by Mike Telin
What is PianoDays @CLE? “It’s a festival that celebrates the piano in all of its forms,” Piano Cleveland president Yaron Kohlberg said during a recent Zoom conversation. “We want piano lovers from around the city and the region to be able to enjoy not only traditional classical performances but also performances that offer something for everybody.”
While Piano Cleveland’s signature event is the Cleveland International Piano Competition, Kohlberg said that it is important for them to engage with their audience while attracting new people to that event and to classical music. “It’s our role to tackle these things and to influence people — we are responsible for the future.”
To get people in the piano mood, there will be two Forte Friday events — the first on July 15 at 6:30 pm at Crocker Park and the second on July 22 at 5:30 at the Van Aken District. “Last year we saw that the pop-up events like these were a great way to attract new audiences and to generate excitement for our big performances,” Kohlberg said, adding that like last year, these will also feature music of many genres and styles.
Piano Cleveland has a lot in store for Northeast Ohio this summer. But before 
If you ask a musician what new skill they learned during the past eighteen months, more often than not, the answer is video editing. And, in a relatively short amount of time, many became quite good at it. 
After a three-day break, Competition first-round performances will continue on Thursday, July 15 at 7:00 pm. Audiences can also experience that evening’s session by attending the Watch Party at the Beachwood Community Center. Pack a picnic and bring your chairs to watch performances under the stars and on the big screen. Click 
Many pianists win prizes in international piano competitions but few return to the scenes of their triumphs to run them.
Piano Cleveland has announced that after a year-long postponement due to the challenges presented by the pandemic, the organization’s signature event — the Cleveland International Piano Competition (CIPC) — will take place from July 8 through August 11, 2021. (Above: Nikita Mndoyants, 2016 first place winner, with Bramwell Tovey.)
With the recent spread of COVID-19, the opportunity to attend live classical music performances has come to a complete halt and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. Many organizations and individual artists are seeking to fill that void through online streaming.
Classical music concerts in Cleveland usually thin out in July as festivals outside the city get under way, most notably The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom season. So it is a welcome turn of events to see a new international summer festival supported by University Circle institutions arrive for two weeks in mid-July. I attended the first weekend of Music in the Circle concerts that brought musicians from around the world to the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, July 11 and to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Sunday, July 14.