by Stephanie Manning
Though this past year took a lot from musicians, it also gave many the rare gift of time. Jinjoo Cho, artistic director of ENCORE Chamber Music Institute, decided to use that time to bring a long-held idea of hers to fruition — but first, it would require a lot of research. Starting June 6, ENCORE will present its 2021 Music & Ideas Festival, a reimagined format that makes the organization’s sixth season its most ambitious yet.
Combining classical music with innovative ideas, Cho curated programs “sparked by” eight individuals she considers her personal inspirations. This group includes scientists and activists as well as a writer, visual artist, jazz singer, and former president. Each concert will be paired with a preceding panel discussion, with topics ranging from “The Power of Introverted Minds” to “Gen Z’s Crumbling Earth.”
After two YouTube Live events, the concert season, titled FIRE, kicks off on June 11 with a program from the Ariel Quartet inspired by Marie Curie. The pioneering scientist won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 — the same year Maurice Ravel composed his String Quartet in F, which will be paired with works by Robert Schumann and Amy Beach.
When I first read about the 
Several things can stand in the way of a smooth musical arrangement, including the range of the instrument of destination.
After taking a year off, the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP) is gearing up for its return with Re:Sound 2021, an innovative, online music festival that will premiere on June 3. Faced with an influx of pandemic-fueled virtual concerts, “we decided to take a season to reconnect and think about what we wanted to do,” artistic director Sophie Benn said in a recent interview. She added that finally putting on an event again “feels amazing.”
On Friday, May 28, Dan Lippel’s program on this year’s all-online Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival will feature music by Johann Sebastian Bach played on a guitar tuned to a Baroque temperament. Most classical music fans know that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a collection of preludes and fugues in all 24 keys called The Well-Tempered Clavier, but if asked to explain why he did that, many would get it wrong.
While the pandemic is still causing major disruptions in our nation’s educational system, there are countless stories of how teachers, students, and parents have come together and met their unique challenges head-on.
On Sunday, May 23, The Cleveland Orchestra announced its return to live concerts at Severance Hall in October, as “a more flexible, innovative, versatile, and empathetic institution, strengthened by the lessons of the past 14 months.”
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.”
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.