Bruckner & Adams with the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom

Once again, I was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend a per­for­mance of the world-renowned Cleve­land Orches­tra. This time it was at Blos­som Music Cen­ter, there was a Meet the Musi­cians pan­el before the per­for­mance, and a chance to meet the fea­tured vio­liniset, Leila Jose­fow­icz, dur­ing inter­mis­sion. We were also plied with wine & hor d’oeu­vres at both times; so, you know, bonus. The per­for­mance fea­tured pieces from John Adams and Anton Bruck­n­er.

In my pre­vi­ous post, I com­plained a bit about the lack of rea­son­ably priced tick­et oppor­tu­ni­ties to see the Orches­tra and a lack of young folks. In the run up to attend­ing this per­for­mance, how­ev­er, I learned that see­ing the Cleve­land Orches­tra at Blos­som is a fam­i­ly tra­di­tion for fam­i­lies all over the North­east Ohio area; that’s a seri­ous perk of liv­ing near Cleve­land. Grow­ing up in the mid­dle of nowhere Indi­ana, there was nev­er an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see some­thing as spe­cial as the Cleve­land Orches­tra. It’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing I’ll be tak­ing my son to in the future. The acoustics at Blos­som are admirably suit­ed to lis­ten­ing to the Orches­tra, from any van­tage. At Sev­er­ance Hall you sit inside the music, at Blos­som it wash­es over you.

I real­ly enjoyed the Meet the Musi­cians pan­el; hear­ing from Frank Cohen (clar­inet), Amy Lee (vio­lin), Stephen Rose (vio­lin) and Paul Yan­ci­ch (tim­pani). Frank in par­tic­u­lar was charm­ing and had some great sto­ries to relate about grow­ing up attend­ing orches­tral per­for­mances. All of the musi­cians spoke a bit about upcom­ing per­for­mances and their thoughts on the pieces and being part of the orches­tra in gen­er­al. When it was time for ques­tions I asked if any of the musi­cians could expand on their for­ays into play­ing in non-tra­di­tion­al spaces, like the Hap­py Dog or in Ann Arbor, MI. Amy Lee has been active in that area and men­tioned that some orches­tra mem­bers have been try­ing to find a place to play on their night off dur­ing their upcom­ing trip to New York City, but were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing a venue that would be cool with it. That’s real­ly stu­pid of you, New York.

Our box seats were top notch (of course), and the chance to kib­itz as the more musi­cal­ly knowl­edge­able asked Leila Jose­fow­icz ques­tions dur­ing the inter­mis­sion was an added bonus to what had already been a won­der­ful evening. Post-inter­mis­sion was spent on the lawn with dozens and dozens of fam­i­lies and the sounds of Anton Bruck­n­er’s 9th Sym­pho­ny. It was a per­fect evening for clas­si­cal music. Many thanks to the Cleve­land Orches­tra for the invi­ta­tion.