by Mike Telin
Why is it that people never seem to tire of 18th-century Scottish folk songs? The moment we hear the poems of A red, red rose, they conjure up the image of the lonely romantic, sitting alone next to a fireplace or in the corner of a village pub while a band entertains the other patrons.
On Saturday afternoon, September 24, Les Délices brought these images to life during their season opener, “The Highland Lassie.” The program mixed an entertaining set of songs steeped in romantic sentimentality, with fiddle tunes that made it impossible not to tap along. The venue — Dunham Tavern Museum — provided the perfect ambiance for the capacity crowd to sit back and enjoy the 60-plus minutes of top-notch performances that blurred the lines between folk song and art song.
Mid-February finds most Northeast Ohioans in a kind of limbo. A month remains before the sun once again shines for twelve hours a day. At a time of year like this, it helps the listener cope when musicians kindle sonic warmth. Playing in an intimate setting that looked out on the sparse, snow-dusted gardens of the Dunham Tavern Museum in Cleveland, the Omni Quartet and four guest players did just that on February 10, in an installment of Heights Arts’ Close Encounters Chamber Music series designed to combat the deepest winter blues.
Dunham Tavern Museum is a perfect venue for an afternoon of chamber music. On Sunday afternoon, June 25, the seventh installment of this year’s ChamberFest explored the theme of “Youth” and featured early works by Beethoven and Bartók. The concert began with Wilhelm Popp’s 
A great thing about chamber music is that it can be performed in any space that can accommodate a small number of musicians while leaving room to comfortably seat an audience. Since 2005, Heights Arts’ Close Encounters Chamber Music Series has found its niche in Cleveland’s vibrant chamber music scene by presenting concerts in intriguing and inviting spaces around the city. The series, coordinated by artistic director Isabel Trautwein, presented its first concert of the season on Sunday afternoon, November 22 at Dunham Tavern Museum in Midtown.