Memorial Fund to be established to honor the late Christine Haff-Paluck

April 22, 2021 by Daniel Hathaway

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.

I am starting off the fund with $25,000 and am hoping, with the help of the many people she touched in her life, to grow the endowment to $100,000. To make a donation to the Chris Haff-Paluck Memorial Fund, write a check payable to Commonwealth Charitable Fund with Chris Haff-Paluck Memorial Fund written in the memo line.

Checks can be set to: Bridgeview Wealth Partners, LLC
7525 Granger Road Suite 106 Valley View, OH 44125.

Please be sure to include your name and home or email address. We would like to send you a thank you along with documentation for tax purposes.

Thank you for helping continue Chris’s legacy of helping young musicians.

Gerry Paluck

Click here to download a pdf of this letter to share with friends.

About Daniel Hathaway

Daniel Hathaway founded ClevelandClassical.com in September, 2008, after a thirty-one year tenure as music director of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, where he founded the Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert Series and Trinity Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School, he also studied historical musicology at Princeton and Harvard Universities. Before coming to Cleveland in 1977, he served as head of humanities at the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City and as head of arts at Groton School in Massachusetts. In Cleveland, he has served on the music staff of Cleveland Opera, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the faculty of Laurel School. As an organist, Hathaway has played recitals in the U.S., England, France, Germany, and Austria. He team-teaches Music Journalism at Oberlin College and Conservatory and is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

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