by Mike Telin
If you thought the cimbalom was only used in Eastern European folk music, think again. “I got my start on it with the LA Philharmonic,” percussionist Chester Englander said during a recent telephone call. “They hired me to play a piece by Frank Zappa called Yellow Shark and it uses the cimbalom in ‘The Girl in the Magnesium Dress.’” From then on Englander has been on a mission to expand the instrument’s repertoire.
On Friday, April 22 at 7:30 pm at Kent State’s Ludwig Recital Hall, Englander will join No Exit in a concert they’re calling “The Big Cimbalom Thing.” The program will feature music by Per Nørgård and world premieres of works by Douglas Knehans, Hong-Da Chin, and Edward Smaldone — and it will be repeated on April 28 at 8:00 pm at Cleveland State’s Drinko Hall, April 29 at 8:00 pm at SPACES, and April 30 at 7:00 pm at Heights Arts. All the concerts are free. [Read more…]
As the ongoing climate crisis continues to grow in severity, artists across all disciplines have turned to their work to bring about a call to action for members of society to do better — or perhaps, to remind them that this issue isn’t going to just go away. Brooklyn-based Unheard-of//Ensemble’s artistry takes this idea to a new level, inviting their audiences to fully engage with the music, space, and of course, nature that surrounds them during the evening.
When composer/pianist 
The third iteration of No Exit’s fall program took the ensemble to an intimate venue — the gallery of Heights Arts on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights, where space is at such a premium that percussionist Luke Rinderknecht’s big marimba was nearly marooned offstage, and a few dozen audience members added up to a packed crowd.
By unofficial consensus, it’s best when virtual concerts wrap up in under an hour. The new music ensemble No Exit took that idea to another level on Friday, August 27 with a pre-recorded video of less than half that length.
Composer and flutist Hong-Da Chin has carved out a unique career. His music is influenced by folk music from his native Malaysia as well as Chinese and Indian cultures. A specialist in contemporary music, he is equally at home on modern and traditional Chinese flutes.
Although great strides have been made in audio technology, latency issues (lag in time due to internet connection) still prevent musicians from seamlessly passing musical lines from multiple locations in real-time. In their most recent collaboration, “New Sound Worlds,” Cleveland-based No Exit and St. Paul-based Zeitgeist bring life to a new work by Scott Miller during which members of both ensembles perform from their homes and studios. The concert is available on-demand 
The new music ensemble No Exit continues its longstanding collaboration with Zeitgeist, their counterparts from Minnesota’s Twin Cities, with “New Sound Worlds,” a free 
New music concerts can run the risk of sinking under the weight of their own self-importance, especially when “world premieres” are involved. Happily, while No Exit takes itself seriously, it goes about its business with a redemptive playfulness, as demonstrated in several of the entries in the hour-long concert that debuted on the ensemble’s YouTube channel on January 29.