by Jarrett Hoffman
Fretwork, the famous England-based viol consort, will return to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art next week for a program inspired by the Museum’s current exhibit “Michelangelo: Mind of the Master.”
On Wednesday, October 23 at 7:30 pm, Fretwork will play “Music from the Age of Michelangelo,” a program based on musical developments that occurred during that artist’s life. One was the emergence of the violas da gamba, and the trend of homogeneous ensembles.
Another was a book of music published in 1501 by Ottaviano Petrucci that represented a major technological breakthrough in the field of printing. The Harmonice Musices Odhecaton (“One Hundred Harmonic Pieces of Music”) was the first music book to be printed using movable type, and contained works for three to six parts — mostly vocal pieces, but without text — by major composers of the time.
Avi Avital remembers meeting Omer Avital — no relation — in the cafeteria at the Jerusalem Music Academy.
German violinist Carolin Widmann rarely performs in the U.S. — and we Americans might be feeling a tad neglected.
Since its inception in 2008, the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program has brought more than eighty international artists to Cleveland for residencies. Now, and for the first time in its history, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) will make a serious commitment to the commissioning of new music in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation.
“The war to end all wars” — if only that were true. Known as simply 
Deep in the Huayin County in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, in a rural village at the foot of Mount Hua — it was there that pipa player Wu Man first heard the Huayin Shadow Puppet Band, a family of farmers with an artistic tradition over 300 years old, passed down through generations.
Those who were lucky enough to have a ticket to the Mantra Percussion concert on Friday, February 23 at Transformer Station were treated to a spectacular sonic feast for the ears.
Few composers in the classical tradition have successfully transformed stories for children into engrossing all-ages artworks. In a concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art last week, Third Coast Percussion — the Chicago-based quartet of Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore — made a strong case for their new work, 
A Native Canadian boy in the Nipigon country of Ontario dreams of a journey he knows he can’t make. But a figure carved out of cedar, with a strip of lead to keep it upright in the water, and a message inscribed on the bottom to please return it to the water? That might just make it all the way through the Great Lakes, down Niagara Falls, past Quebec City, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and beyond — despite encounters with a snake, a forest fire, passing ships, pollution, and people along the way.