We have received the following letter from Gerry Paluck.
On April 25, 2020, my wife Chris Haff-Paluck passed away due to health complications related to breast cancer, lupus, and diabetes. For more than forty years, Chris had been a freelance double bassist, educator, mentor to young musicians, concert presenter, and arts manager at the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the founder and moving spirit of Arts Renaissance Tremont (ART).
Through her crowning achievement, Arts Renaissance Tremont, the non-profit organization Chris created 29 years ago, she established a yearly program of free classical music concerts. Through ART she has not only given established musicians, but also aspiring young artists an additional venue to showcase their talents. Chris has been dedicated to providing great music at no cost to audiences of all ages throughout Northeast Ohio, and she has done all this and more without the benefit of a large supporting organization and without the slightest thought of personal remuneration or recognition.
I’m creating this memorial fund to honor her memory and carry on her work. The investment income from the fund will go to help young, aspiring musicians attend the Encore Chamber Music Institute, started by Chris’s dear friend Jinjoo Cho. [Read more…]
Virtuoso double bassist and composer Edgar Meyer is a musical omnivore. His collaborators read like a who’s-who in folk, jazz, country, classical, and bluegrass music. Meyer’s diverse discography includes the celebrated Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites Performed on Double Bass. In 2011 he teamed up with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, and Chris Thile for The Goat Rodeo Sessions. And in addition to being a multi-Grammy winner, Meyer is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, an Avery Fisher Prize, and a MacArthur Award.
J.S. Bach’s 
Earth and Air: String Orchestra is taking its final bow next week, but they won’t be going away quietly. The chamber ensemble has enlisted not one but two soloists for the occasion, more specifically two “Dueling Divas,” as violinists Andrew Sords and Mari Sato call their duo.
Although black squirrels can be spotted around Northeast Ohio, they are prolific in the city of Kent. “At our first rehearsal we talked about choosing a name for the group, so we threw out some ideas,” bassoonist Mark DeMio recalled during a recent telephone conversation. “Our horn player said that since there were so many black squirrels in the area he always liked the idea of playing in a group called the black squirrel — something. And that’s how we became the Black Squirrel Winds.” 
On Wednesday, April 7 at 7:00 pm, CIM Piano Professor Daniel Shapiro will play Beethoven’s last three sonatas in the 8th program of a complete cycle that he launched last fall to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Now that the cold and dreary winter is behind us, our thoughts turn to spring. And with trees beginning to blossom and flowers blooming we can begin to think about cultivating the garden. On April 8 at 7:30 pm, 
Piano Cleveland has announced that after a year-long postponement due to the challenges presented by the pandemic, the organization’s signature event — the Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) — will take place from July 8 through August 11, 2021. (Above: Nikita Mndoyants, 2016 first place winner, with Bramwell Tovey.)