by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Today’s concerts: Bombino (“the Sultan of Shred”) visits CMA, and the CIM Orchestra plays music by Coleridge-Taylor, Still & Stravinsky

•Other events today: “Drumming with Dylan” and “Listen @ the Library”

•News briefs: Michael Sachs resigns from CIM

•Almanac: choral works by Dett & Bruckner

CONCERTS HAPPENING TODAY:

Bombino (above), who has been described as “the Sultan of Shred” (New York Times) and the “World’s Greatest Guitarist” (Noisey), will visit Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art at 7:30 pm. Read Max Newman’s interview with him here. Tickets are available online. 

And at that same hour, Jake Taniguchi will lead the CIM Orchestra in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Four Novelletten, William Grant Still’s Mother and Child, and Igor Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète (rev. 1947) at Kulas Hall. It’s free, but reservations are required.

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by Jarrett Hoffman

IN THIS EDITION:

•Dear Diary: an encounter with the Great Stalacpipe Organ, in a cave

•Bulletin Board: Next Jazz Legacy apprenticeship deadline, George Walker album from Cleveland Orchestra

•Almanac: R. Nathaniel Dett & Anton Bruckner

DEAR DIARY,

This past weekend I heard the biggest musical instrument in the world. It’s inside a cave in Virginia.

The cave is called Luray Caverns. It has high ceilings and big open spaces, but it feels very close-up in the dim lighting and with stalactites stretching down right in front of you.

Partway through the cave, you find the Great Stalacpipe Organ. Armed with four manuals, it was invented in the ‘50s by Leland W. Sprinkle (a real name), a mathematician and scientist who was involved in electronics and worked at the Pentagon.

Back then, Luray tour guides would tap on stalactites with a mallet to make sounds, even playing well-known tunes. That might’ve been what gave Mr. Sprinkle his idea. Or maybe it was his son smacking his head on a stalactite — another kind of percussion, and another version of the story.

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