by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 6 pm today, Piano Cleveland takes the mound at Progressive Field to promote the upcoming Cleveland International Piano Competition with a piano-inspired evening as the Cleveland Guardians take on the Detroit Tigers. CEO Yaron Kohlberg will throw out the first pitch at 6:40 and play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” live on a piano — a first for the venue. Tickets, available online, include food and drink in the new right field Pennant District.
Come early to hear The Concert Truck perform in Gateway Plaza and catch CIPC contestants jamming out on the piano.
For details of upcoming concerts, visit our Concert Listings page.
VIDEO INTERVIEW:
On Aaron Dworkin’s Arts Journal blog, Monica Ellis, Founding Member of Imani Winds & Bassoon Faculty at Manhattan School of Music, shares strategies for maintaining a “portfolio career” and the secrets to success for Imani Winds. Watch here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1796, Cleaveland was established as a settlement by the surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company and named after their leader, General Moses Cleaveland. (Although he supervised the design of what would become our modern downtown, he returned home shortly thereafter and never returned to Ohio.) The name of the settlement was shortened in 1831, allegedly in order to fit on the masthead of The Cleveland Advertiser, and it wasn’t until 1836 that the settlement became incorporated as a city.
Culture took even longer to arrive on the banks of the Cuyahoga River, a history laid out by Cleveland State University professor J. Heywood Alexander in his article in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Jazz began to flourish in the early 20th century (read a parallel article by Joe Mossbrook and Chris Columbi here.)
And on this date in 1933, soprano Caterina Jarboro appeared in the role of Aïda at the New York Hippodrome, the first Black female opera singer to perform in the United States. A year earlier, Jules Bledsoe made history by singing the role of Amonasro in the same opera, the first Black singer to appear in that role. His performance came in the second and last season of Stadium Opera at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, a series whose first season, sponsored by The Cleveland Press, also saw the premiere of Shirley Graham’s Tom-Tom. Alas, no recordings are available.
