by Jacob Strauss
With food trucks lined up on E. 14th Street by the Strassman Insurance Stage on Euclid, Tri-C JazzFest was hitting its groove on Friday, June 24.
Cats on Holiday, a swamp pop band from Cleveland wearing Hawaiian shirts, was playing on the outdoor stage when I arrived. There was an accordion player with a crawdad printed on the bellows, and a man playing spoons on a washboard, who, in a moment of poetry, said there is redemption and grace and love in carrying pain, and that is why the perseverance of the people of Cleveland is special.
After eating a Po’boy from The Dawg Bowl Cajun food truck, I caught the first half of Brian Culbertson’s show in The Connor Palace Theatre. [Read more…]
The first piece of business at ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 25 concert in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music was rearranging the order of the program. “Timeless Explorations”
Cleveland Opera Theater saw the payoff of several years’ work when 
In youth, everybody has dreams of becoming someone larger than they are, to drastically change the circumstance of their life. It is a story as old as drama itself and has been told continuously through thousands of generations by all people. The story is about hope in a wish, about dreams coming true not through fate or destiny, but by acting on the few opportunities we have in life.
On June 23, Ohio Light Opera rang up the curtain on the second production of its 43rd season in Freedlander Theatre at The College of Wooster. Following on the heels of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the company’s first-ever staging of Hello, Dolly! continued the inclusion of Broadway in OLO’s repertoire.
On Friday, June 10 the Signum Quartet, coming all the way from Germany to ENCORE at Gilmour Academy, played an eclectic program spanning the era of Schubert to rock classics by Led Zeppelin and Radiohead. The theme of this concert was war and politics, and the programming illustrated the revolutionary nature of the music.
On Thursday June 9, the Re:Sound Festival kicked off with two dynamic sets from the New York-based ensemble Warp Trio, and Cleveland’s own Robin Blake Sound Experiment.
You’d think that two instruments that create their sound by plucking strings might not provide enough variety to sustain interest over the course of a whole program, but guitarist Colin Davin and harpist Emily Levin have news for you.
Margaret Brouwer’s latest album, Reactions: Songs and Chamber Music, released in April of this year, is an exploration of shared humanity, connection, love, and responses to universal life experiences.