He uses those trials to inform his soul-infused, indie-funk band that he describes as “Stevie Wonder meets Steely Dan meets Asia.”

Bassel and the Supernaturals will be returning to Northeast Ohio to headline a show at the Beachland Ballroom & Tavern at 8 p.m. Feb. 26. A Kent native and his band are working on a new record that draws from Almadani's experiences as a Syrian-American and connections to his cousins, aunts and uncles that are in the throes of conflict in Syria. To Almadani, music is a way to get the message out and help further humanitarian efforts in Syria. “We’ll donate a percentage of our merchandise, but it really goes above and beyond that, whatever we can afford to send over for charity purposes we do,” says Almadani, who also has hosted workshops and seminars to raise awareness about the issue. We talk to him about coming home, how being Syrian-American has shaped his music and how he turns his struggles into art.

CM: What does it mean to return to Northeast Ohio to headline a show?
BA: My musical roots tie back to my days in Kent. I used to travel every weekend to see some of my favorite bands, and I have some very vivid memories of shows at those local venues. It kind of puts things in perspective when you get the opportunity. We’ve been increasing momentum for a really long time. When we get a show booked, you don’t think too much of it until you put that in perspective of how I viewed that venue as a kid, and the bands I looked up to. Once you take it in, you realize that it’s really neat. It’s really cool that it’s coming at a time when Cleveland is really getting back on the map.

CM: How has your connection to Syria influenced your music?
BA: There’s a lot of it coming into our next album. It’s taking me a bit of time. I didn’t want to rush the creative process when approaching this particular subject. The crisis in Syria is a very sensitive subject. People are affected by what’s going on, and I’ve taken a lot of time to figure out how I personally connect with this. As a soul musician, you can see right through it if it’s not genuine. I experience Syria through the lens of my family, the news article I read and the pain that I feel every single day. It’s constant anxiety because of my role here. I must find a way to connect back to that experience and make a difference. There are a lot of examples of that going into the new record. I’m really excited about getting that material out the door.

CM: Is there a specific song on your upcoming album that stems from your personal setbacks?
BA: There’s a song on there that hits the subject real hard. The song "Lost" relates to two stories. It’s about my cousin being murdered in Syria last year; she was a victim of crossfire, as well as a story about my guitar being stolen during a crazy rainstorm at a festival in Painesville. The song is really about that emotion of loss. Anybody can really personalize to them about something that they lost as well.

Rhythm Makers: Local Band Mo' Mojo Embarks on a Tour of Central and South America

Dominican Republic workshop

After touring Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Akron-based zydeco band Mo’ Mojo is ready for another challenge of breaking down language barriers and connecting with the locals through music.

The American Music Abroad, a program of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, has selected Mo’ Mojo as one of 10 American bands to do a five-week tour of Central and South America. Beginning Jan. 20, Mo’ Mojo will travel to Belize, Panama, Barbados, Mexico and Colombia. In addition to performing public concerts, the band will interact with local musicians, give lectures and take part in workshops with students.

The band, which is preparing to release its fourth album, We All Got the Same, in May, has already visited Haiti and Dominican Republic as part of the program. “Every single time — as soon as that energetic zydeco music started — smiles spread across their face and dancing started,” says Leigh Ann Wise, Mo’ Mojo vocalist and percussionist. “It's kind of what zydeco does universally. It makes you smile and dance — or at least tap your toe — no matter what language you speak and no matter what your social status or ethnic background.” Wise chats with us about dancing and jamming out with Haitians and the upcoming trip. 

CM: What is one of your most memorable moments working with locals in Haiti?

LW: We were giving a workshop for the students at The Haitian-American Institute. ... The music started and they started smiling and moving a little. The big shift came when we asked if they want to learn how to dance the zydeco. It’s a two-step. You know, here in the states if you ask high school students if they want to stand up in front of a crowd and learn a dance, it’s likely — in my experience — you’re going to get a lot of resistance. Not these folks. Half the room jumped up and started dancing. By the end of the song, they were teaching us to dance. It was truly one of my favorite moments yet. 

CM: What did you learn in Haiti?

LW: For me, it was my first real hands-on experience of how music transcends language barriers. When we were learning songs with Ti Coca & Wanga Neges, a popular world-traveling Haitian band, no one in their band spoke English and certainly no one in our band spoke Haitian Kreyol, but we gathered outside and just started playing. They learned one of our songs and we learned one of theirs. And you know what was key? Eye contact. If Ti Coca wanted me to learn a lyric I completely did not understand, he’d just keep singing it and looking me in the eye. 

CM: What are you looking forward to the most about the upcoming trip to Central and South America?

LW: The idea that we get to teach kids, to me, is the most fulfilling way to spend my time. Who gets to travel playing music as a mode of communication? It's such a blessing. I feel honored to be a part of it.

Riffy Rendezvous

Photo by Ed Battes

After their first album careened onto the scene last year, Cleveland rockers So Long, Albatross are finally working on new things, bringing their riffy stoner rock sound out of the basement and into a professional recording studio, literally. But before they start work on their latest album, they’ll be taking the stage at the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern for Cellar Door Rendezvous, along with label-mates Seafair, Ohio Sky and The Commonwealth. The two-day get-together (March 14-15) will feature 17 other bands, with full access passes going for $20.

This will be So Long, Albatross' first appearance in the big room together, though they’ve all played there at one point or another in different bands. “We’ve played the tavern quite a few times in the last couple of years and it’s always fun,” says vocalist and guitarist Keith Vance. “But it’s just cool to do something else.”

We spoke to Vance about the finer points of writing lyrics and what's on the horizon for the Cleveland-based trio.

CM: What was the recording process for your first album like, and where do you want to go next?

KV: Well, we’ve written a bunch of songs recently. We’ve taken a break from playing shows, since we played a bunch after the first album. We’ll be working with Jim Stewart, who’s one of the sponsors for the show, and is a really great guy. He’s worked with a bunch of people I know and everyone has awesome things to say about him.

CM: Though you started out as three-person group have you thought about adding a fourth?

KV: The three of us have been playing together for so long now. The drummer and I especially have been playing in bands since we were 14, so 16 years ago. ... It’s hard enough for the three of us to get together, let alone another person. We’re just so locked into each other, we know what we’re going to do before we do it, and to add somebody new would be difficult.

CM: Lyrically, where do you want to take things?

KV: That’s something that’s probably my biggest struggle. The music comes really easy to us, generally, and the lyrics get filled in in the end. I want to get a little bit better at trying to tell a story or get my point across in ways that aren’t so vague. Sometimes I feel like I’m a little vague or cryptic and I don’t mean to be. I want to get a little more open, maybe a little bit more vulnerable with some of the things that I write.

Machine Gun Kelly Raises His Black Flag

Photo by Quentin Le'Son

Whether you know Machine Gun Kelly as the wild boy who brought a flash mob to SouthPark Mall in August of 2011 or an East Side up-and-coming artist who can spit rhymes with lightning-fast precision, one thing remains true: he has influenced thousands of people around the world. On Aug. 2, more than 3,000 people traveled from 42 states and two countries to attend the first annual E.S.T. Festival in Garrettsville, Ohio, which was hosted and headlined by the 23-year-old artist in an effort to support Cleveland Public Schools and other charities.

"This was a sacrifice on our end to create something much bigger than us and our pockets," he says. "This was all done off of emotion."

Last year, we chose Machine Gun Kelly as one of the 25 Reasons We Rock because of the movement he's creating amongst his fans. Since then, he released his debut album, Lace Up, with Bad Boy and Interscope Records, won the mtvU Woodie of the Year Award in March and recently released his sophomore album, Black Flag, for free June 26.

We traveled to the E.S.T. Fest to talk with Machine Gun Kelly about his reasons for giving away his music, his thoughts behind his movement and to see what's next for one of Cleveland's hottest rap stars.

Cleveland Magazine: As the next step in your career, what does this festival mean to you and how did it get started?

MGK: We had always had this vision, and really it kind of came to fruition by default of the fact that no festivals would book us this year. The one thing I always wanted to have was a legacy and be iconic, you know? As a fan, I can’t think of anything better than someone coming into my life and giving me a community to go to, giving me a family to be around when I feel alone. There’s a girl who paid $1,500 for a plane ticket to come here from Norway. She came here by herself. I met her last night. This is honestly giving people a place to belong for a weekend and free themselves.

CM: What was your creative process behind Black Flag, and how did it differ from Lace Up?

MGK: Lace Up, I was in a negative space. There were so many different MGKs that were present during that. It took a long time to write. Black Flag was one month. Cleveland, Ohio. In a basement. Done. I came home for the first time after touring for about a year and a half. I didn’t write for six months. So I soaked up all of those life experiences, and in one month I put it all into an album. I think it’s my best work today.

Photo by James Bigley II

CM: What's at stake for you with this new album?

MGK: Everything. I think this album will determine if Machine Gun Kelly is going to be the next superstar, like we all believed in, or if he’s just going to stay at this underground state that he’s in. Which is sweet, I’ll just continue running the underground. I’d rather run both worlds, but whatever it is, it’s in God’s hands now.

CM: Why did you make the album free to the public?

MGK: I needed a chance to say everything I wanted without any interference, without any guidance. However, on this next album, I’m going to take all the guidance I can get. My thing is, I gave you all Black Flag, now give me a chance to do something a little bit different on this next album and just rock with me.

CM: So what is "Machine Gun Kelly," and how would you define this movement? 

MGK: Look, when I die, Machine Gun Kelly is going to be alive and walking because Machine Gun Kelly is every one of those kids out there. What people don’t realize is that those kids are going to grow up and become something. And I’m going to be with them when they become that. They’re not going to forget this shit ever in their life. What if one of these kids becomes a judge? There could be a life-altering situation with me where it depends on one person and that one person is him, and he’s like, ‘You know what? This mother f---er changed my life so allow me to give him one more chance.’

From Talent Show to the Rock Hall: Dylan Baldi of Cloud Nothings Plays Summer Series Wednesday

In 2008, Dylan Baldi was one of many students playing an instrument in Westlake’s talent show, The Green and White Revue. The program included a blank page for autographs, an idea that seemed laughable.

From the catwalk hanging over the audience of Westlake High School’s Performing Arts Center, I shined the massive spotlight on Irish dancers, baton twirlers and cute four-foot-tall elementary school pianists who punched the ivory keys as if they were those of a typewriter. What were the chances that any of them would produce a signature that someone might actually look back on?

No one knew that just a year later, Baldi would drop out of Case Western to begin writing songs. Or that his band, Cloud Nothings, would become one of the country’s fastest growing indie bands, featured in the New York Times and Rolling Stone and touring the United States and Europe. Or that, this Wednesday, Baldi, will play in front of the temple of musical greats: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cloud Nothings just returned to the United States after playing two shows in Japan, performing in Osaka and in Tokyo before a crowd of 2,000.

“They actually know who we are, which doesn’t make any sense to me,” Baldi says. “It was pretty weird to go over there and play for that many people.”

Cloud Nothings’ live set relies heavily on their newest album, Attack on Memory, recorded in Chicago and released this Jan. 24. Baldi describes it as more complex than his previous record.

“Every time I sit down to write a song, I want to do something new with it that I haven’t tried yet,” he says. He hopes to keep moving farther away from his start, determined that experimenting with sound will push his music to a better level. Cloud Nothings’ edgy, alternative style is certainly a product of evolution from where he started as a little kid: piano lessons and the saxophone.

Now music is Baldi’s full time job. His songs, once written solo, are now truly a collaboration. “I write the words and the melody and my guitar part, but whatever [the other band members are] playing, they figure it out on their own for the most part.”

Attack on Memory recently made MTV’s "Best Albums of 2012 (So Far)" list. An autograph no longer seems far-fetched.

Cloud Nothings will kick off the Rock Hall’s Summer in the City Series this Wednesday at 7 p.m. with Herzog, another Cleveland indie rock band. The free concert will take place in the plaza outside the museum, or inside in the event of rain.

The Other Weapons Bush Didn’t Find in Iraq: Cleveland's Weapons of Mass Creation Festival

Designer Jeff Finley's festival celebrates Cleveland as a scrappy creative engine. He has taken his passions for art, design, music and entrepreneurship and smashed them into a 3-day extravaganza of raw talent, the Weapons of Mass Creation Festival in Cleveland’s Gordon Square Arts District.

The festival, in its third year, runs tonight through Sunday. It includes 20 speakers, 20 designers and 30 bands, including Tad Carpenter (an illustrator/designer who has worked with Macy's and Hallmark, among many others), Three Bears Design (a Cleveland-based creative collective) and Gregory and the Hawk (a New York-based band with multiple albums and EPs). Many are local. Other featured designers and entrepreneurs are traveling from as far as Nova Scotia, Chicago and San Francisco.

Four locations along Detroit Avenue between West 52nd and West 54th streets, including the Reinberger Auditorium and Saigon Plaza, are hosting concerts, an art show, workshops and what’s billed as the “biggest break-dancing/b-boying battle in Ohio.” Tickets range from $5 for tonight's opening party to $60 for a three-day pass to all lectures and music.

I talked to Finley, who's also a designer and partner at the Cleveland creative design agency Go Media, to find out more about the innovative missile that is WMC.

Q: What does this event bring to of Cleveland that it hasn’t seen before?

A: There’s been an Ingenuity festival and art fests, but as far as commercial art goes, and graphic design, we’re the premier event going on in the Midwest. The types of artist we’re bringing in are the thought leaders in the industry. There’s a young creative class and we’re scrappy and hardworking and trying to build something for the future. We’re really showcasing we have and making it an attraction for other cities to show Cleveland’s really doing something inspiring.

 Q: How were you able to get all of the different people to come to Cleveland?

A: Cleveland is well known but it doesn’t have the reputation of being a creative powerhouse. If you have an event in San Fran, they’ll want to go. We have to work hard to make a compelling reason for people to come here. Making friends in the design community, we’ve built a strong reputation. So we get big-name artists and designers from New York or Chicago to spread the word about last year and now hear how everyone is excited to come back.

Q: What will people who aren’t into the design and indie or punk rock music scene getting out of the event?

A: [It’ll appeal to] people who have this burning passion to do things their own way and start their own business. [It’s about] doing what you want to do, staying scrappy and being an entrepreneur. The common message last year was, “Work hard and make shit.” Just come to be inspired, because we’re all in this together, especially in Cleveland.

Brite Winter Festival Lighting Up Ohio City

Sunglasses are in order for this Saturday’s free Brite Winter Festival on Ohio City’s Bridge Avenue.

This year, the third annual arts and music celebration will embrace its name with a theme of light and ice. General Electric is donating enough lights to decorate a whole town of Christmas trees.

The fest will remain aglow from start to finish thanks to a wall made of 15,000 shades of LED-light-injected ice bricks, lit custom ice sculptures, open-sided box trucks with lights pulsing to music and lit balloons hovering at the doors of all seven walking-distance indoor music venues.

“We’re hoping that it gets overfilled throughout the evening,” festival co-chair Thomas Fox says.

Forty bands, most of them local, will play between 5 p.m. and 2 a.m., including Lighthouse and the Whaler, Black Taxi, and Modern Electric. Guests can fight the frost at the outdoor stage or huddle in heat in the seven indoor locations on West 25th Street and Lorain Avenue, from Touch Supper Club to Joy Machine Bike Shop. The event is designed so visitors can’t see every performance and will feel overwhelmed by all the options.

“It’s amazing to feel that way,” Fox says. If you’re not happy with one band, he adds, just move to the next one.

Along with the 15 art displays and eight music venues, a 24-foot game of Skee-ball will challenge even the most seasoned Skee-baller. A grown-up version of grade-school “Telephone” will let grown-ups listen to a whisper in the “Whisper-ma-phone” and then try to repeat what they heard.

The Brite Winter Festival has grown since its inception in 2010 when two Case Western Reserve University graduates decided Clevelanders needed something to look forward to during the slush and mush of winter months. They threw the party with financial help from Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative and Case student organizations.

Now, the festival has 15 sponsors and has moved from Hart Crane Park in the Flats to Ohio City. Organizers expect to more than double the turnout from last year.

New Year's for the Young and Young at Heart

When I think of New Year’s Eve, I think of ridiculous party favors draped and strewn among drunken partygoers holding half-spilled beer and a Champagne toast to a memory that'll probably be lost by morning.

Enjoying the holiday with kids can be an alternative to the typical New Year’s celebration. Several family-friendly spots in Cleveland offer New Year’s Eve extravaganzas ranging from relaxing to adventurous to picturesque.

Great Lakes Science Center
New Year’s Eve, Eve
216-621-2400
Dec. 30, 7-11:30 p.m.
Eager holiday celebrators can enjoy the new year a night early, with a scientific twist. Visitors to downtown Cleveland’s science center can make their own supply of fake, fluffy, white snow to take home as a souvenir, watch fruitcake detonations, eat liquid nitrogen ice cream samplers, drink a ginger ale toast and see a balloon drop to end the second-to-last day of the year.
$24 per person, $20 for members

First Night Akron
330-374-7690
Dec. 31, 6 p.m.-midnight
The main streets of downtown Akron will bustle with families strolling past flame twirlers, stilt walkers, illusionists and ice sculpting specialists. Eighty artists and performance groups will appear at the event, including a Beatles tribute and Celtic music from Fergie & The Bog Dogs. Several downtown eateries will be open, including The Lockview, Spaghetti Warehouse and Cilantro Thai and Sushi. Horse-drawn sleigh rides and free Metro bus rides will take people around.
Admission buttons $10, children under 10 free

Mapleside Farms
Kids New Year’s Eve Bash, New Year’s Eve Grand Buffet
330-225-5577
Buffet 3-8 p.m., kids party 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Mapleside Farms in Brunswick has recently revamped its old-fashioned persona and is welcoming the New Year as a stylish, modern gathering place and eatery. Kids can celebrate the New Year with a toast from a fruit punch fountain in plastic champagne glasses. A buffet dinner will feature carved prime rib, walnut-crusted salmon, a salad bar and a chocolate fountain.
Party: $25, $15 for children 2-12; Buffet, $31.95, $18.95 for kids 5-12, free for kids 4 and under

Progressive Field
Snow Days
216-420-4487
Noon-1 a.m.
The Cleveland Indians’ home stays open past midnight for 2012's arrival. It’s part of the Indians’ Snow Days, which has transformed the stadium into a winter wonderland, with three ice-skating rinks and the 200-foot Batterhorn tubing hill for those in the need for speed.
Admission $5, children 2 and younger free

Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
Noon Year’s Eve
216-661-6500
10 a.m.-1 p.m.
For kids who can’t keep their eyes open until midnight, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo welcomes a pre-jamboree at the stroke of noon. The zoo’s festivities include a wild animal show, ice-sculpturing performances and animal-costumed characters greeting visitors. The 1260 AM Radio Disney Road Crew will play hits from 2011. And as the clock finally strikes noon, the Zoo’s ball will drop to ring in the New Year. Bundle up; most of the activities will be outdoors.
Free with zoo admission: $7 adults, $4 children 2-11, free for 2 and under

The Plain Dealer's Phillip Morris is Pulitzer finalist

We've been Phillip Morris fans since the days when his fresh take on our town was buried inside The Plain Dealer's editorial pages.

So we named Morris one of our Most Interesting People in 2008 when his column was moved to the Metro page and his common-sense opinions reached a wider audience. Obviously, we couldn't get enough of the guy and included him in our February 2009 feature, Singles File, as one of our 20 Sexy Singles. Now, Morris adds another honor to his resume: He was named a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary on Monday.

Beyond the print journalism awards that the Pulitzer Prize is most commonly associated with, Cleveland also achieved some recognition in other categories:

Perfectly timed with our April article honoring National Poetry Month, Ashland University faculty member Angie Estes was honored as a poetry finalist for her book Tryst.

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society was given the privilege to host the first performance of Fred Lerdahl’s String Quartet No. 3 in December 2009, which was named a finalist in the only music category.

And thanks to Playhouse Square’s 2010-2011 Broadway Series, Clevelanders will get a chance to see Pulitzer Prize winning drama Next to Normal in June 2011.

Check out the rest of the 2010 winners and finalists here.

D.M.C. the teacher: Life lessons from an old-school rap legend

Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels, in unlaced Adidas kicks and a black gazelle hat, once raised hell in a museum much like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He broke Elton John’s oversized shades and stomping on Michael Jackson’s sequined glove in the video for his band Run-D.M.C.'s 1985 hit, "King of Rock." This mayhem has proved more ironic than iconoclastic, since Run-D.M.C was inducted into the actual Rock Hall this year -- and McDaniels was back last night to speak to a crowd of educators from across the country and fans.

McDaniels, now 45, appeared as part of the Rock Hall’s Summer Teacher Institute “Electrifying the Classroom” program. Wearing designer jeans and a T-shirt, his head clean-shaven, he stood up for old-school hip-hop in a gangster-rap era and recounted his life story's highs and lows.

Run-D.M.C. mainstreamed hip-hop and created rap-rock — without glorifying drugs and violence. McDaniels, a hard-working, deep-thinking father of hip-hop, cringes at the modern hip-hop era of “slangin’ cane” and “sippin’ outta’ pimp cups” -- all justified as merely art imitating the harsh reality of ghetto life.

“You’re a goddamned liar," McDaniels says to hip-hop acts who use this defense. "Even in a dirt-poor ghetto, there’s some good. Everyone in the ghetto's not a pusher, everybody’s not a pimp, and everybody don’t like to go to strip clubs.”

Gangster rappers may sell ten million albums, but the negative images destroy ten million lives, he says. He questions why they don’t rap about the old woman who cleans houses for 50 years to send her children to college. There are songs about using guns, but none about choosing not to, he points out.

McDaniels grew up as a straight-“A” student at an all-boys Catholic school in Queens. He filled stacks of notebooks with rhymes emulating his heroes Grandmaster Flash and Kool Moe Dee. They used hip-hop as a device for education and communication, and ultimately evolution, McDaniels says. “They lived in the roughest place, and you never heard violence, profanity, or disrespecting women.”

Those notebooks were discovered by a young Russell Simmons, who had made a name for himself opening for Bronx rappers. The rest is rock history, and a lesson for the many children he talked to through the program, including more than 90 schools via Web chats.

“The reason why you pay attention to your studies is you never know who’s looking,” he told them.

It took hard times for him to become such a vocal proponent of education. Fading fame and a feeling of emptiness left a heavy-drinking McDaniels with thoughts of suicide -- until a cathartic cab ride listening to Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel.”

“One whole year, all I listened to was Sarah McLachlan,” he recalls. After finding out he was adopted, McDaniels called up the singer/songwriter, who he’d met at a party, and who was also adopted. The two collaborated on “Just Like Me.” McDaniels went to co-found the Felix Organization, a camp for foster children run by grown-up, successful adoptees.

McDaniels' new message inspired at least two of the 60 teachers in attendance.

“He reaffirmed what I think most teachers believe, that each child has such potential and we’re doing whatever we can to bring that out in those kids,” says Janet Myers, a high school communications teacher from Joplin, Mo., with 33 years of experience.

Debbie Supplitt, an elementary teacher in Battleground, Wash., had never heard of Run-D.M.C. before. But she sees, even in first-graders, the negative hip-hop imagery McDaniels rails against. “We think we’re isolated in the suburbs, but we’re really not," she says. "TV crosses all cultures. So does music.” --John Hitch

Gramophone: Cleveland Orchestra second best U.S. Orchestra

The U.K.'s Gramophone magazine ranked the Cleveland Orchestra as the second best U.S. orchestra behind Chicago, but ranked seventh overall. The orchestra typically ranks in the top five in the world, so this isn't necessarily cheery news as we expect to be near the top of any list of great orchestras, but it's not really bad news, either.

The ranking of orchestras was done by classical music critics worldwide.

While the rankings are based on performance and individuality, there is a major difference between Chicago and Cleveland. The Chicago Symphony is on firm financial ground, actually producing a surplus this year. The Cleveland Orchestra is struggling financially. We reported last year that the plan to expand its donor base with residencies in Miami* and Vienna was not going as well as planned. The last I heard, speaking with someone who keeps a close ear on the financial position of the orchestra, we can expect a deficit again this year.

It's remarkable that the orchestra, through reputation and a devout following and support in this town, has remained one of the premiere orchestras for so long. Cleveland is a much smaller city than any of the top-ranked American symphony orchestras. This latest report says we can still see one of the world's best orchestras playing in University Circle.

*In the above photo, the orchestra is rehearsing in Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center (then called the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts).