by Nicholas Stevens
As Yo-Yo Ma stood, wincing and stretching to applause after playing Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, the wonder of the situation hit home. Well over 10,000 people — maybe twice that number, depending exactly how many picnickers had crowded onto the lawn — had gathered at an outdoor pavilion on a Sunday evening to hear a continuous 140-minute recital. These thousands of paying visitors had driven miles from their homes to hear a single musician play a single set of 300-year-old dance suites on a single instrument, alone onstage with nothing but blue lights as a backdrop. If anyone ever tries to tell you that classical music is dead or dying, then that person is trying to sell you their latest book. [Read more…]
Last Sunday, August 12, an all-Brahms concert by the Master Singers Chorale and Orchestra at SS. Cosmas and Damian Church in Twinsburg honored the retirement of founding artistic director J.D. Goddard. The afternoon’s high point was the performance of the Fourth Symphony.
The days become shorter and hotter. School resumes. Vacationers unpack. We all know how this part of the summer feels: at once hazy and pell-mell, static and sped up. Northeast Ohioans can celebrate the fact that, for the fifth year running, The Cleveland Orchestra is inviting listeners into its cool urban home for the Summers@Severance series. In the second of three concerts, conductor Vasily Petrenko made good on the Orchestra’s new vow to tell “stories…without a single word,” through music born of travel and migration.
It was another enjoyable movie night at Blossom Music Center with The Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday, August 4. On offer was 
When you’re dialing the number of one of twenty living polymaths (according to 
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