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Poetry, music, and the kitchen sink: Heights Arts Close Encounters (Jan. 21)

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by Mike Telin

Walters-(Tanya-Rosen-Jones)From its inception, Heights Arts Close Encounters Chamber Music series has presented interestingly curated programs in unique spaces. On Sunday, January 21 at the Bop Stop, the series just might have outdone itself with a program titled Rhythms, Rhymes, and the Kitchen Sink. “How many people have ever been to a concert that combines music for English horn, bassoon, and piano with poetry, performed in a jazz club,” English hornist and poet Robert Walters asked the large audience. Needless to say, nobody had. “This may be a first in Western Civilization,” Walters exclaimed. [Read more…]

“It felt like my secret weapon” — Robert Walters’ path to poetry and English horn

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Walters-(Tanya-Rosen-Jones)In a humanities class at the Curtis Institute of Music in the 1980s, professor Joan Landis asked a young Robert Walters to do something he had never done before: read a poem aloud. It was Wallace Stevens’ Sunday Morning, and it changed Walters’ life. “The texture, the language, the rhythm, the assonance, consonance, and rhyme — all the acoustical properties of poetry — I thought, ‘Oh my god, this feels like music.’”

Walters will be armed with his English horn and a stack of original poems this Sunday, January 21 at 3:00 pm at the Bop Stop for “Rhythms, Rhymes, and the Kitchen Sink,” part of the Heights Arts Close Encounters series.

[Read more…]

Heights Arts Close Encounters series begins its 12th Season

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by Mike Telin

Heights-Arts-TrautweinFor the past eleven years, the Heights Arts Close Encounters series has presented chamber music the way it was meant to be heard — up close and personal in intimate spaces. “I can’t believe this is going to be season twelve,” violinist and series Artistic Director Isabel Trautwein said during a telephone conversation. “I figured out that the last concert of this season will be our 50th.” Click here for ticket information.

Trautwein, a member of The Cleveland Orchestra’s first violin section, said that the idea for the series came informally. “I asked a friend if she knew of an organization that might want some chamber music concerts. She put me in touch with Peggy Spaeth, who was the executive director of Heights Arts at that time. We talked, and here we are.”

In the beginning the concerts were held in private homes, but as the demand for tickets grew, they began branching out into venues including Dunham Tavern and Museum and the Bop Stop. [Read more…]

“The Sung Path”:
reflections on a concert

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by Nicholas Jones

Walters-(Tanya-Rosen-Jones)It’s not that rare that poems are used on recitals to complement the music, but it’s unusual to find a concert that features poetry and music on a relatively equal basis, and to find the poems written by one of the lead performers. That was the case this weekend, however, at the Heights Arts concert, “The Sung Path,” featuring Oberlin Conservatory Professor and Cleveland Orchestra English hornist Robert Walters. The combination inspired our reviewer, an occasional poet, to some verses of his own; as an academic, he thought it best to add some footnotes as well. —ed.
[Read more…]

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