by Jarrett Hoffman
“The war to end all wars” — if only that were true. Known as simply the World War up until the late 1930s, the international disaster we now call WWI came to an armistice a century ago, after claiming over 16 million lives.
A concert this week at the Cleveland Museum of Art will commemorate those lost in that conflict. Embarking on their 71st tour to North America, director Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars — the British vocal ensemble whose specialty is sacred music of the Renaissance — will bring “War and Peace” to Gartner Auditorium on Friday, April 13 at 7:30 pm, as part of the Museum’s Performing Arts Series.
L’Homme Armé (“The Armed Man”), a secular song that was popular in Renaissance France, will open Friday’s concert. “It’s a real battle cry,” Peter Phillips said in a phone call from London. “We all go for it — even I sing in it. That’s a pretty noisy start.”
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.
Of the many quotable lines issued by filmmaker and musician Jim Jarmusch at the Cleveland Museum of Art last week, two stood out: “I’m a self-proclaimed dilettante, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” and later, “The most beautiful thing humans do — have done — is music.” Both comments, given during a post-concert interview in the Museum’s Gartner Auditorium, shed light on the performance that Jarmusch and his bandmate Carter Logan had just staged.
Kyoungtack Hong’s painting 
After Roberto Plano won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2001, he returned to his native Italy to teach and concertize. On Sunday, October 15 at 2:00 pm, Plano will revisit Cleveland to open this year’s Tri-C Classical Piano Series in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art with a free concert of music by Liszt, Villa-Lobos, Ginastera, and Gershwin.