Sandra Gross-Hutton, sculptor and owner/founder of the Brazee School of Glass in Cincinnati, was asked to deliver a commencement address May 12 to the 2013 graduates of the School of Creative Arts at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Here is what she said.
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Amy Culbertson, former entertainment editor at the Cincinnati Post, now a food and travel writer living in Forth Worth, Texas, remembers the Blue Wisp Jazz Club, from the days it was located in Obryonville, to its current, tenuous location at 700 Race Street downtown. She submits this affectionate essay about the club and what it means and has meant to Cincinnati.
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Louis Langrée

Though he will be onstage for only six of the 20 concerts in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's 2013-2014 season -- his first as music director -- Louis Langrée has assembled a well-rounded and thoughtful lineup. There will be new music and familiar favorites, popular guests and new faces, some intriguing collaborations and continuing community outreach in the form of the orchestra's "One City, One Symphony" project inaugurated in November, 2012.
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Michael Gielen

Michael Gielen, music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1980-1986, wrote an introduction to his last subscription concert with the CSO March 14 and 15, 1986 at Music Hall.  That program paired, perhaps for the first time anywhere, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Schoenberg's 1947 "A Survivor from Warsaw." During his six-year tenure with the CSO, Gielen programmed many such juxtapositions of old and new music, a visionary practice now commonplace everywhere.  
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Evans Mirageas outside Music Hall in Cincinnati

Art matters and as "the confluence of theater, literature, ballet, visual art, costume design, instrumental music and singing," opera has a unique power to teach and inspire.  No one has said it better that Cincinnati Opera artistic director Evans Mirageas.
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Closing Ceremony, 2012 World Choir Games, U.S. Bank Arena, Cincinnati, Ohio (Peace Bell in foreground)

The 2012 World Choir Games, held in Cincinnati, Ohio July 4-14, ended with the ringing of the Peace Bell, a presentation by the 2014 World Choir Games host city, Riga, Latvia and a concert by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra led by Pops conductor John Morris Russell and guest conductor Gabor Hollerung.  Guest artists were Broadway star Idina Menzel, gospel great Marvin Winans and cast members from Cincinnati Opera's upcoming "La Traviata." The event was a kind of coming of age for Cincinnati, which showed itself eminently capable of hosting thousands of visitors speaking dozens of languages in an international competition known as the Olympics of choral music. There was even a Champion from Cincinnati, the Choraliers of Fairfield, Ohio, winners in the Show Choir event.
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Gustavo Dudamel at the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky (photo by Rich Copley)

Get off your high horse, you might say, but the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the very definition of "elite," came to the Bluegrass State this week.  Apparently it was no problem for the picky Viennese. who, incidentally, have their pick of conductors, too, hiring only the world's best on a guest-conductor-only basis.  The Vienna Phil's pick this time was Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel, today's hottest young conductor.  While in Kentucky, Dudamel and the orchestra members rubbed shoulders with attendees of the World Equestrian Games, being held for the first time outside of Europe in, where else?  Kentucky.
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Cincinnati Music Hall

Cincinnati's 132-year-old Music Hall is beautiful.  It has enviable acoustics.  It is a beloved icon for the Cincinnati community.  However, as the performance home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, it has a fatal flaw.  It is too big.  On Jan. 7, 2010, CSO music director Paavo Järvi announced that he will leave the orchestra at the end of the 2010-2011 season.  Did Music Hall have anything to do with it?  Would Dr. Demento have had something to say?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viTUhOT4d3I

Re-posted from Feb. 23, 2009.

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Many people paid tribute to Erich Kunzel as he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame May 7 in Cincinnati.  One of them was Charles Manning, Pops Pianist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, who headed East over I-74 to join a festive crowd in Memorial Hall, home of the hall of fame in historic Over-the-Rhine.  Manning's perceptive and eloquent remarks are those of someone who played under Kunzel from 1982-2002 while he served as ISO Pops Music Director.
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Do newspapers  matter?  According to a new study by economists at Princeton University based on evidence from the closing of the Cincinnati Post in December, 2007, they can have "a substantial and measurable impact on public life."  After the Post closed, fewer candidates ran for public office in Cincinnati's Northern Kentucky suburbs, where the Post was historically dominant.  Incumbents were yielded an advantage and voter turnout fell.  The March 2009 study from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs may be found at http://wws-roxen.princeton.edu/wwseconpapers/papers/dp236.pdf
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What can Cincinnati's arts organizations do to help themselves and each other during these straitened economic times?  Much, based on a simple premise:  connect the dots. Some thoughts and observations on how it could have and might still be done.
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Charles Coleman

New York composer Charles Coleman has some thoughts about the ubiquitous term "accessible" as applied to new music.  Must music be "primarily simple with a tuneful nature" to be "accessible?"  Bah, humbug.
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Collaboration and mutual reinforcement will be increasingly necessary if arts groups are going to survive in today's straitened economy.  Having seen opportunities for mutual benefit go unrealized in the Greater Cincinnati community, it was rewarding to find a small glimmer of hope on the Music Hall calendar in November.  "Stargazing and Late Night in Spain," a ticket being offered by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's young professionals group, will draw attention to both the CSO and Cincinnati Opera. 
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promotional illustration for Cincinnati Ballet's "Dracula"

Which is scarier, Dracula the ballet or ballet with canned music?  I found out at the world premiere of Cincinnati Ballet's "Dracula" Oct. 31 at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.  Choreographer on just 5 1/2 months' notice was Cincinnati Ballet associate artistic director Devon Carney. 
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