by Jarrett Hoffman
When a festival runs for long enough, it becomes interesting to look back and remember that it wasn’t always a staple of the local culture. At one time, it was entirely new.
“Last weekend,” Daniel Hathaway wrote in April of 2014, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony “burst suddenly into bloom like a crocus after a long winter with the first of two concerts anchoring its promising new enterprise, NEOSonicFest…”
Back then, music director Steven Smith had been thinking for years about how to keep the name and activities of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony alive, as Mike Telin reported in our very first preview of NEOSonicFest. The retirement of the orchestra’s founder, Edwin London, and the end of its residency at Cleveland State University had slowed the group’s momentum.
Launched five years ago, the Music for Miles series presented its 30th performance at Waterloo Arts in Collinwood on Sunday, September 13, a concert by the Cleveland Percussion Project which attracted an admirably intergenerational audience. Headed up by Andrew Pongracz, the quartet of drummers and mallet players also included Dylan Moffitt, Bruce Golden, and Luke Rinderknecht, a stellar assembly of local professionals who held the audience of small children and adults in thrall for nearly two hours.