by Mike Telin
For the past eleven years, the Heights Arts Close Encounters series has presented chamber music the way it was meant to be heard — up close and personal in intimate spaces. “I can’t believe this is going to be season twelve,” violinist and series Artistic Director Isabel Trautwein said during a telephone conversation. “I figured out that the last concert of this season will be our 50th.” Click here for ticket information.
Trautwein, a member of The Cleveland Orchestra’s first violin section, said that the idea for the series came informally. “I asked a friend if she knew of an organization that might want some chamber music concerts. She put me in touch with Peggy Spaeth, who was the executive director of Heights Arts at that time. We talked, and here we are.”
In the beginning the concerts were held in private homes, but as the demand for tickets grew, they began branching out into venues including Dunham Tavern and Museum and the Bop Stop. [Read more…]
“The purpose of art is expression, but I think it’s also about empathy,” cellist Tony Rymer said in a recent conversation. “When you’re studying a piece by a composer who died a couple hundred years ago, in the end, you’re trying to understand why they wrote it that way and what they wanted it to sound like. You have to connect with someone from a different time — you kind of become friends with dead people through the music.”
Over the past eight years, Les Délices has presented well-researched, thought-provoking, and highly entertaining concerts that explore music and topics of the French Baroque.