by Kevin McLaughlin
On Wednesday, May 28, a collaboration between No Exit and The Collective at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium testified to the merits of exploring fresh musical terrain — in the end offering rewards for both the sympathetic listener and those less easily persuaded.
After a brief welcome by CMA Performing Arts Director Gabe Pollack, the lights lowered and a short black and white film starring Timothy Beyer’s head — not an AI stand-in, he insisted — introduced the concert.
The Collective is an international group of composers who have banded together to facilitate performances of their work. No Exit, Cleveland’s independent new music ensemble, occasionally performs The Collective’s music, as they did spectacularly on Wednesday. In June, the two organizations will embark on a two-week European tour that will include stops in Greece, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands.
Big things are happening for the innovative new music ensemble No Exit. In June they will embark on a two-week European tour that will include stops in Greece, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands.
After taking up the trombone as a nine-year-old, John Faieta went on to carve out a diverse, career as a teacher — he has served on the faculties of Boston University, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Berklee College of Music — as well as performing with the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, the the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra.
The Meridian Arts Ensemble specialize in the avant garde, but they’re dextrous enough to flip between all kinds of genres. So, what was Joseph Haydn’s Feldpartie — written in 1780 — doing on the program next to George Lewis’ uber-contemporary Tightrope? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
For the past eight months No Exit has been celebrating their 15th anniversary with their most ambitious project to date: 
For the recent set of concerts in their season-long celebration of the surreal, No Exit turned to two pivotal events in the history of dadaism for inspiration — the 1920 Festival Dada and the 1923 Soirée du Coeur à Barbe. This program, “Piano Dada,” included works of poetry, theater, and music that were performed at those historic Paris festivals. I attended the performance on March 16 at Heights Arts.