by Daniel Hathaway
On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, CIM faculty cellist Melissa Kraut joined her sister, clarinetist Rena Kraut, in Mixon Hall to share a family album of photos, remembrances, and music chronicling the journey of their forebears from Rzeszów in Nazi-occupied Poland to Palestine and Israel, and finally to the United States. Assisted by faculty pianist Anita Pontremoli, the Kraut sisters presented a moving timeline titled “From the Shtetl to the Concert Stage: The Thread that Sustained Music through the Holocaust” (Shtetl is Yiddish for “village.”) [Read more…]
The weather may have been frigid on Friday evening, February 2, but the capacity audience that gathered inside John Knox Presbyterian Church in North Olmsted was warmed by the mellifluous playing of the excellent classical guitarist Jason Vieaux. The concert was presented as part of the church’s Performance Series.
Few composers in the classical tradition have successfully transformed stories for children into engrossing all-ages artworks. In a concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art last week, Third Coast Percussion — the Chicago-based quartet of Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore — made a strong case for their new work, 
Third Coast Percussion went bold with their latest project, a sprawling marine ecosystem of an album titled 
In a recent concert by the Cleveland Institute of Music’s New Music Ensemble, Keith Fitch — CIM’s composition department chair, and the ensemble’s director — demonstrated his penchant for effective curation. His own new composition, 
While Sergei Prokofiev’s third piano concerto receives more than its fair share of visits to the concert stage, and even his first concerto makes appearances from time to time, what about the composer’s second concerto — why does it languish in obscurity?