by Stephanie Manning
At more than 200 schools across Ohio, students from pre-K to twelfth grade can start their day feeling calm and relaxed thanks to three minutes of classical music. Developed by local non-profit organization The Well, the Mindful Music Moments program pairs audio prompts with performances by local orchestras to increase student focus and reduce anxiety. This year, the program partnered with The Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the Columbus Symphony to create a piece directly inspired by the kids of Mindful Music Moments and the cities they call home.
When faced with the uncertainty of what the restrictions governing indoor, in-person concerts might be this summer, the organizers at ChamberFest Cleveland made the bold decision to take the concerts outside and make them free.
After the postponement of their 2020 season, ChamberFest Cleveland made a triumphant return on June 6, as they kicked off the 2021 concert series aptly named ‘Together Again.’ Originally planned to be held at The Grove Amphitheater, the venue was changed to St. Paschal Baylon church, due to rain.
Much had changed in the 130-some years that separate Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Vienna from that of Alban Berg. The Cleveland Orchestra titled episode 11 of its In Focus digital series “Order and Disorder,” presumably to contrast Mozart’s well-behaved, Enlightenment-inspired Clarinet Quintet from 1789 with the societal chaos reflected musically in Berg’s Lyric Suite, three of the six movements from the composer’s 1925-1926 String Quartet that he arranged for full string orchestra in 1928.
Although great strides have been made in audio technology, latency issues (lag in time due to internet connection) still prevent musicians from seamlessly passing musical lines from multiple locations in real-time. In their most recent collaboration, “New Sound Worlds,” Cleveland-based No Exit and St. Paul-based Zeitgeist bring life to a new work by Scott Miller during which members of both ensembles perform from their homes and studios. The concert is available on-demand 
The second concert of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival brought another intriguing contrast of artists, from repertoire to presentation and videography.
Online recitals pose the question: can a virtual format preserve the precious conversation between a musician and their audience? In a recently streamed concert, guitarists Drew Henderson and Petra Poláčková proved that such communication can still exist outside of a live setting, when the music is played with generous expressivity and technical finesse. Henderson and Poláčková’s performance, presented by the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, was pre-recorded and streamed on Friday, June 4th. 
The 2021 album 
If an album has a musical half-life, which we’ll define here as the amount of time its impact will remain to be felt, it’s likely longer than that of a concert performance. So in order for the classical music world to diversify in a lasting way, programming has to change not only on the concert stage, but also in the recording studio.
On the second concert of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, lutenist Nigel North and guitarist Robert Gruca proved to be a pleasantly balanced combination. The two recorded performances, which premiered on YouTube the evening of May 21, were presented back-to-back in a single video. At just over an hour long, the wide-ranging program showcased the distinct styles of the British and American pair of musicians with repertoire that spanned from the 17th century to the present day.