oh, the intrigue. Anyway, this is a cool orchestra playing interesting music, and they're in trouble.
Cleveland Chamber Symphony finds 'it's a tough time'
By Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer
April 04, 2010, 12:01AM
Cleveland Chamber Symphony music director Steven Smith: “We’re not gone. It’s a tough time for all of us.”
In movie theaters around the world, audiences watching Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" are hearing waves whoosh and gulls soar as the Cleveland Chamber Symphony performs Robert Ericson's "Pacific Sirens."
Here's one irony: The fictional Shutter Island, home to a maximum-security psychiatric hospital where Leonardo Di Caprio investigates strange doings, is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean. It's supposed to be in Boston Harbor, which opens up to the Atlantic.
Now for a life-size local irony: Try catching the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in the flesh in Northeast Ohio.
The Grammy Award-winning ensemble, which concentrates on works by living composers, is one of numerous orchestras and artists who perform late 20th- and 21st-century music in Scorsese's psychological thriller.
But the Cleveland Chamber Symphony hasn't given a concert since last fall, and it's struggling to stay alive.
"We're not gone," says Steven Smith, the orchestra's music director. "It's a tough time for all of us. We're trying to marshal our forces and come back as strong as ever."
For more than two decades, the professional ensemble was in residence at Cleveland State University, where founding music director Edwin London built an impressive record of world premieres and garnered national awards for programming.
London's retirement and personality clashes at CSU led to the orchestra's departure in 2004 for the Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music, where it has presented occasional concerts.
A performance scheduled for late February, however, was canceled after funds to pay the orchestra couldn't be found. So the only place to experience the group -- except on a series of compact discs, including a 2007 Grammy-winning Messaien recording -- is a big screen near you.
Although contemporary-music mavens haven't heard a live peep out of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in months, Smith says he and musicians are working hard to program a new season at Baldwin-Wallace.
The orchestra has applied to Cuyahoga Arts and Culture for a $16,000 grant -- which it must match by June 30 -- to finish a recording project begun three years ago. Smith, the ensemble and soloist Eva Legene recorded Gerald Plain's Concerto for Recorder and Chamber Orchestra in January 2007.
With the CAC grant, they would be able to fill out the disc in June with Monica Houghton's "Osa Sinfonia," which they performed on the same B-W program with the Plain concerto.
"We're not that far away," says Smith of the orchestra's matching portion of the grant. "We're about two-thirds of the way there."
Smith says the orchestra hopes to present several concerts next season at B-W. In addition, it anticipates reviving its Young and Emerging Composer Project, which gives college-age composers the chance to hear their scores played by the ensemble.
Peter Landgren, director of B-W's Conservatory of Music, says the college is committed to hosting the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. B-W supplies no funding, but it prints the programs and provides ushers for the orchestra's rent-free concerts in Gamble Auditorium.
Landgren gives several reasons for B-W to continue welcoming the musicians.
"They bring a level of performance and a segment of repertoire that needs to be on a college campus," he says. "They fill a repertoire niche that no one else fills in the Greater Cleveland area."
And, it turns out, in movie theaters near and far.
