Composers Connect, the last event in the Cleveland Orchestra’s current season on Saturday, June 6, features the music of four of the orchestra’s former Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellows, Marc-Andre Dalbavie (1998-2000), Matthias Pintscher, who will also be on the podium for the concert (2000-2002), Susan Botti, a Cleveland native who will also assume singing duties (2003-2005), and Johannes Maria Staud (2007-2009).

We reached Susan Botti last week by phone to ask how she became a Daniel R. Lewis fellow and how that experience has helped to advance her career.

Mike Telin: You are a Clevelander?

Susan Botti: Yes, I was not born here but transplanted at about six weeks.

MT: What part of the city did you live in?

SB: Cleveland Heights. I was schooled through the Catholic School system and I went to Beaumont High School. My father was the head of cardiology at University Hospital.

MT: You have such an interesting background, singing, composing and you have also embraced so many musical styles; does this or at least part of it come from the fact that you were raised in a city like Cleveland?

SB: Yes in many ways it was, because music is something that is kind of hard to escape here. We have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to our credit and the R&B scene was good. It was like it just sort of came to me, it wasn’t even going out and getting it. I am also the 6th of 7 children, so I had 5 personalities older then me that went through all kinds of musical events. So I absorbed all of them, whatever they were going through. I have vivid memories of the Beatles from my oldest sister, and I remember when Miles Davis, “Man with the Horn”, came into the house with one of my older brothers. There were a lot of musical styles. My oldest sister was also trained as a ballerina, so that music was probably my very earliest classical music memory. Then, of course there was the Cleveland Orchestra, so yes, there were a lot of different styles. [Read more…]