EACH OF THE FOUR COMPOSERS featured on tonight’s program — Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Samuel Barber, and William Grant Still — profoundly impacted American classical music, contributing uniquely to its development. They all embraced a fusion of classical and popular musical styles, reflecting the diverse cultural and artistic landscape of America, and many were particularly inspired by jazz, which captured in sound the daring spirit of the time.
The Three Dance Episodes from On the Town are orchestral excerpts from Bernstein’s 1944 Broadway musical of the same name, which he composed alongside lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The show follows three sailors on a 24-hour shore leave in New York City during World War II, and this suite reflects the energy and excitement of the sailors’ adventures in the city.
In a similar spirit, Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal is a vivacious orchestral work inspired by Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 18th-century comedy of manners. Composed in 1931 when the composer was only 21, the overture reflects the play’s wit and humor while showcasing Barber’s already mature mastery of orchestral color.
Seven years earlier, in 1924, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was first performed and quickly became one of the most famous works of American classical music, instantly recognizable from its opening clarinet line. This year marks the centennial of this groundbreaking piece and tonight, we hear a spectacular new transcription of the work created and performed by banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck.
Still’s First Symphony is an equally innovative work that, upon its premiere by Howard Hanson and the Rochester Philharmonic in 1931, marked the first time a major American orchestra had performed a symphony by an AfricanAmerican composer. Subtitled “Afro-American,” this four-movement work is a personal and powerful exploration of Black identity, blending Western classical forms with elements of blues, spirituals, and jazz. As Still himself said, “I don’t think that it is good for the world of music to have everything come out of the same mold. God didn’t place only roses on earth. ... He put flowers of many sorts and many colors here, the beauty of each enhancing that of others.”
— Kiana Lilly
Kiana Lilly is The Cleveland Orchestra’s arts administration intern and a voice student at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Three Dance Episodes from On the Town
by Leonard Bernstein
BORN: August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts
DIED: October 14, 1990, in New York City
COMPOSED: musical, 1944; suite, 1945
WORLD PREMIERE: On the Town premiered at New York’s Adelphi Theatre on December 28, 1944. The Three Dance Episodes were first performed on February 3, 1946, with the composer conducting the San Francisco Symphony.
CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE: June 28, 1960, conducted by Louis Lane
THOUGH KNOWN FOR his sympathy and facility in rendering “difficult” modernist scores as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein’s posthumous reputation rests, in no small part, upon his instinctive feeling for popular music and its audience, which resulted in three musicals of creative significance, culminating in the peerless West Side Story (1957). The first of his major forays into musical theater, On the Town (1944), would probably be even better remembered today had lightning not struck so decisively with the later show (though On the Town’s multidisciplinary mash-up of music and dance does portend the things to come). Regardless, the show continues to charm audiences with the “aw-shucks” optimism of three American sailors, living it up in New York City on shore leave for a single, hijinks-filled day.
It’s more than just coincidence that Bernstein created a veritable stag-party-insound for On the Town, with Manhattan doubling as a kind of proto-Disneyland for the sailors. It is a mark of his skill in negotiating the no man’s land between popular and art music that he understood and exploited his musicals’ potential as a source of symphonic extracts, while reveling in the overt Americanisms that had become an established part of the nation’s symphonic vocabulary from the Jazz Age onward.
Together, these Three Dance Episodes form a fairly conventional ternary structure, not unlike the traditional concerto format (though without a combative soloist taking center stage): two brisk, rhythmically piqued outer movements sandwich a sonorous, central pas de deux based on the show’s main ballad, “Lonely Town.” The rather brief first episode, “The Great Lover,” establishes the overcaffeinated tone for the suite as
whole, with an outsized contribution from the brass and winds that borrows unashamedly from the big band soundscape that had taken the nation by storm over the previous decade, its ubiquity only further cemented by the desperation of wartime R&R, when the dance floor must have seemed, to a strange degree, like a life-ordeath exercise.
By contrast, the central “Lonely Town” finds the composer in a more dreamy mood, unfurling the songful episode in a generous arch, sweeping from sobriety — and even melancholy — to passion, and then back again. Here Bernstein seems to glance over his shoulder at an older colleague and friend, Aaron Copland, whose style is more than faintly suggested. The episode boasts romance aplenty, especially in the feverish “whoosh” of its middle section where the strings make a bid to banish the winds from their primacy, as if in revolt against the barking of an intemperate drill sergeant.
If one were to take a poll, it is surely On the Town’s de facto title song (the words “On the Town” are never actually uttered) that would be most readily recalled by audiences, on account of Bernstein’s uncannily perfect musical prosody in setting the three sailors’ clarion-cry: “New York, New York, / it’s a helluva town!” Its up-tempo tune gleefully dominates the last of the three episodes. Here, Bernstein treats us to a kaleidoscopic, carnivalesque evocation of Times Square. At moments, it sounds more than a bit like a dry-run for the “Dance at the Gym” from West Side Story, and a short detour in driving duple meter is a dead-ringer for “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Lyricism hasn’t entirely fled the scene, however: A memorably husky saxophone solo shows the sailors in a steamier aspect, slowing the song’s main melody to an exercise in seductive swing.
Eighty years after the musical’s premiere, we can hardly fail to be seduced by Bernstein’s paean to the everyman sailor. In On the Town, he sings not of great men doing great deeds, but of the too-easily-forgotten enlisted man, caught here during one of those rare moments in which his only duty was to forget.
— Dane–Michael Harrison
Dane–Michael Harrison is a research fellow in the Archives of The Cleveland Orchestra for the 2023–24 season. He is a PhD candidate in historical musicology at Case Western Reserve University.
Photo: Jack Mitchell Wikipedia
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
Rhapsody in Blue (trans. Béla Fleck)
by George Gershwin
BORN: September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn
DIED: July 11, 1937, in Hollywood
COMPOSED: 1924; banjo transcription, 2023
WORLD PREMIERE: February 12, 1924, with the composer at the piano, accompanied by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. Béla Fleck premiered his banjo transcription with the Nashville Symphony and Giancarlo Guerrero on September 9, 2023.
CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE: July 22, 1939, with pianist Henry Pildner, conducted by Rudolph Ringwall. Tonight’s performance marks the first presentation of Béla Fleck’s banjo transcription of Rhapsody in Blue with The Cleveland Orchestra.
ORCHESTRATION: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 alto saxophones, tenor saxophone, 3 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals, snare drum, bass drum, tam-tam, triangle, glockenspiel), and strings, plus solo banjo (substituting for solo piano)
DURATION: about 20 minutes
ON FEBRUARY 12, 1924, a concert billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music” at a venue near Times Square in New York City attracted an overflow audience that included Igor Stravinsky, John Philip Sousa , and stride pianist Willie (“the Lion”) Smith among its musical luminaries. A new “jazz concerto,” introduced as the second-to-last work on the program, stirred the audience into a reaction of frenzied enthusiasm.
The impact of George Gershwin’s composition, known to posterity as Rhapsody in Blue, continues to reverberate. The celebrity big band leader Paul Whiteman had organized his “experiment” as part of a mission to bring wider recognition to jazz. Whiteman wanted to prove that the jazz idiom was as capable of producing great music as the European classical tradition and could inspire works rivaling those in the symphonic repertoire. “I sincerely believe in jazz,” he later declared. “I think it expresses the spirit of America.”
For his part, Gershwin was well-situated to bridge musical worlds. His impoverished upbringing on New York’s Lower East Side in the early years of the 20th century sharpened his sensitivity to the many stories of immigrants like that of his own family. Of Ukrainian- and Lithuanian-Jewish heritage, his parents had fled the increasingly antisemitic conditions of the Russian Empire.
This background paved the way for the polyglot musical language Gershwin would develop as he moved effortlessly among different idioms. Already as a teenager,
he became firmly grounded in the “real” world of commercial entertainment and launched his career crafting popular songs for music publishers who congregated along W. 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues (the so-called “Tin Pan Alley”).
The American banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck, who was also born in New York City, recalls his uncle taking him to see the biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945) at the Thalia Theater, an old Art Deco movie palace on the Upper West Side. (Fleck’s family lived only two blocks from Gershwin’s former residence in the neighborhood.)
The movie, which even shows a banjo player in the orchestra during the sequence when Rhapsody is performed, “had an incredible impact on young me, and the piece in particular blew me away,” Fleck says. “Over the years, I’ve checked in with Rhapsody in Blue regularly and always found it had that same compelling effect on me.” He added it to his “bucket list” of pieces he wanted to explore on his instrument. The pandemic gave him time to focus on his project of arranging the solo piano part for banjo.
Gershwin himself composed his original score for Rhapsody for two pianos, writing at frantic speed in the weeks before the premiere. He later described how his vision for the piece came to him while traveling on a train while he was listening to “its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer.”
The composer/arranger Ferde Grofé (1892–1972) orchestrated the score for Whiteman’s jazz band and continued to introduce additional arrangements — including, in 1942, the one for symphony orchestra that is usually heard in the concert hall. Fleck studied Gershwin’s piano score closely — “one measure at a time, just to see if it was even remotely possible on the banjo” — and concluded that “technically, it would not be easy, but some kind of possible.”
After premiering the result with the Nashville Symphony last September, Fleck released the debut recording of his arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue this past February, on the official 100th anniversary of the work, partnering with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and conductor Eric Jacobson. The album also
Photo: Lebrecht Music & Arts / Alamy Stock Photo
GEORGE GERSHWIN
includes two shorter takes on Gershwin’s piece titled Rhapsody in Blue(grass) and Rhapsody in Blue(s), respectively, along with two little-known solo pieces by Gershwin.
Fleck crafted a banjo interpretation of the piano part, which he integrated with Grofé’s arrangement for orchestra. “I’ve always noted that banjo is kind of like a lap piano,” says Fleck. One challenge, though, is that he can strike only three notes at a time (versus at least 10 at the keyboard when using both hands — not to mention the much larger range of the piano). He thus had to change the piano part “to accommodate the banjo’s range and limitations.” In the process, Fleck carries forward the kind of innovation that Gershwin pioneered in Rhapsody in Blue by tearing down assumed barriers between genres.
In Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin used his gift for catchy, self-contained melodies and his understanding of jazz to reimagine the European model of the piano concerto. He initially titled the work-in-progress American Rhapsody but took up his brother Ira’s suggestion to use Rhapsody in Blue as a play on the artist James Whistler ’s colorthemed names for his paintings. Overall, Gershwin described the piece as “a musical kaleidoscope of America — of our vast melting pot, of our incomparable national pep, our blues, our metropolitan madness.”
— Thomas May
Thomas May is a writer, critic, educator, and translator. A regular contributor to The New York Times , The Seattle Times , Gramophone , and Strings magazine, he is the Englishlanguage editor for the Lucerne Festival.
JULY 28 - AUGUST 10
THE FUTURE IS GRAND.
Blossom Summer Soirée
Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5
by Samuel Barber
BORN: March 9, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania
DIED: January 23, 1981, in New York City
COMPOSED: 1931
WORLD PREMIERE: August 30, 1933, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Alexander Smallens
CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE: October 24, 1940, conducted by Music Director Artur Rodziński
THIS JOYOUS OVERTURE by Samuel Barber was for many years featured by American orchestras and American conductors who wanted to offer a sample of their national heritage, especially on tour overseas. Yet when it was first heard in New York in 1938, critics suspected it of being Italian, or at best English, because it contains a folklike melody that someone like Vaughan Williams or Holst might have written.
As a young man, Barber did not share the desire to write distinctly national music that infected many American composers of his generation. He’d just as soon spend his summers in Italy than in the prairies, and his teacher at the Curtis Institute, Rosario Scalero, an Italian with a Viennese background, naturally steered students toward the European tradition.
The spirit of Barber’s overture is undoubtedly Italian, as Rossini would have recognized, while its English overtones are appropriate to the rather surprising literary source that Barber had chosen for this first essay in orchestral writing. During his student years at Curtis, which he attended from the age of 15, Barber was an avid reader, especially of English literature. His notebooks list the names: Chesterton, Dickens, Thackeray, Swift, and so on. His lifelong devotion to vocal music, both songs and opera, testifies to his faith in words as catalysts to music. Composition of the overture was preceded by a setting of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach and followed by Music for a Scene from Shelley. Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy The School for Scandal lies a little outside this rather exalted canon of great literature. Rather, it belongs to the tradition of London stage comedy that extends from the Restoration to the Whitehall farces of the 1950s
and ’60s. First staged in 1777, the play mocks hypocrisy, miserliness, lechery, and other social failings with disguises, subterfuges, mistaken identities, and knockabout humor.
High spirits are the appropriate tone for the overture, therefore, and its lively rhythmic invention suggests the play’s snappy dialogue and sharp action. Only the folklike tune, so unexpected when it emerges on the oboe from the energetic opening pages, seems foreign to this mood — but it provides what might be thought of as symphonic contrast. Its return later in the overture is given to the English horn.
This is a young man’s music, brimming over with ideas, some of which barely have time to register in the mind before something new replaces them. The lead-in to the reprise is almost comically overdrawn, and the ending has a grandeur that suggests something closer to a full symphony. Barber’s music quickly developed a maturity on which his reputation is solidly based, but, here at age 21, he was aiming for the thrill of orchestral music without too much concern for balance or restraint. It was a learning piece for Barber, and one he didn’t intend to actually be used in conjunction with a production of the play itself.
Not that the music came to him easily. He composed the overture on a summer trip to Italy with his fellow student and friend Gian Carlo Menotti in 1931. As he wrote to his anxious parents: “We surely have been lazy — nothing but swimming and tennis all day long. … I am getting so fond of it that I don’t want to work at all.” On his return to Philadelphia, he showed it to Fritz Reiner, conductor of the Curtis Orchestra. Reiner turned it down, but Barber was consoled by the award of the Joseph H. Bearns Prize for this work in April 1933, followed by its premiere performance at the Philadelphia Orchestra’s summer venue in August of that year.
— Hugh Macdonald
Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year
Photo:
SAMUEL BARBER
Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American”
by William Grant Still
BORN: May 11, 1895, in Woodville, Mississippi
DIED: December 3, 1978, in Los Angeles
COMPOSED: 1930
WORLD PREMIERE: October 29, 1931, with Howard Hanson conducting the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra
CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE: January 11, 1976, led by Music Director Lorin Maazel (though the Orchestra had performed the symphony’s third movement several times in preceding years, starting in 1942)
WILLIAM GRANT STILL’S “AFRO-AMERICAN” Symphony is one of the seminal works in his vast catalog. It, along with Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 and William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, mark how the generation of Black composers that emerged during the interwar years contributed to the ongoing conversations that concerned American musical nationalism.
Born in 1895, a young William Grant Still arrived in New York in 1919 and was instantly drawn into the various musical and intellectual circles that framed the city’s identity during the 1920s. He worked in the Black musical theater circles and played oboe in the pit orchestra of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s landmark musical Shuffle Along. He also worked as recording director and arranger for Black Swan Records, the first Black-owned recording company. Still began writing for the dance orchestras of Artie Shaw and Donald Voorhees, and also sought opportunities to develop his compositional voice, studying briefly with George Whitefield Chadwick at the New England Conservatory and Edgard Varèse. The culminating effect of Still’s engagement with modernist classical music, blues, and jazz during these years informed the sound of the “Afro-American” Symphony.
Completed in 1930, the “Afro-American” Symphony was initially conceived as part of a symphonic trilogy that would provide a composite portrayal of African Americans. The work not only exemplified New Negro ideology — popularized during the Harlem Renaissance — but also provided a strong example of the type of elevated Black art that
movement leaders advocated for. Its narrative theme chronicles the transformation of the enslaved African to the American Negro, each movement representing a different emotion or sentiment.
Still anchored this context with descriptive titles, poetic fragments written by American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and musical themes that signified the essence of Black identity, specifically the blues and Negro spirituals. In his later years, Still stated that his use of these folk idioms reflected his desire “to elevate a musical idiom typical of the American Negro to symphonic level,” and to portray the “class of American Negroes who [clung] to the old standards and traditions; those sons of the soil who differ, but little if at all, from their forebears of ante-bellum [sic] days.”
The first movement, “Longing,” is written in the standard sonata form. The poetic fragment by Dunbar reads as follows:
All my life long twell de night has pas’ Let de wo’k come ez it will, So dat I fin’ you my honey, at last’, Somewhaih des ovah de hill.
It begins with a slow introduction played by the English horn, which is followed by the principal theme, an original blues melody in the muted trumpet. It bears hallmarks of the vaudeville blues idiom that Still’s mentor, W.C. Handy, is credited with popularizing — blue notes, vocalized nuances, and the 12-bar form. Following the transition, which features motivic interplay between woodwinds, horns, and strings, the second theme enters. This secondary theme, played by the oboe, resembles the melodic contour of a Negro spiritual.
The second movement, “Sorrow,” features two variations of the blues melody. Still characterizes these themes as “the fervent prayers of a burdened people rising upward to God,” and Dunbar’s poetry illuminates the theology of hope and transcendence that frames the sacrality of the blues:
It’s moughty tiahsome layin’ ’roun’ Dis sorrer-ladden earfly groun’ An’ oftentimes I thinks, thinks I, ’Twould be a sweet t’ing des to die An go ’long home.
Photo: Carl Van Vechten |
Commons
WILLIAM GRANT STILL
Still’s use of the blues in this movement exemplifies the symbiotic relationship between the sacred and the secular. It is a reminder of how the moan of the jukebox was commensurate with the moan emoted in the ecstatic worship and fervent praying of the praise house.
The third movement, entitled “Humor,” captures the transcendent spirit of Black joy: An’ we’ll shout ouah halleluyahs, On dat mighty reck’nin’ day.
Displays of joy represented how the enslaved reclaimed their humanity. Sound, rhythm, and movement were used to transcend and protest the atrocities associated with slavery and, later, Jim Crow laws. This movement is foregrounded in the syncopated rhythmic patterns that would have accompanied Black folk dances. Still invokes another layer of cultural context with the tenor banjo, an instrument which represents the retention of African culture in America. Its use in this movement invokes the cultural space of the frolic, which, in the post-slave experience, morphed into different ritualized spaces that fostered communal bonds. Still’s use of the banjo also reclaims it from the stigma of minstrelsy, reaffirming its cultural history in America.
The final movement, “Aspiration,” invokes the hope of Black America during the interwar years. The poetic verse selected for this movement shifts away from vernacular dialect to a more elevated tone that was commensurate with New Negro ideology:
Be proud, my Race, in mind and soul. Thy name is writ on Glory’s scroll In characters of fire.
High mid the clouds of Fame’s bright sky Thy banner’s blazoned folds now fly, And truth shall lift them higher.
The opening theme, introduced by the strings, reminds us of Still’s gift for melody and rich harmonic color. It is not until the second theme enters that the blues theme, which has served as the unifying factor throughout this work, returns. The development of these themes along with the progressive drive of the rhythm underscore the spirit of perseverance conveyed in Dunbar’s words.
— Tammy L. Kernodle
Tammy L. Kernodle is a musicologist and distinguished professor at Miami University. She has written extensively on Mary Lou Williams and is the author of Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (University of Illinois Press, 2020).
BRETT MITCHELL
conductor
Hailed for presenting engaging, thoughtfully curated programs, American conductor Brett Mitchell is in consistent demand on the podium at home and abroad. In March 2024, he was named music director of the Pasadena Symphony, beginning an initial five-year term with the 2024–25 season. He has also served as artistic director & conductor of Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival since 2022. Previously, he held music director posts with the Colorado Symphony, Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra, and Moores Opera Center.
As a guest conductor, Mitchell’s recent engagements have included appearances with the Detroit, National, San Francisco, and Vancouver symphonies; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Minnesota Orchestra; and a two-week tour with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. He also regularly collaborates with leading soloists, including Yo-Yo Ma , Renée Fleming, Itzhak Perlman, Conrad Tao, and Alisa Weilerstein.
From 2013 to 2017, Mitchell served on the conducting staff of The Cleveland Orchestra. He joined the Orchestra as assistant conductor in 2013 and was promoted to associate conductor in 2015. During this time, he was also music director of The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, a tenure which included a four-city tour of China in June 2015.
In addition to his work with professional orchestras, Mitchell is well known for his affinity for working with and mentoring young musicians. He is regularly invited to work at high-level training programs such as the Cleveland Institute of Music, National Repertory Orchestra, Sarasota Music Festival, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. He has also served on the faculties of Northern Illinois University, the University of Houston, and the University of Denver.
Born in Seattle, Mitchell holds degrees in conducting from the University of Texas at Austin and composition from Western Washington University. He also studied with Leonard Slatkin at the National Conducting Institute and was selected by Kurt Masur as a recipient of the inaugural American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation Scholarship in 2008. Mitchell was also one of five recipients of the League of American Orchestras’ American Conducting Fellowship from 2007 to 2010.
Photo: Roger Mastroianni
BÉLA FLECK
banjo
Just in case you aren’t familiar with Béla Fleck, there are many who say he’s the premier banjo player in the world. Others claim that Fleck has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo through a remarkable performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical map and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. If you are familiar with Fleck, you know that he just loves to play the banjo and put it into unique settings.
An 18-time Grammy Award–winner, Fleck has the virtuosic, jazz-to-classical ingenuity of an iconic instrumentalist and composer with bluegrass roots. His collaborations range from his groundbreaking, standardsetting ensemble Béla Fleck and the Flecktones to a staggeringly broad array of musical experiments. His newest project is no different, as Fleck expands and explores George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue by paying homage to the legendary composer while redefining an American classic just in time for its centennial. The album’s release on February 12, 2024, coincided with the 100th anniversary of Rhapsody in Blue’s premiere in New York City and features three variations of the iconic piece with a gamut of special guests, alongside two other Gershwin works arranged by Fleck and performed on solo banjo.
From writing concertos for symphony orchestra, exploring the banjo’s African roots, and collaborating with Indian musical royalty Zakir Hussain and Rakesh Chaurasia alongside Edgar Meyer, to performing as a folk duo with his wife Abigail Washburn and jazz duos with Chick Corea , many tout that Béla Fleck is the world’s premier banjo player. As Jon Pareles wrote for The New York Times, “That’s a lot of territory for five strings.”
Photo: Jeremy Cowart
THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA
Franz Welser-Möst Music Director
KELVIN SMITH FAMILY CHAIR
FIRST VIOLINS
Liyuan Xie
FIRST ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER
Virginia M. Lindseth, PhD, Chair
Jung-Min Amy Lee
ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER
Gretchen D. and Ward Smith Chair
Stephen Tavani ASSISTANT CONCERTMASTER
Dr. Ronald H. Krasney Chair
Wei-Fang Gu
Drs. Paul M. and Renate H. Duchesneau Chair
Kim Gomez
Elizabeth and Leslie Kondorossy Chair
Chul-In Park
Harriet T. and David L. Simon Chair
Miho Hashizume
Theodore Rautenberg Chair
Jeanne Preucil Rose
Larry J.B. and Barbara S. Robinson Chair
Alicia Koelz
Oswald and Phyllis Lerner Gilroy Chair
Yu Yuan
Patty and John Collinson Chair
Isabel Trautwein
Trevor and Jennie Jones Chair
Katherine Bormann
Analisé Denise Kukelhan
Gladys B. Goetz Chair
Zhan Shu
Youngji Kim
Genevieve Smelser
SECOND VIOLINS
Stephen Rose*
Alfred M. and Clara T. Rankin Chair
Jason Yu2
James and Donna Reid Chair
Eli Matthews 1
Patricia M. Kozerefski and Richard J. Bogomolny Chair
Sonja Braaten Molloy
Carolyn Gadiel Warner
Elayna Duitman
Ioana Missits
Jeffrey Zehngut
Sae Shiragami
Kathleen Collins
Beth Woodside
Emma Shook
Dr. Jeanette Grasselli Brown and Dr. Glenn R. Brown Chair
Yun-Ting Lee
Jiah Chung Chapdelaine
VIOLAS
Wesley Collins*
Chaillé H. and Richard B. Tullis Chair
Stanley Konopka 2
Mark Jackobs
Jean Wall Bennett Chair
Lisa Boyko
Richard and Nancy Sneed Chair
Richard Waugh
Lembi Veskimets
The Morgan Sisters Chair
Eliesha Nelson
Anthony and Diane Wynshaw-Boris Chair
Joanna Patterson Zakany
William Bender
Gareth Zehngut
CELLOS
Mark Kosower*
Louis D. Beaumont Chair
Richard Weiss 1
The GAR Foundation Chair
Charles Bernard2
Helen Weil Ross Chair
Bryan Dumm
Muriel and Noah Butkin Chair
Tanya Ell
Thomas J. and Judith Fay Gruber Chair
Ralph Curry
Brian Thornton
William P. Blair III Chair
David Alan Harrell
Martha Baldwin
Dane Johansen
Paul Kushious
BASSES
Maximilian Dimoff*
Clarence T. Reinberger Chair
Derek Zadinsky2
Charles Paul1
Mary E. and F. Joseph Callahan Chair
Mark Atherton
Thomas Sperl
Henry Peyrebrune
Charles Barr Memorial Chair
Charles Carleton
Scott Dixon
HARP
Trina Struble*
Alice Chalifoux Chair
FLUTES
Joshua Smith*
Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Chair
Saeran St. Christopher
Jessica Sindell2
Austin B. and Ellen W. Chinn Chair
Mary Kay Fink
PICCOLO
Mary Kay Fink
Anne M. and M. Roger Clapp Chair
OBOES
Frank Rosenwein*
Edith S. Taplin Chair
Corbin Stair
Sharon and Yoash Wiener Chair
Jeffrey Rathbun 2
Everett D. and Eugenia S. McCurdy Chair
Robert Walters
ENGLISH HORN
Robert Walters
Samuel C. and Bernette K. Jaffe Chair
CLARINETS
Afendi Yusuf*
Robert Marcellus Chair
Robert Woolfrey
Victoire G. and Alfred M. Rankin, Jr. Chair
Daniel McKelway2
Robert R. and Vilma L. Kohn Chair
Amy Zoloto
E-FLAT CLARINET
Daniel McKelway
Stanley L. and Eloise M. Morgan Chair
BASS CLARINET
Amy Zoloto
Myrna and James Spira Chair
BASSOONS
John Clouser*
Louise Harkness Ingalls Chair
Gareth Thomas
Barrick Stees2
Sandra L. Haslinger Chair
Jonathan Sherwin
CONTRABASSOON
Jonathan Sherwin
HORNS
Nathaniel Silberschlag*
George Szell Memorial Chair
Michael Mayhew§
Knight Foundation Chair
Jesse McCormick
Robert B. Benyo Chair
Hans Clebsch
Richard King
Meghan Guegold Hege
TRUMPETS
Michael Sachs*
Robert and Eunice Podis Weiskopf Chair
Jack Sutte
Lyle Steelman 2
James P. and Dolores D. Storer Chair
Michael Miller
CORNETS
Michael Sachs*
Mary Elizabeth and G. Robert Klein Chair
Michael Miller
TROMBONES
Brian Wendel*
Gilbert W. and Louise I. Humphrey Chair
Richard Stout
Alexander and Marianna C. McAfee Chair
Shachar Israel2
BASS TROMBONE
Luke Sieve
EUPHONIUM & BASS TRUMPET
Richard Stout TUBA
Yasuhito Sugiyama*
Nathalie C. Spence and Nathalie S. Boswell Chair
TIMPANI vacant
PERCUSSION
Marc Damoulakis*
Margaret Allen Ireland Chair
Thomas Sherwood
Tanner Tanyeri
KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS
Carolyn Gadiel Warner
Marjory and Marc L. Swartzbaugh Chair
LIBRARIANS
Michael Ferraguto
Joe and Marlene Toot Chair
Donald Miller
Gabrielle Petek
ENDOWED CHAIRS CURRENTLY UNOCCUPIED
Elizabeth Ring and William Gwinn Mather Chair
Blossom-Lee Chair
Clara G. and George P. Bickford Chair
Paul and Lucille Jones Chair
Charles M. and Janet G. Kimball Chair
Sunshine Chair
Otto G. and Corinne T. Voss Chair
Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Smucker Chair
Rudolf Serkin Chair
CONDUCTORS
Christoph von Dohnányi
MUSIC DIRECTOR LAUREATE
Daniel Reith
ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR
Sidney and Doris Dworkin Chair
Lisa Wong
DIRECTOR OF CHORUSES
Frances P. and Chester C. Bolton Chair
* Principal
§ Associate Principal
1 First Assistant Principal
2 Assistant Principal
This roster lists full-time members of The Cleveland Orchestra. The number and seating of musicians onstage varies depending on the piece being performed. Seating within the string sections rotates on a periodic basis.
Now in its second century, The Cleveland Orchestra, under the leadership of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst since 2002, is one of the most sought-after performing ensembles in the world. Year after year, the ensemble exemplifies extraordinary artistic excellence, creative programming, and community engagement. The New York Times has called Cleveland “the best in America” for its virtuosity, elegance of sound, variety of color, and chamber-like musical cohesion.
Founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, the Orchestra performed its inaugural concert in December 1918. By the middle of the century, decades of growth and sustained support had turned it into one of the most admired globally.
The past decade has seen an increasing number of young people attending concerts, bringing fresh attention to The Cleveland Orchestra’s legendary sound and committed programming. More recently, the Orchestra launched several bold digital projects, including the streaming platform Adella, the podcast On a Personal Note, and its own recording label, a new chapter in the Orchestra’s long and distinguished recording and broadcast history. Together, they have captured the Orchestra’s unique artistry and the musical achievements of the Welser-Möst and Cleveland Orchestra partnership.
The 2024–25 season marks Franz Welser-Möst’s 23rd year as music director, a period in which The Cleveland Orchestra earned unprecedented acclaim around the world, including a series of residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of its kind by an American orchestra, and a number of acclaimed opera presentations.
Since 1918, seven music directors — Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Franz Welser-Möst — have guided and shaped the ensemble’s growth and sound. Through concerts at home and on tour, broadcasts, and a catalog of acclaimed recordings, The Cleveland Orchestra is heard today by a growing group of fans around the world.
@ClevelandOrchestra
@CleveOrchestra
@CleveOrch
@clevelandorchestra
FRANZ WELSER-MÖST, MUSIC DIRECTOR
YOUR VISIT
LATE SEATING
Guests with Pavilion seats who arrive after the start of the concert may be asked to wait outside the Pavilion until the first convenient pause in the music, after which our ushers will help you to your seats.
LAWN SEATING
Guests on the Lawn may bring their own chairs, but guests with high-backed chairs that obstruct others’ views may be asked to relocate to the rear of the Lawn. Rental chairs are available for a fee of $10 per evening. Tents, flags, balloons, or other structures that might obstruct views or present a hazard are prohibited. Open flames are also prohibited.
PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEOGRAPHY & RECORDING
Audio recording, photography, and videography are prohibited during performances at Blossom. Photographs and videos can only be taken when the performance is not in progress. As a courtesy to others, please silence all electronic devices prior to the start of the concert.
SMOKING
All Blossom Music Festival events are presented in a smoke-free environment. Smoking or
vaping are not allowed anywhere on the grounds or in buildings once you have entered through the ticket gates. A smoking area is available outside the gates in a designated area of Parking Lot A.
WEATHER INFORMATION
In the event of severe weather, a coordinated campus-wide alert will be issued. Guests and staff will be directed to safety by our staff and loudspeaker system. Visit clevelandorchestra. com or text BLOSSOM to 844-955-4377 for weather updates and more information.
FREE TRAM & ADA VAN SERVICE
Free tram service between the parking lots and Smith Plaza and the Pavilion is available on a continuous basis before and after each concert. The ADA Van Service can pick up at the Main Gate with service to the Tram Circle.
QUESTIONS?
The Blossom Friends of The Cleveland Orchestra host two Information Centers — one located outside the Main Gate across from the Lawn Ticket Booth and the other inside the Main Gate on Smith Plaza.
FREE MOBILE APP TICKET WALLET
Download today for instant, secure, and paperless access to your concert tickets.
For more information and direct links to download, visit clevelandorchestra.com/ticketwallet or scan the code with your smartphone camera to download the app for iPhone or Android. Available for iOS and Android on Google Play and at the Apple App Store.
The Cleveland Orchestra is grateful to these organizations for their ongoing generous support of The Cleveland Orchestra: National Endowment for the Arts, the State of Ohio and Ohio Arts Council, and to the residents of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.
