by Alice Koeninger
As we celebrate its 50th anniversary, it’s fun to look back on highlights from Blossom Music Center’s illustrious list of performances. In its inaugural season in 1968, Vladimir Ashkenazy made his first appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra as a pianist. The newly-formed Blossom Festival Chorus performed Carmina Burana on August 25, to great acclaim. This year, they will perform that same work on the same date, exactly 50 years later.
Blossom’s second year brought performances by such artists as Alicia de Larrocha, Victor Borge, José Feliciano, Duke Ellington, Maria Alba, Hank Thompson, Dionne Warwick, André Kostelanetz with Marian Anderson, and Peter Nero. The first Fourth of July concert also took place in 1969, conducted by Meredith Willson, composer of The Music Man. That same year saw the official record for the largest crowd ever at Blossom: 24,364 people came out to hear Blood, Sweat & Tears. That record was “unofficially” broken in 1973 when Pink Floyd attracted an estimated 32,000 people to Blossom’s green slopes.
Leonard Bernstein conducted Mahler’s Second Symphony –– his only appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra –– in 1970. While governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter visited Blossom in 1974 as the guest of Ohio governor John Gilligan. In 1984, Big Bird made a guest appearance, and in 1985, Christoph von Dohnányi presented a fully-staged production of The Magic Flute. [Read more…]
The Happy Days Lodge welcomed musicians from The Cleveland Orchestra with special guest Eric Wong into its wide-beamed hall on Tuesday, July 17, at 7:00 pm. Hosted by the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the concert was a lovely and relaxed program full of color and brightness. 
Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Hall was filled with double basses on Friday, July 13 for the Bass Ensembles and Bass Orchestra concert. Concluding a week of workshops, performances, and seminars at the Milt Hinton Bass Institute, this show was a way for parents to see what their kids had been up to. 
lawn), the relaxed dress code (an Akron Beacon Journal headline read “Wear what you please”), and the planned broadcast of the program in color on Channel 3 and on WCLV-FM, all added to the excitement. 
Despite its title, Tri-C Jazz Fest deviated from true jazz to more pop styles of music on the evening of Saturday, June 30. Snarky Puppy began their sold-out set around 6:00 pm in the Ohio Theatre. The large audience included entire families, all excited to hear this Grammy-award winning band perform. 
Friday night of the Tri-C Jazz Fest was a whirl of music, from the outdoor stage on a street lined with food trucks, to the steady stream of shows in the Playhouse Square theaters. Bands such as Organ Ism, Acid Cats, and Uptown Buddha filled the blocked-off streets with their neo-soul, funk, jazz, and hip-hop hybrids. Tents were selling Cleveland-themed clothes, jewelry, and household items, plus some more unique products like wine slushies or bags made from recycled jeans.
As you may remember, two summers ago The Cleveland Orchestra helped to celebrate the centennial of the National Parks Service at the Blossom Music Center. Now it is time for Blossom to celebrate its own milestone: its 50th anniversary. 
A recent phone conversation with David Shimotakahara, Executive Artistic Director of GroundWorks DanceTheater, was as much about his upcoming collaboration with ChamberFest Cleveland as it was about the process and source of creativity.
Flutist Alexa Still recently released her second solo album on the Oberlin Music label.