Welcome: André Gremillet

WELCOME

building on tradition, innovation, and community

ANDRÉ GREMILLET

President & CEO Dear Friends,

As I write this, The Cleveland Orchestra is completing a successful 2021 Blossom Music Festival season, and preparations are in full swing for a safe return to our fi rst public concerts at Severance Hall in over eighteen months. We are doing our utmost to continue navigating through the most challenging circumstances in the Orchestra’s history, motivated by the promise of a monumental 2021-22 season — Franz Welser-Möst’s twentieth as music director — fi lled with beauty, contemplation, refl ection, and celebration of the human spirit. We cannot wait to share our musical off erings with you. For more than a century, The Cleveland Orchestra has grown and evolved, facing challenges large and small, and working through change as a necessary part of moving ahead each year. But the last year and a half has forced us to adapt as quickly as possible, and across all areas — performances and presentations, preparation and planning. This was no small feat, yet it also brought out the best in The Cleveland Orchestra as a resourceful, creative, and forward-looking institution, where all stakeholders were united behind a common purpose: the preservation of one of the world’s great orchestras for a community that deeply loves and values it. These eff orts are just beginning. As we return to our storied home this fall and open its doors again to you, our remarkable community, we continue to reevaluate everything we do. How do we best translate our historic traditions and the hand-crafted art made each week onstage with new ideas, repertoire, and technology to propel us forward while protecting the health and well-being of staff , musicians, volunteers, and audiences? How best to engage our audiences both inside and outside of the concert hall? How do we continue bringing the transformative power of music to the world — across economic, social, age, and societal divides? The past year and a half has seen the development of an array of new and evolving initiatives including our inaugural season of In Focus streamed broadcasts, a steady stream of recording projects, education programs, and community engagement. The pandemic has further opened our eyes and minds to changing ourselves from the inside out, to meet and welcome tomorrow’s audiences today. Our repertoire continues to expand, including a more diverse range of voices than at any other point in our history. In a word, what we are striving to do and be is to become more curious — about music, about our audiences, about the world around us. About everything. This curiosity includes constantly questioning how we — together and individually — interact with the power of music to touch the lives of everyone around us, to activate our souls and hearts and minds. The future begins today, every day. In closing, I must add a special acknowledgement regarding collaboration. We are doing this together, all of us — the musicians, the staff , the board of trustees, the volunteers and technicians, our fans and donors, audiences and contributors. Throughout the past two years, everyone who followed and supported and encouraged us amid the pandemic’s uncertainty, all of you are helping ensure that The Cleveland Orchestra endures and grows, shines and evolves not just now, but long into the future. Let the music continue!