Summers Before Blossom: A Look Back

, Cleveland Orchestra trustee Dudley S. Blossom Sr. Summers Before Blossom by Amanda Angel IN JULY 1927 returned early from his vacation in Wyoming, so that he In the decades before opening could attend the ensemble’s fi nal summer concert at Gordon Park. It was the fi rst season that the Orchestra Blossom Music Center in 1968, programmed a series of “Open Air Concerts” in partner-

Th e Cleveland Orchestra ship with the City of Cleveland. Performances were held on both the east side in Gordon Park and on the west provided a live summertime side in Edgewater Park. “That crowd, that throng of people, sitting all over the soundtrack for generations benches, all over the place, on automobiles, in automobiles, anywhere they could to hear the music!” Blossom later across Northeast Ohio — recalled. “Those summer concerts, it seemed to me, meant more to the appreciation of the Orchestra in this town and performing concerts in parks, more for the love of the Orchestra throughout the commu on piers, in auditoriums, and nity than anything that has happened.” Little did Blossom realize that those al fresco even baseball stadiums. performances would set in motion plans for a summer festival that would bear his family name forty years later. In the intervening decades, The Cleveland Orchestra provided countlesssummertime memories for the city and its neighboring communities — in parks, on piers, at auditoriums, and even in baseball stadiums. The summer concerts in 1927 were not only embraced by music lovers in Northeast Ohio, they were equally popular among the Orchestra’s musicians, who did not yet have year-round contracts and received extra income for performances held outside of the regular season. Following up on the initial success, the Orchestra continued its partnership with the City in 1928, presenting thirty-one “Cleveland Civic Summer Concerts” — including seven Nationality Nights to celebrate the diverse ethnic communities and neighborhoods. The fi nancial burdens surrounding the construction of Severance Hall, which opened in February 1931,

Summer 1927: Handbill for Edgewater Park concerts. Summer 1932: Audiences for a summertime Promenade Concert at Severance Hall are called to come inside with a fanfare from three trumpet players on the balcony above the front entrance.

coupled with the Great Depression, suspended summer performances until 1932 and 1933, when “Promenade Concerts” helped inaugurate the new concert hall. One large attraction of these presentations was the hall’s newfangled “conditioned air, whereby a constant temperature and a proper humidity are maintained through varying weather conditions.”

As the country’s economic woes continued, the next few seasons saw no organized summer concert series until the 1936 Great Lakes Exposition, a regional fair celebrating the centennial of the incorporation of Cleveland, took place. Chaired by the same Dudley Blossom, who had by that time become president of the Orchestra’s board of trustees, the fair took place along the Erie lakefront, from West 3rd Street to East 20th Street. More than four million visitors came to see displays trumpeting Midwest inventions and international exhibitions. As part of the festivities, many Cleveland Orchestra musicians were hired to be members of the “Great Lakes Symphony Orchestra,” which performed in a wooden shed on the East Ninth Street Pier.

The following year, that shed was rebranded as the Aquastage — not to be confused with the next year’s popular Aquacade, which held water ballets during the 1937 edition of the Great Lakes Exposition — and presented light opera and operetta, with many Cleveland Orchestra members accompanying performances from the pit. In 1939, the Orchestra was again searching for a summer venue where it could present its own concerts. The World Poultry Congress announced plans for its summer convention near the Ninth Street Pier, promising to snarl traffi c and exhaust parking all around the Aquastage. With travel to the piers all but unfeasible, the musicians looked south into downtown to Cleveland’s cavernous Public Auditorium. The Orchestra was already familiar with the space, having performed at the building’s April 15, 1922, opening to a capacity crowd of 13,000. Since then, Public Auditorium had hosted the Metropolitan Opera’s spring tour dates in the city, as well as periodic Cleveland Orchestra performances. Three conductors — Rudolf Ringwald, Burle Marx, and Victor Kolar — led the “Cleveland Summer Orchestra” in classical standards and pops during the 1939 season, starting a summer tradition that would continue at Public Auditorium for the next three decades. Soloists included such opera singers as Risë Stevens (1943), Regina Resnik (1945), and Lawrence Tibbett (1949); local pianists Eunice Podis and Dorothy Humel (who would later be Cleveland Orchestra trustees); and the virtuoso harmonica players John Sebastian and Larry Adler were popular annual attractions. Frank Sinatra made his Cleveland debut singing in an orchestral program of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern in 1943, and in 1952 a 22-year-old Lorin Maazel led two Summer Pops Concerts, twenty years before he was named music director of The Cleveland Orchestra.

Work to install air conditioning in Public Auditorium in 1953 unintentionally led to one of The Cleveland Orchestra’s most memorable series of presentations. Facing a summer devoid of music, Cleveland News reporter Ernest Wittenberg fl oated the idea that the Orchestra perform prior to Cleveland Indians baseball games. Both sports and music fans embraced the idea. The City purchased new sound equipment for Municipal Stadium, for a dozen concerts presented between doubleheaders. The “Indipops,” as they were cleverly named, won raves in the local press, though assistant conductor Louis Lane, who led all twelve performances, later recalled that fi lling out the programs with “music

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA ARCHIVES

Summer 1953: Between twelve Major League Baseball doubleheaders, conductor Louis Lane led “Indipops” concerts at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The annual Summer Pops Concerts stepped outside while new air conditioning was installed at Public Auditorium.

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA ARCHIVES

TOP Summers 1937-38: For two summers, Cleveland Orchestra members performed at the Aquastage on the East Ninth Street pier, accompanying light opera and operetta from the lakeside pit.

BOTTOM Summers 1939-69: Cleveland’s Public Auditorium hosted Summer Pops Concerts for thirty years, featuring guest artists from pop and jazz to opera and classical pops.

that was loud most of the time and suffi ciently popular” proved a challenge. The Orchestra returned to Public Auditorium the next year and continued to present summer concerts in the now air-conditioned space. In the ensuing decades, in addition to the yeoman eff orts of staff conductor Louis Lane, the Summer Pops Concerts attracted many famous guest conductors, including Arthur Fiedler, Carmen Dragon, Duke Ellington, Skitch Henderson, André Kostelanetz, Leroy Anderson, Ferde Grofé, and Henry Mancini, as well as guest artists such as pianist Van Cliburn, Dave Brubeck and his Quartet, comedian Anna Russell, tenor Richard Tucker, Ahmad Jamal and his Trio, and Benny Goodman and his Jazz Ensemble. In the meantime, the search for a permanent summer home was getting more and more serious. George Szell, the Orchestra’s legendary music director from 1946-1970, saw the project as not only an opportunity to bring music to larger crowds than ever before, but fi nally ensuring that the musicians would have the stability of year-round employment (which also meant a better, more consistent ensemble for him to conduct). A committee of Orchestra trustees examined more than eighty possible sites across Northeast Ohio. Many of the plots were too small, others were eliminated due to noisy overhead air traffi c. Eventually, the engineering fi rm of William Gould & Associates recommended a property of more than 500 acres with a natural bowl-like shape in the Cuyahoga Valley, 25 miles from Cleveland and 10 from Akron.

The property was purchased in 1966, and the same year the board approved plans to name the summer facility as Blossom Music Center to honor this important local family, who had supported the Orchestra since its founding. Though Dudley Blossom Sr. had died in 1938 and his son, Dudley Blossom Jr. passed away in 1961, both of their widows were at the groundbreaking on July 2, 1967. Elizabeth Bingham Blossom (Mrs. Dudley Blossom Sr.) and her youngest granddaughter, Betsy, broke the ground on the site. Emily Blossom (Mrs. Dudley Blossom Jr.) stated, “There is music in our hearts today; there’ll be music in the air a year from now.” Blossom Music Center opened on July 19, 1968, marking the culmination of the Orchestra’s fi ftieth anniversary season, and the fi rst in which Orchestra musicians received year-round pay. To begin the opening night program, Szell led the Orchestra in “The Star-Spangled Banner” followed by Beethoven’s The Consecration of the House overture. After a brief intermission came Beethoven’s mighty Ninth Symphony, gloriously fi lling the new Pavilion and Lawn with stirring music and bonds of human togetherness. The Cleveland Orchestra had indeed found its permanent summer home.

Since that inaugural evening, more than 21 million music lovers have visited Blossom’s bucolic grounds to hear symphonic music at its fi nest — as well as rock, pop, jazz, country, folk, rap, and more — creating one of Northeast Ohio’s best-loved summer traditions.

Amanda Angel moved this summer from New York City to join Th e Cleveland Orchestra staff as managing editor.