by Stephanie Manning
Perhaps nothing exemplifies a festival themed around “Planet Earth” quite like a concert performed underneath a prehistoric fish. Specifically, the 359-million-year-old Dunkleosteus terrelli, known as “ancient Ohio’s apex predator.” But you can just call him Dunk.
The ENCORE Music & Ideas Festival drew a packed crowd at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on June 15, and audience members were in for a treat at this concert in the visitor hall. The skeleton of Dunk may have been the closest to the action, but the bright and airy space was filled with other neat creatures for attendees to peruse. (On the left was a reconstruction of Lucy, the most famous human ancestor fossil, and to the right were the bones of Happy, a “reptile hipped” dinosaur.)
It’s an epic feeling when three superheroes, from separate stories and with their own distinct powers, team up. The real-life, artsy, and Cleveland-related parallel to that? A collaboration next week among three prominent local institutions from three different disciplines.