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Cleveland Orchestra:
Episode 3 of “In Focus”

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by Mike Telin

“We have Severance Hall and we have Blossom Music Center, and Adella feels like our third home — a digital home for the 21st century,” Cleveland Orchestra chief brand officer Ross Binnie said during a recent telephone conversation.

On Thursday, November 12 at 7:00 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra will present “In Focus: Episode 3.” Recorded at Severance on the 22nd and 23rd of October under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst, the program features Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D with Emanuel Ax as soloist, and Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings. Click here to access the Orchestra’s Adella streaming platform (available on demand following the premiere), and here to purchase Adella premium.

Although behind-the-scenes discussions had centered around the creation of digital concerts for some time, Binnie noted that “like our ‘On a Personal Note’ podcasts, creating ‘In Focus’ was accelerated because of the pandemic.”

While acknowledging that they are not the only orchestra to offer their own digital platform, Binnie does see Cleveland’s as being a little different from the others. “We’re all trying to tell our stories, but I think ours is more focused on our music-making than our history, although there is a part of the site that’s devoted to archives.”

Ultimately, when audiences cannot attend in-person performances, Adella provides a way for the Orchestra to stay in touch with their donors, subscribers, and single-ticket buyers. “We typically play to 400,000 people in a year, and Adella helps us transport our story across the world. It helps us keep in touch: it’s great for our audiences in Miami, it’s great for our audiences in Europe and Asia — they can see what we’re doing the rest of the year, which I think is a tremendous asset.” [Read more…]

Ross Binnie talks about The Cleveland Orchestra’s fall season

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by Mike Telin

binnie-rossAs The Cleveland Orchestra gears up to launch its fall Severance Hall season, we caught up with Ross Binnie, the Orchestra’s Chief Marketing Officer, and asked him to give his insights into the array of programs. He described them as “a blend of the curious and the familiar which will be wonderful for the audiences.”

The season kicks off on September 29 and 30 when Franz Welser-Möst leads performances of Ives’s Symphony No. 3 (“The Camp Meeting”) and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2. And organist Paul Jacobs (below) will make his Cleveland Orchestra debut as soloist in Copland’s Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. [Read more…]

Summers@Severance to feature three (no, four!) Friday concerts in 2015

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by Daniel Hathaway

TCOS@STerraceExcept for special events like Oberlin’s Cooper Competitions, Severance Hall usually takes a summer break while The Cleveland Orchestra is off performing at Blossom Music Center. Last year, in response to burgeoning summer activity among other University Circle institutions, the Orchestra’s administration planned three Friday evening performances on its home turf. As chief marketing officer Ross Binnie said in an interview for this publication last July, “The change is so dramatic and the area is really buzzing with life now on a year-round basis. So it seemed an oversight not to have our doors opened as well to anyone wants to come to hear our concerts indoors in a relaxed atmosphere in the summer.”

This summer, Severance Hall will again resound with three concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra — on July 10, August 7, and August 21 at 7:00 pm — plus a bonus performance on August 28 at 8:00 pm by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Music director Franz Welser-Möst will lead the opening performance, which revisits two works the Orchestra played during that busy week in May when the League of American Orchestras was visiting Cleveland for its annual conference. On July 10, Olivier Messiaen’s Hymne and Richard Strauss’s Symphonia domestica will share the program with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with Igor Levit as the featured soloist. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Ross Binnie gives a guided tour of the spring season

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by Mike Telin

BINNIE-RossNow that the first spring flowers are poking their heads out of the ground, it’s a good time to look ahead to The Cleveland Orchestra’s busy schedule of events for April and May. And who is in a better position to talk about that than Ross Binnie, the orchestra’s chief marketing officer?

“We’ve got a little bit of classical for everybody — that’s my motto for the spring season,” Binnie said during a lively telephone conversation. “If I had to point at a project that I am really looking forward to, I think that the opera, Strauss’s Daphne, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst on May 27 and 30, is going to be really interesting. The director, James Darrah, has a real gift for bringing these works to life.” Although many details are still being worked out, the opera will be costumed and have staged elements. [Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra to debut Summers@Severance series

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By Mike Telin

Severance-Hall-Summer“We haven’t performed in Severance Hall during the summer since we opened Blossom Music Center in 1968, so this is exciting,” said Ross Binnie, Chief Marketing Officer at The Cleveland Orchestra, in a recent telephone conversation.

The Cleveland Orchestra will begin its new Summers@Severance series on Friday, August 1st at 7:00 pm, when conductor Johannes Debus will lead performances of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances and Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess and the Piano Concerto in G major, featuring Benjamin Grosvenor as soloist. The series marks the first time in decades that the Orchestra is presenting its own series of ticketed summer concerts at Severance Hall. [Read more…]

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