by Daniel Hathaway
In a normal season (remember those?), Daniel Meyer would describe his job as music director and conductor of the Erie Symphony, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and the Lakeside Symphony. Since COVID hit, things have changed. “I’ve apparently become a film producer,” he told me in a recent telephone conversation. “That’s a skill set I didn’t know I had before the pandemic, but it’s helped justify our existence.”
Having already established a good relationship with Erie’s public radio and television stations, Meyer and the Symphony leapt at the invitation to produce eight hour-long programs over the course of the season in lieu of in-person concerts. “That forced us to get creative and explore some very interesting repertoire.” [Read more…]
Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival founder Armin Kelly was planning to celebrate the second decade of the event when the novel coronavirus crashed the party. “The 2020 shutdown was too close to our festival time to put an alternate plan together,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “So we put up one streamed concert, and that was our 20th anniversary season.”
Oberlin Conservatory has announced that its successes in implementing online education over the past year have given rise to entirely new opportunities for virtual learning developed for a worldwide audience. This summer marks the launch of Oberlin Conservatory Global, which begins with a series of courses designed for music students, teachers, and lifelong learners of all backgrounds.
The new music ensemble No Exit continues its longstanding collaboration with Zeitgeist, their counterparts from Minnesota’s Twin Cities, with “New Sound Worlds,” a free 
From the time he moved to Northeast Ohio to attend the Cleveland Institute of Music, 
Since its debut season in 2012, ChamberFest Cleveland has been guided by a single idea — to create a family of musicians and audiences who come together to share their love of chamber music. And like so many families who were separated due to the pandemic, so was the ChamberFest family. 
Lately, wind players have only been sighted here and there on the calendar, and have mostly performed all on their lonesome. That makes the finale to the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s 62nd season an extra special occasion for anyone with a fondness for music of the lungs.
Blissfully unaware of what was to come, on September 10, 2019, I wrote:
When you hear the word madrigal, for many what first comes to mind are those dinners where the performers and guests dress in Renaissance costumes. While those events continue to flourish, especially during the Yuletide season, on Saturday, May 15 at 7:30 pm the Cleveland Chamber Choir will remind us that the writing of these part-songs has never stopped.